Selling a Business Is Not Just a Financial Decision. It Is an Identity Moment.
You have spent twenty, thirty, forty years building this. You know which technician just bought a starter house, which manager is putting two kids through college, which long-time customer signed with you back when the internet was still dial-up and never went anywhere else. Selling your business is not a transaction question. It is a question about what happens to the people who trusted you, what your life looks like on the other side of the wire, and whether the timing serves the rest of the story you are still writing.
For most owners, selling a business is the largest single financial event of a lifetime and the second-most identity-shaping decision a founder ever makes, right behind starting the company in the first place. The CGK business brokers and M&A advisors who guide that decision sit with you in it before they run the process for you.
We love when you call, though we spend most of our time on the phone closing deals for owners like you. The form below is the fastest way to reach Greg Knox directly. He replies within one business day, usually much sooner.
🔒 Strictly confidential. Direct routing to Greg Knox, not a junior screener. We never share inquiries with anyone.
Questions owners ask themselves before they call a broker.
These are the questions that show up at four in the morning when you are not yet talking to anyone. Our business brokers have heard each of them across hundreds of engagements with privately-held owners.
How CGK business brokers actually run selling a business from intake to close.
Selling a business with CGK is not a listing. It is a structured M&A process built for privately-held companies in the High Main Street and lower-middle-market bands ($1.5M to $100M in revenue). Here is what selling a business with CGK looks like from the seller’s seat, stage by stage.
You work with a senior named principal from first call through wire.
Selling a business with CGK is anchored by a senior named principal. The same person who runs your free valuation also writes your Confidential Information Memorandum, runs your buyer outreach, negotiates your Letter of Intent, manages diligence, and sits with you at closing. You will never get handed off to a junior screener after the engagement letter is signed. Most franchise brokerages and listing-mill shops cannot say that with a straight face. CGK can. Continuity is part of the product.
We tell you whether and when to take the business to market.
Most of the value in selling a business shows up in the conversations before we go to market. If the diligence file has gaps that will cost you a multiple turn, we say so. If your bench has a single point of failure that a sophisticated buyer’s deal team will discount, we name it. If the industry buyer pool is in a quiet quarter and waiting two cycles will materially change your outcome, we tell you to wait. Disciplined intake on the front end is half of the reason nine of every ten CGK engagements close while the brokerage industry as a whole sits closer to two of ten.
The valuation is a memo, not a number.
The free verbal valuation that opens every selling a business conversation at CGK is a working session with a senior principal, not a one-page printout. We pull our model up on the screen, walk you through the comparables, the multiple band, the adjustments, and the math behind the range. The optional paid written valuation memo includes a defensible analysis, four independent valuation methodologies, an executive summary, and specific moves that could raise the number before you take the business to market. If you later engage CGK on the sale, the written valuation work credits against the success fee.
The CIM is written for the buyer’s diligence team.
The Confidential Information Memorandum we build for selling a business is a industry-calibrated document written for the decision-makers on the buyer’s diligence team, not for a casual browser. For a multi-location dental practice, that means a hygienist-bench narrative with documented retention. For a federal services firm, that means contract-by-contract performance schedules and security-clearance bench depth. For a regional veterinary group, that means AAHA accreditation cycle detail and shop-by-shop doctor productivity. The CIM gets read by the deal team whose offer will set the floor for everyone else, so every page has to defend a number, not just describe a business.
Diligence is staged in tiers, not handed over at LOI.
Confidentiality is absolute from the first conversation through closing. We market through a blind teaser that does not identify the company. Every serious buyer signs an NDA before receiving the CIM. Diligence is then staged in tiers. Summary financials and the buyer thesis are shared at NDA. Detailed financials and anonymized customer concentration come post-LOI. The most sensitive items, named customer lists, key-employee identities, and supplier-specific exposure, are held back until after a couple of turns of the purchase agreement, when the buyer has committed real legal cost and the structure is essentially locked. Sellers who hand all of this over at LOI lose leverage they cannot get back. Employees, customers, suppliers, and competitors find out when you decide it is time, not before.
We back-end the business sale process so the deal actually closes.
The other half of the nine-of-ten close rate is back-end deal management on the business sale process itself. That means negotiating the LOI to your terms instead of the buyer’s first draft, structuring the escrow holdback for your industry instead of the buyer’s standard playbook, managing diligence so the deal team has answers before the questions become deal-killers, and holding a deal together through the months between LOI and wire when most brokerages start losing their grip. Both halves are necessary. Neither is sufficient on its own. The combination is what produces a close rate four-and-a-half times the brokerage industry average.
Buy-side and sell-side at CGK are kept distinct.
CGK runs a separate buy-side practice for acquirers (the other side of the table), with its own mandates, its own deal flow, and its own fee structure. None of it touches your sell-side engagement. Buy-side and sell-side at CGK are kept distinct, and CGK never represents both sides of any single deal. The firewall is absolute on any individual transaction. Your job, as the seller, is to get the highest defensible price under terms that work for you and your people. That is the only objective on our side of your engagement.
Start with a free business valuation conversation.
Every CGK seller relationship begins the same way: a free verbal valuation walkthrough with a senior CGK principal. We schedule a working session, in person, or by Zoom, and walk you through the model and the band your business is likely to clear in today’s buyer pool. No commitment. No pressure. No sales pitch.
What the free verbal business valuation includes.
A senior CGK principal sits with you, in person or by Zoom, pulls up our valuation model calibrated to your industry, and walks you through the price range your business is likely to clear in today’s buyer pool. You see the methodology, the comparables, the multiples, and the adjustment math behind the number. You leave with a verbal range and a clear sense of next steps. The free verbal valuation is available to any owner seriously thinking about selling on any horizon: a year, five years, longer. Written valuations are a separate engagement.
If you need a written business valuation memo.
If you need a written valuation to share with your CPA, attorney, spouse, lender, the IRS, or a court (partnership buyout, estate planning, gift planning, SBA loan documentation), that is a separate fixed-fee engagement at CGK. The memo includes a defensible analysis, four independent valuation methodologies, an executive summary, and a candid conversation about specific moves that could raise the number before you go to market. If you later engage CGK to sell your business, the written valuation work credits against the success fee.
Why a CFA charterholder valuation matters when you sell.
Sophisticated buyers, often led by an MBA-trained Principal with a finance background, will ask hard questions about your number at the LOI stage. CGK’s role is to give you the analytical defense that holds the price up under that pressure. The CFA charter is the institutional gold-standard credential for valuation work, and CGK is the rare business brokerage with a CFA charterholder leading the analysis. A defensible business valuation becomes the floor on your deal. A soft one becomes the ceiling.
Start with a confidential conversation.
A senior CGK principal will respond within one business day to schedule a free verbal valuation, in person, or by Zoom. For privately-held owners with $1.5M+ in annual revenue. Strictly confidential. No commitment.
Confidential. No obligation. Direct routing to a named CGK principal, not a junior screener.
From first conversation to wire transfer.
Most CGK engagements for selling a business run six to twelve months from signed engagement letter to wire transfer. Some close in three to six. Clean diligence files, lower customer concentration, and seller flexibility on terms all shorten the timeline. Here is a typical seller journey when selling a business with CGK, stage by stage.
Confidential conversation
You call our office or submit the form. We listen. No pressure, no commitment.
Free verbal valuation
A senior principal walks you through the model and the price range your business is likely to clear.
Diligence prep
Signed engagement on a success-fee basis. We help you close the items that affect the final price: financial recasting, document cleanup, and the management-team questions buyers will dig into.
CIM and data room
Blind teaser drafted, Confidential Information Memorandum built for the deal team, structured data room populated.
Marketing and buyer engagement
Multi-buyer competitive process under NDA, qualified-buyer outreach, screening calls.
Indications of interest and LOIs
Competing IOIs and LOIs negotiated to your terms; escrow holdback structured for your industry.
Diligence and PSA
Staged diligence, purchase agreement negotiation, regulatory and lender coordination as needed.
Closing the business sale and wire
Final purchase agreement, escrow funding, wire instructions, clean handoff, buyer-seller transition plan.
Four composite owner stories from a recent year of selling a business with CGK.
The four composite seller stories below illustrate the four most common reasons privately-held owners actually start selling a business: a generational retirement, an unsolicited offer that triggered a real process, a partner exit that reframed the company’s future, and a personal trigger that compressed the runway. Names, industry details, and locations are composited; the structural patterns are real. Each story shows what selling a business felt like from the seller’s seat.
How a Washington DC federal services firm went to a PE-backed govcon consolidator after twenty-eight years, with the business brokers who knew the cleared-bench story was the asset.
Walter started the firm in 1998 with one other person after a decade as a program manager at a regional federal IT prime. Twenty-eight years later, the firm employed one hundred and ten W-2 employees with a cleared-workforce ratio that ran roughly sixty-five percent across Secret, Top Secret, and a meaningful TS/SCI subset. The contract book was anchored by recurring task orders at Fort Belvoir, the Pentagon, and a civilian-agency cluster at Crystal City, with the top three contract vehicles running roughly thirty-five percent of revenue combined. By the time Walter called CGK, the firm was doing thirty-two million in revenue at a sixteen percent EBITDA margin, clean for a labor-and-pass-through federal book, with two hundred and ninety thousand of revenue per head. His two adult children had each chosen unrelated careers: his daughter was a pediatric oncologist in Seattle, his son a tenured math professor in Charlottesville. Walter and his wife wanted four months a year in their Eastern Shore house and a foundation seat at a DC veterans-services nonprofit.
The first call was forty-nine minutes. CGK listened. Walter walked through the way he had built the cleared bench during the 2010s growth cycle, the way the program-management lieutenants under him had taken over the day-to-day customer rhythm during the pandemic, the way three different PE-backed govcon platforms had been calling him quarterly for two years with quick-close pitches. He did not know what the firm was worth at five million in EBITDA with the cleared-workforce premium, the contract-vehicle concentration discount, the program-management bench, and the recurring task-order base. He did not know whether the consolidators calling him were the right kind of acquirer or whether a strategic prime would value the cleared bench more aggressively. CGK told him what to expect from each band of buyer, then set up a free valuation walkthrough.
The valuation walkthrough showed Walter a multiple band that respected the cleared-workforce ratio (functionally non-substitutable for a non-cleared consolidator inside a federal book), the recurring task-order base, and the program-management lieutenant bench, and that priced in the contract-vehicle concentration as the structural drag a sophisticated deal team would discount. The diligence file needed a contract-by-contract performance and renewal-probability schedule, security-clearance attrition and recompete history by program manager, and explicit novation language on the three largest task-order contracts. Walter spent five months getting it done. CGK took the firm to market in the spring of the same year. Roughly 230 buyers signaled interest off the blind teaser. About 142 signed NDAs to receive the full CIM. Fifteen LOIs landed in the LOI window. The pool was the structural mix the federal services industry tends to draw: HNW former-government-services-executive buyers running their own searches, several search funders, a notable group of independent sponsors with govcon theses, the heaviest concentration of bidders from mid-market and lower-middle-market PE govcon platforms, several large national strategics (some PE-backed primes, some publicly-traded), and a couple of family offices with govcon-cleared theses. Four LOIs advanced to a final round. Walter picked the second-highest headline because the buyer (a PE-backed govcon consolidator with eleven other federal services platforms in its portfolio across VA, MD, NC, and TX, sponsored by a Boston upper-middle-market PE fund with an explicit Mid-Atlantic rollup thesis) committed to keeping the firm’s name and Tysons headquarters intact, kept his two program-management lieutenants in named roles with multi-year retention agreements, and structured the rollover so Walter could step out within ninety days while keeping economic exposure to the next four years of consolidator growth. The deal closed at eighty-two percent cash at close, ten percent in an eighteen-month escrow keyed to contract-novation completion, and eight percent rolled forward as equity in the consolidator’s holding company. Wire hit on a Wednesday at 10:14 a.m. Walter drove to his wife’s office downtown and took her to lunch. He drove back that afternoon and thanked his two program-management lieutenants in person for the bench they had quietly built while he was running the customer conversations.
“Twenty-eight years of work, and the deal that closed it was about whether the buyer would ask about Carlos and Maya first. They did.”
How a Houston mechanical services owner who took a cold call from a PE associate ended up running a real process with business brokers who priced the deal correctly.
Pauline took over the family HVAC business in 2009 when her father had a heart attack and stepped back. He had founded the company in 1987 with two trucks running residential service across north Houston. By 2026, Pauline had grown the firm to forty-two W-2 employees, fourteen service trucks, and three install crews running residential and light-commercial HVAC across the north Houston, Sugar Land, and The Woodlands submarkets. Revenue was nine and a half million at a sixteen percent EBITDA margin, with thirty-eight percent of revenue running through recurring maintenance agreements, a premium-multiple driver in a industry PE has been rolling up aggressively since 2018. She had a senior service manager named Esteban who had been with the family since 1998, two install-crew leads who had each been with the company more than fifteen years, and a dispatcher named Karen who knew every long-time customer by first name.
The trigger was a single cold call. A twenty-eight-year-old associate at a Dallas private equity firm with a home services rollup thesis called Pauline on her cell phone on a Tuesday afternoon and offered, in his words, a “quick conversation about a strategic transaction.” He floated a multiple band over the phone that was meaningfully higher than anything she had been quoted before, asked her to sign an exclusivity NDA, and pressed for a flight to Houston the following week. Pauline did not sign. She called her CPA. Her CPA told her to call CGK before she did anything else.
The first conversation with CGK ran fifty-six minutes. Pauline walked through the family history, the Esteban story, the recurring maintenance-agreement base, the way the install crews handled the Memorial-area custom-home work that had been quietly growing into the highest-margin part of the book, and the PE associate’s specific pitch. The valuation walkthrough showed her a band where the PE associate’s number sat right at the floor, not the ceiling. The recurring maintenance-agreement base, the senior-bench retention, the diversified residential-and-light-commercial mix, and the Memorial-area custom-home margin lift were premium-multiple drivers a sophisticated PE-backed home services consolidator would pay up for. The thing dragging the number down was the way her bookkeeper had been running the install P&L commingled with the service P&L, hiding the actual margin lift on the Memorial-area custom-home work. CGK told Pauline the truth: the cold call was a real bid, but it was the floor, not the ceiling. She spent ninety days getting the install-and-service P&L broken out, the maintenance-agreement renewal-rate trailing-thirty-six-months pulled, the senior bench onto two-year retention agreements with comp-step protections. Then CGK took the firm to market.
Home services has been in heavy PE consolidation across the Sun Belt and the buyer-pool depth showed it. Roughly 195 buyers signaled interest off the blind teaser. About 118 signed NDAs. Twelve LOIs landed. The original PE suitor who had triggered the call signed an NDA and landed in the LOI mix at the seventh-highest headline of the twelve. The pool itself was the structural mix the home services industry tends to attract: a handful of HNW operator-investor buyers, a few search funders with a home services thesis, several independent sponsors, the heaviest concentration of bidders from mid-market and lower-middle-market PE home services rollups (the industry has been in heavy consolidation since 2018), and a couple of large national strategics. Three LOIs advanced to a final round. Pauline picked the highest headline because the buyer (a PE-backed home services consolidator with thirty-five trades platforms across the Sun Belt, sponsored by a Boston upper-middle-market PE fund) committed to keeping the family name on the trucks, kept Esteban as regional service manager with a meaningful comp upgrade, kept the two install-crew leads under their existing comp structure, and gave Pauline a one-year transition consulting role at one day per week. The deal closed at eighty-four percent cash at close, eight percent in a twelve-month escrow for general indemnity, and eight percent rolled forward as equity in the consolidator’s holding company. The headline came in roughly twenty-eight percent higher than the original PE associate’s cold-call number. Wire hit on a Friday at 1:47 p.m. Pauline drove to her father’s house in Spring, sat with him on his back patio, and told him the deal had closed. Her father was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, in his careful, accented English, that he was proud of her.
“The cold-call number sounded high until I saw what the real number was. A structured process pays for itself in one round of bidding.”
How two Nashville co-founders worked through a partner exit and ended up selling the company together, with business brokers who framed the three real options.
Daniel and Amanda met at Vanderbilt’s landscape architecture program in 2002 and launched the design-build firm together in 2008, structured as a fifty-fifty partnership from day one. Eighteen years later, the firm employed sixteen full-time W-2 staff plus eight seasonal hires running four design-build crews across the Nashville and Franklin residential markets, with revenue at three-point-six million, an SDE of seven hundred and twenty-five thousand, and a twenty-two percent recurring maintenance base that smoothed out the seasonal revenue cycle. Daniel ran the build side. Amanda ran the design side. They had been each other’s professional partners longer than either had been married. In late 2025, Amanda decided she wanted out of the build side entirely and was thinking about launching a residential design-only practice on her own. Daniel was not certain he wanted to operate the build side without her, but he was certain he did not want to dissolve the company. The two of them called CGK together, on the same Zoom, on a Wednesday afternoon.
CGK framed the three real options on that first call. Option one: Daniel buys Amanda out at a partner-buyout valuation and continues operating alone. Option two: they recapitalize, taking a minority outside investor who covers Amanda’s exit and gives Daniel new capital to run the build side with operating support. Option three: they sell the entire company together to a strategic or PE-backed acquirer, exit at the same time, and let Amanda go launch the design-only firm with her share of the proceeds while Daniel decides his next chapter. CGK walked them through what each option would look like financially, operationally, and personally. Daniel and Amanda each took a week and called us back together. They had picked option three.
The valuation walkthrough showed them a band where the design-build mix, the recurring maintenance base, the four crew leads with five-plus years of tenure each, and the high-end residential customer book in a market growing as fast as Nashville and Franklin were all premium-multiple drivers. The thing dragging the number down was the way the design revenue and the build revenue commingled inside a single P&L, hiding the actual margin profile of each. Daniel and Amanda spent four months pulling out a clean design-vs-build P&L for the trailing thirty-six months, getting the four crew leads onto two-year retention agreements, and documenting the design-system playbook Amanda had built so the buyer would understand what she had been doing in the design seat. Then CGK took the firm to market.
Residential design-build landscape in fast-growth Southeast metros is a moderately consolidating industry and the buyer-pool depth reflected it. Roughly 95 buyers signaled interest off the blind teaser. About 58 signed NDAs. Six LOIs landed. The pool was the structural mix the high-end residential design-build tier tends to attract: a small group of HNW operator-investor buyers, a few search funders, a couple of independent sponsors with a home services thesis, the heaviest concentration from regional design-build rollup platforms operating across the Southeast, and a couple of strategic acquirers. Three LOIs advanced to a final round. Daniel and Amanda picked the highest headline together because the buyer (a regional residential design-build platform with eight other studios across the Southeast, sponsored by a family-office backed rollup) committed to keeping the firm under its existing name in Franklin, kept the four crew leads under their existing comp structure with comp-step protections, hired Amanda for a three-month design-system handoff, and offered Daniel a one-year transitional regional-build-director role at three days a week. The deal closed at seventy-nine percent cash at close with the remaining twenty-one percent as a seller note over four years at a market rate, split fifty-fifty between Daniel and Amanda per the partnership structure. Wire hit on a Thursday at 11:55 a.m. Amanda called Daniel from her car in the Franklin parking lot. They were both quiet for a long moment. Then Amanda said, in the steady voice Daniel had heard her use across eighteen years of design reviews, that she was going to go launch the design-only firm in January, and that she hoped he would come over once a quarter and tell her what he was building. Daniel said he would.
“Eighteen years of working together, and the deal closed it cleanly because we ran it together with the right people.”
How an Austin specialty pet grooming owner whose spouse took a federal role in DC found business brokers who priced the book and closed in four months.
Beverly opened her first specialty grooming shop in 2014 in central Austin, focused on breed-specific show-grade grooming for owners willing to pay a premium for the certification-track skill set. She added a second location in Westlake in 2019 that bundled grooming with a small boarding suite. By 2026, the two locations together were doing one-point-four million in revenue with three hundred and eighty-five thousand of SDE on a twenty-seven-and-a-half percent margin, sixty-five percent repeat customers, and a ten-person staff including three certified groomers Beverly had personally trained and credentialed. In early 2026, Beverly’s husband Marcus was offered a senior career-track federal role in Washington that he had been pursuing for seven years. The role started in six months. The family was relocating regardless. Beverly had to figure out what to do with the business in less time than she would have preferred.
The first call with CGK was on a Saturday afternoon. Beverly had spent the previous week researching brokerage options and had filtered down to three firms she wanted to talk to. CGK was the second on the list. The conversation ran sixty-four minutes. Beverly walked through Marcus’s role, the relocation timeline, the question of whether to keep operating remotely (she did not want to), the three certified groomers, the breed-specific premium positioning, the Westlake boarding suite she had built into a quietly high-margin add-on, and the repeat-customer book that had taken a decade to build. CGK told her three things on that first call. One: a compressed timeline does not have to mean a discount, but it does mean the diligence file needs to be cleaner than usual because there is no runway to fix it mid-process. Two: the certified-groomer bench is the asset, not the lease. Three: at her tier and her timeline, the realistic deal universe was regional pet services rollups, HNW operator-buyers, and a small subset of family-office pet platforms. The valuation walkthrough showed her a band that respected the certified-groomer bench premium, the repeat-customer base, the Westlake margin lift, and priced in the compressed timeline as a modest discount on terms but not on headline.
Beverly spent six weeks pulling the cleanest diligence file CGK had seen at her tier in eighteen months. The three certified groomers each signed two-year retention agreements with comp-step protections. The trailing-thirty-six-months repeat-customer revenue was broken out and pulled. The Westlake boarding-and-grooming revenue split was cleanly documented. The breed-specific certification calendar and the trade-show competition record were attached as appendices to the CIM. Then CGK took the firm to market.
Specialty pet services in fast-growth Texas metros is a moderately consolidating industry and the buyer-pool depth reflected it. Roughly 62 buyers signaled interest off the blind teaser. About 35 signed NDAs. Three LOIs landed. The pool was the structural mix the specialty pet services tier tends to attract at this size band: HNW operator-investor buyers, a couple of independent sponsors with a pet services thesis, regional pet services rollups, and a couple of family-office pet platforms. All three LOIs advanced. Beverly picked the highest headline because the buyer (a regional pet services rollup with twelve other studios across Texas, sponsored by a Dallas-area family office) committed to keeping the brand on the Westlake storefront, kept the three certified groomers at their existing comp tier with retention bumps, and structured the transition so Beverly could move with her family in week sixteen instead of week twenty-four. The deal closed at seventy-eight percent cash at close with the remaining twenty-two percent as a seller note over three years at a market rate, sized so Beverly could anchor the relocation cash needs and still keep meaningful continuity incentive on the buyer through the transition. Wire hit on a Tuesday at 9:22 a.m., four months and six days from the day Beverly first called CGK. She drove to the Westlake location, hugged the three certified groomers one at a time, and started packing the family’s house that weekend.
“I did not have a year. I had four months and the cleanest diligence file I could build. The right business brokers know how to price that, not punish it.”
If any of these four sellers sounds like you, start with a free business valuation.
The four composites above are different industries, different sizes, different trigger events, different deal structures. They are the same engagement, run the same way, by senior CGK principals. The first conversation is free. The verbal valuation that follows is free for any owner seriously thinking about selling on any horizon: a year, five years, longer.
Confidential. No obligation. Direct routing to a named principal.
Talk to a CGK Business Broker
A senior CGK principal will respond within one business day. For privately-held owners with $1.5M+ in annual revenue.
The industries anchoring CGK sell-side engagements.
CGK runs sell-side engagements across both High Main Street and lower-middle-market bands ($1.5M to $100M in revenue) in the sixteen industries below, plus deal experience across thirty-plus other industries. If you are selling a business in one of these, our brokers have closed transactions in it before.
Plus deal experience across 30+ industries. Don’t see yours? Our business brokers have closed transactions in almost every privately-held industry, including some very niche businesses.
The national bench guiding privately-held owners through selling a business.
Every CGK engagement is led by a senior named principal start to finish. The bench below covers all eleven CGK offices, with Managing Directors specialized across valuation analytics, M&A structuring, sector specialization, and buy-side work. The principal you start with is the principal you close with.
What privately-held owners say after selling a business with CGK.
The process went very smoothly, and we closed in less than two months. It wouldn’t have happened without CGK’s insight, connections in the industry, and hard work. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them to anyone selling a business.
Hanna M.Selling my business was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I’m incredibly grateful to have had Wes by my side throughout the process. He brought perspective, pushed when necessary, and always had my best interests in mind. His experience and strategic approach allowed me to maximize the sale price while minimizing long-term risk and obligations. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t hesitate to choose him as my broker.
Adam NevilleDerik located multiple interested strategic buyers that produced more than one serious offer. The negotiations were tough but Greg and Derik’s experience helped us overcome. We got a great result for our employees and for the owners. We would recommend them without reservation.
Bob TaylorWe sold a business that was 47 years old and being run by second generation within a year of working with Wes. CGK has a system that attracts serious prospects to review opportunities. Wes was able to make the overwhelming feeling of selling easy and to a certain extent enjoyable. I never felt alone or in the dark throughout the entire process.
Jennifer WilliamsWe decided to sell our company in 2025. Talked to another M&A company in the Houston area. We felt very comfortable with Greg and Matthew at CGK. Could not have made a better choice. From day 1 till final closing and even after 30+ days, they have been here helping us with documents and support during the transition. Thanks can not be said enough.
Rickey ThomasInside the Blueprint, on Bloomberg TV and Fox Business News.
CGK Business Sales was featured on Inside the Blueprint, the syndicated business television series. Our episode aired on Bloomberg TV and Fox Business News. CGK is one of the few business brokerages a privately-held seller can compare against with a Bloomberg appearance to point to. Watch the segment, then start a confidential conversation with a CGK principal.
The six triggers that bring owners to the selling a business conversation.
Most CGK engagements start because one of the six triggers below has crossed the line from someday to this year. Any one of them is enough to start.
- Generational retirement. The most common trigger. The owner has built the business over twenty, thirty, forty years, and the next generation has chosen unrelated career paths or is not yet ready to step into the operating chair.
- An unsolicited buyer is calling. A PE associate, a industry strategic, or a regional rollup operator has been calling. The conversation has moved past pleasantries. Run a process before you sign anything, while you still have leverage.
- A partner or co-founder is exiting. One co-owner wants out and the other has to decide whether to buy them out, recapitalize, or sell the company together. Each path has different math.
- A health, family, or partnership trigger. A back surgery, a partnership disagreement, a spouse’s career change, a new family medical situation. The horizon for “someday” has gotten shorter.
- You want to sell into strength, not into stress. The trailing twelve months are the strongest the business has ever printed. The bench is the deepest it has ever been. This is when the multiples are highest and most owners hesitate.
- You need outside growth capital. The business needs an investor or a strategic partner to fund the next phase of growth, and a partial sale or a recapitalization is the right structure.
What costs owners the most money when selling a business.
The mistakes below show up in the diligence file, the LOI cycle, or the wire amount when selling a business. Each one is recoverable if you know about it in advance. Most owners do not, until it is too expensive to fix.
Pricing the business on what you want instead of what the market will pay. The most expensive mistake in the business sale process is anchoring on a number that has no buyer-pool support. A defensible verbal valuation that compares your business to recent transactions in the same industry and the same size band is the cheapest insurance you can buy before you take the company to market.
Trying to sell a business without representation. Selling a business without a broker is a structurally bad bet: roughly twenty percent of businesses listed on the open market without a broker actually close. The owner-led sale fails because the owner cannot run the company and run the deal at the same time, cannot maintain confidentiality once buyers know the seller’s name, and cannot structure a competitive process that creates the leverage needed to push the price up. Business brokers do not just find a buyer. They run a process.
Failing to normalize EBITDA properly. Owner add-backs, one-time expenses, non-recurring revenue, related-party transactions, and personal expenses run through the company P&L all need to be normalized for the buyer’s deal team. A clean EBITDA bridge is what holds the multiple up under sophisticated diligence. A sloppy one is what trims six figures off the wire.
Letting one buyer drag the diligence timeline. When the seller has only one buyer at the table, the buyer knows it and the diligence cycle stretches. A competitive process keeps the pace honest and keeps the original suitor on a clock instead of in control.
Mishandling employee, customer, and supplier confidentiality. Confidentiality is half of what makes selling a business work. If employees, customers, suppliers, or competitors find out the business is for sale before the seller decides to disclose, value gets destroyed in real time. A blind teaser, staged NDAs, and tiered diligence are how a sophisticated broker keeps the sale process private until the seller picks the moment.
Skipping the tax and estate work until LOI. Stock vs. asset, F-reorganization, installment treatment, state-tax allocation, charitable structures: each of these can shift net proceeds by tens or hundreds of thousands. The work has to be done twelve months before close, not at LOI. The right CPA, tax attorney, and trust attorney engaged early pay for themselves several times over on larger deals.
Preparing for selling a business on a 12 to 24 month runway.
The work that happens between deciding to sell and going to market is what determines the final price. Most of it is invisible to the seller until a sophisticated diligence team starts asking questions.
Twelve to eighteen months before your target close date. This is the window where retention agreements get formalized, documentation gaps get found and fixed, and the financials start being kept in the shape a buyer’s diligence team will want to see. Most of the lift on every composite story above happened here. Hygienist retention agreements, location-level P&L breakouts, MBE-status opinion letters, producer retention contracts, certified-groomer retention agreements. None of that work happens cleanly in a sixty-day rush.
After a clean recent track record, not before. Buyers look at how the last twelve months of your numbers ran with weight, and the cleanest LOI cycles run when the most recent two quarters are growth quarters with stable margins. If the industry is mid-cycle (a practice that just hired its second associate, an agency that just absorbed a small competing book, a firm that just won a recompete), let the revenue mature into two clean quarters before going out.
Once the owner-dependency story has been cleaned up. The single most expensive diligence finding is a buyer’s deal team discovering the owner is the binding constraint on customer, regulatory, carrier, or referral relationships. The fix is to put a layer of named lieutenants between the owner and each binding relationship, document the handoff, and let the relationships season for six to twelve months.
Once the tax and estate work is in place. A larger privately-held sale almost always has tax-structuring optionality the seller does not see until they are inside the LOI cycle: stock vs. asset, F-reorganization for QSBS-eligible C-corps, state-tax allocation, installment-sale considerations, charitable-remainder trust structures. The right financial advisor with trust attorneys, CPA, or tax attorney engaged twelve months before close pay for themselves several times over on larger deals.
Owners who run the runway when selling a business hit the multiples that show up in trade-press headlines. Owners who compress it into a sixty-day pre-market sprint learn what a diligence-discounted multiple looks like in real time. Either path, our business brokers will tell you the truth about which one you are on.
When to call a business broker.
Five trigger events keep showing up in the first conversation. Any one of them is enough to start.
The unsolicited approach. A PE consolidator scout, a industry strategic, or a regional rollup operator has been calling and the conversation has moved past the pleasantries. You do not know whether the price they are dangling is a real number, a stalking-horse number, or a relationship-building number. This is the right moment to call a CGK principal, before you sign anything, while you still have leverage.
These folks are not your friend. They are a buyer trying to engineer a deal at the lowest price they can defend. The instinct most sellers feel is to skip the broker fee on the grounds that they “already have a buyer,” but that instinct costs real money. Every CGK engagement runs the unsolicited buyer in parallel with the buyers our process uncovers, and the original suitor frequently lands in the back half of the LOI table. The terms they propose are also significantly weaker than what a competitive process produces. The competitive pressure of a structured process is what generates the price and the structure the unsolicited inquiry alone cannot.
The succession question has resolved. Your child finished a graduate program in a different field; your second-in-command decided to start their own thing; the family conversation about who takes the company has landed and the answer is not a family member. Succession is the most common single trigger event in selling a business for an owner-operator.
You want to sell into strength, not into stress. The trailing twelve months are the strongest the business has ever printed. The bench is the deepest it has ever been. The customer or referral pipeline is the cleanest it has been in years. This is exactly when the multiples are highest and exactly when most owners hesitate.
A health, family, or partnership change has shifted the horizon. A back surgery, a partnership disagreement, a spouse’s career change, a new family medical situation. The horizon for “someday” has gotten shorter. Our business brokers work confidentially through these conversations.
You want to know what your business is actually worth. No pressure, no commitment to sell. The verbal valuation walkthrough is free for any seller seriously thinking about a sale on any horizon. Most of our best engagements start with this conversation a year or more before the transaction.
Recognize any of these triggers for selling a business?
Start with a confidential conversation. A senior CGK principal will respond within one business day to schedule a free verbal valuation, in person, or by Zoom.
Confidential. No obligation. Direct routing to a named CGK principal, not a junior screener.
Frequently Asked Questions About Selling a Business
Practical answers to what comes up most often when privately-held owners are evaluating brokers to take their company to market. Useful background reading is available at the International Business Brokers Association (IBBA), M&A Source, and the U.S. Small Business Administration ownership-transition guide.
Latest from CGK on selling a business.
Recent commentary from CGK business brokers and M&A advisors on selling, buying, and valuing privately-held businesses. Industry data from the industry trade-press data and the IBBA Market Pulse inform our quarterly read of the industry multiples.
AI productivity tools are quietly compressing operating cost lines and re-shaping the multiples sophisticated buyers are willing to pay. Owners going to market in 2026 need to understand how a buyer’s deal team prices the AI lift before signing an LOI, because the valuation gap between AI-mature and AI-naive businesses is widening fast. […] Read More
Stock vs. asset structure, F-reorganizations, QSBS eligibility, installment-sale considerations, and state-tax allocation can each shift net proceeds by tens of thousands or more. The 2026 update walks privately-held owners through the structuring decisions that have to be made twelve months before close, not at LOI. […] Read More
SBA 7(a), conventional senior debt, mezzanine, seller notes, rollover equity, and earn-outs each carry different cost-of-capital, covenant, and risk profiles for the buyer. The post breaks down how each layer interacts with the seller’s preferred structure and where most first-time acquirers misprice their cap stack. […] Read More
Start with a confidential conversation. No commitment.
Submit a brief profile and a senior CGK principal will reach out within one business day. The first conversation is always free, and the verbal business valuation that follows is free for any owner seriously thinking about selling a business on any horizon.
Strictly confidential. No pressure. Direct routing to a named principal, not a junior screener.
Talk to a CGK business broker about selling a business
A senior CGK principal will respond within one business day. For privately-held companies with $1.5M+ in annual revenue.
Or scroll up to the seller-profile form in any of the three valuation blocks above. Direct routing to a senior CGK principal, not a junior screener.
Confidential. No obligation.
Sell your business by industry vertical.
CGK business brokers serve owners across healthcare, federal contracting, distribution, manufacturing, MSP, and construction industries. Each industry has its own diligence cadence, buyer pool, and value-driver story. Click any card below to see the playbook for your industry.
Healthcare
Sell a medical practice with payer-mix, clinical-credentialing, and Stark Law diligence discipline.
Visit pageFederal Contracting
Sell a federal contracting business with cleared-personnel, option-year, and 8(a)-graduate diligence discipline.
Visit pageDistribution
Sell a distribution business with customer concentration, recurring revenue, and logistics diligence discipline.
Visit pageManufacturing
Sell a manufacturing business with capacity-utilization, customer-concentration, and equipment-and-fleet diligence.
Visit pageMSP and IT Services
Sell an MSP or IT services business with recurring-revenue, contract-retention, and managed-services diligence.
Visit pageConstruction
Sell a construction business with backlog quality, workers compensation experience-modification-rate, and trade-bench retention diligence.
Visit pageCGK has offices across the country.
Whichever office you reach, you get the entire firm. Click any city to learn about that local presence and the named principal leading that market.