This is Dave’s story.
How to sell an electrical business at the right time, to the right buyer, for the right price is the question Dave had been turning over for two years before he picked up the phone. When the right time came, he called CGK Business Sales. Dave ran an $11M commercial and industrial electrical contracting operation outside a major Texas metro: 52 employees including journeymen, apprentices, project managers, and a four-person crew dedicated to the EV-charging and solar installation work that had become 20 percent of revenue over the prior five years. He had 18 service vans, four bucket trucks, a small fleet for EV-charger installs, and a yard that smelled like copper and conduit. The book ran 50 percent commercial new construction and retrofit work with general contractors, 30 percent industrial maintenance for manufacturing facilities, and 20 percent solar and EV-charging modernization for commercial property owners. He was 56. His daughter had graduated as an electrical engineer and gone to work at a tech company in Austin. His wife’s father had just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He came to us in early 2024 because he was thinking about what the next ten years of his life needed to look like and did not know who else to talk to about how to sell an electrical business this size. This page is what happened next, and what could happen for you. Dave is a composite, not a single real CGK seller, but the patterns and details are pulled from real electrical contracting engagements.
The night before Dave called us.
Most owners who decide to sell an electrical business have been thinking about it quietly for a year or two before they pick up the phone. Dave was no different. He was 56. For 28 years he had been the name on the master electrician license, the signature on every commercial bid over $250,000, the person who walked the GCs through every retrofit estimate himself because his estimating team was good but the GCs trusted him personally. The business did $11 million in annual revenue, had 52 employees including journeymen and apprentices and a small specialty crew that handled the EV-charging and rooftop solar installs that had grown from a side project five years ago to a fifth of the revenue today.
Why owners decide to sell an electrical business
His daughter had graduated as an electrical engineer four years before and gone to work at a tech company in Austin. He had been quietly proud and quietly disappointed. She was not coming home to take over the shop. His wife had stopped asking about retirement and started asking about her father, who had just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and would need help that Dave’s wife wanted to give. The next ten years of Dave’s life, he was starting to realize, were not going to look like the last twenty-eight. He had been approached three times in the prior twelve months: once by a regional electrical roll-up that had reached out cold, once by a competing electrical contractor across town who said he would buy the book on a handshake, and once by a young MBA who introduced himself as a search funder, said he had raised committed equity from a group of investors specifically to acquire and operate one electrical contracting business, and asked if Dave would be open to a conversation. He did not know what his business was actually worth, did not know whether the buyers calling were the right buyers, did not know what he would do with himself if he sold, and did not have a single peer who had ever sold a business at this size.
That is the night he found CGK and submitted the form. We called him back at 8:55 the next morning.
The conversation we had on the first call.
The first call was 42 minutes. We did most of the listening.
Dave talked about his lead foreman of fifteen years, his solar and EV install crew that he had stitched together over the prior five years, the master electrician license that lived in his name personally, and the four general contractor relationships that anchored the commercial side of the business. He talked about the way the EV-charging certifications kept piling up on his desk every quarter, the NABCEP renewal that was due in March, and the apprentice pipeline he had built with the local trade school. We asked about the business in the way you would ask if you were trying to understand it, not in the way you would ask if you were trying to win the engagement. What we were listening for was not just the financials. We were listening for whether Dave was actually ready to sell, what he was working toward, and whether his expectations on price were grounded in what the market would actually support.
At the end of that call, we set up a working session: an in-person conversation where one of our Managing Directors would walk Dave through our valuation model and tell him honestly what his business was likely to command. We did not promise him a written report. Written valuations involve substantially more work, and we charge for those when a seller actually needs one for estate planning, a partner buyout, a divorce, or another documentary purpose. The walkthrough was free because Dave was clearly thinking seriously about selling, the way someone thinks about it before they actually do it. Whether that ends up being in a year, three years, or longer, we make the same call.
The valuation session was the following Friday at 7 a.m. in his shop’s conference room, after morning safety and before the trucks rolled out for the day’s first jobs.
Dave was not ready to sell an electrical business yet. He went home and waited nine months.
The valuation session showed Dave that his business was worth meaningfully less than he had been hoping, but for reasons that surprised him. Two issues were dragging the number down. The first was Dave himself. He WAS the commercial bidding engine. Every estimate over $250,000 went through him personally, every GC trusted him by first name, and the master electrician license was in his name with no clear successor on the bench. To a sophisticated buyer, that looked like classic owner-operator key-person risk on the highest-margin part of the book. The second was the EV and solar segment. The growth was real and exciting, but the certifications (NABCEP for solar, Tesla and ChargePoint for EV) were tied to specific named installers, and Dave had not yet built a redundancy plan for what would happen if any of them left under new ownership.
We told Dave honestly: he could go to market now and accept the discount, or he could spend six to twelve months elevating his lead foreman into a true Operations Manager role, building a successor master-electrician arrangement (either by sponsoring a senior journeyman through the master exam or by lining up a third-party qualifier the buyer could hire post-close), and adding redundancy on the EV and solar certifications so the segment was not single-installer-dependent. We said the second path would likely command a meaningfully better number from a wider range of buyers, including the search funders and adjacent-strategics that pay premiums for institutionally clean operating businesses.
This is the part most brokers skip. Most brokers would have signed Dave that day, taken him to market, and made the commission whether or not the deal was the best one for him. We told him to wait, even though it meant we did not get paid for nine months and might never get paid at all if he changed his mind.
Dave went home and waited. He spent the next nine months promoting his lead foreman into a true Operations Manager role with real day-to-day authority over commercial bidding, sponsoring his most senior journeyman through the master electrician exam, lining up a backup third-party qualifier through the local trade association just in case, and getting a second installer NABCEP-certified so the solar segment had real bench depth. He read up on what active acquirers were paying for electrical contractors through resources like the National Electrical Contractors Association. He called us back in late 2024 and said he was ready to sell an electrical business that was finally in the shape it needed to be in.
What we did when Dave came back.
What it takes to sell an electrical business properly
When an owner is ready to sell an electrical business with CGK, the speed surprises them. We took Dave’s business to market in just over two weeks once he got us his updated financials, GC relationship summary, EV and solar certification roster with installer redundancy notes, equipment inventory, project pipeline, and crew roster with master-license successor framework documented. The blind teaser went out to 84 buyers we had pre-qualified across five buyer types: search funders looking for a single-acquisition operating business with growth runway, PE-backed electrical roll-up platforms, strategic acquirers from adjacent trades (mechanical contractors and general contractors looking to vertically integrate electrical), regional financial buyers seeking stable commercial cash flow, and adjacent home-services platforms looking for the energy-transition exposure that electrical brought.
Fifty-nine of those buyers signed NDAs and received the full Confidential Information Memorandum. Forty entered our structured data room. Twenty-four submitted Indications of Interest. Thirteen advanced to Letters of Intent. We narrowed to eight for management presentations. Four re-submitted refined LOIs after the management meetings.
Dave decided between two of the top LOIs. They were materially different. One was a higher headline price from a PE-backed electrical roll-up platform, with a conventional escrow structure, an earnout tied to EV/solar segment growth over three years, and a fund hold horizon of five to seven years before the platform itself would likely be sold to a larger sponsor. The other was a slightly lower headline price from a search funder: a 32-year-old MBA who had raised committed equity from a group of investors specifically to acquire and operate a single electrical contracting business that he would run himself for five to ten years. The searcher had a clean financing structure (search-fund equity plus bank debt), no flip pressure, no earnout, and a deeply considered plan for how he would own and grow the business including the EV and solar segment. We walked Dave through what each would actually deliver to him under realistic and pessimistic scenarios, including what the cultural and operational continuity would look like under each owner. The search funder deal was the better one for Dave. The cash position day one was meaningfully stronger, the structure was a clean 100 percent buyout with a small seller note rather than a multi-year earnout babysitting situation, and the cultural fit with a buyer who would actually run the business mattered to him. He took it.
Through the whole process, the same CGK Managing Director who had taken Dave’s first call nine months earlier was the person walking him through every conversation.
What the deal actually looked like.
How the deal looks when you sell an electrical business with CGK
Dave’s deal closed roughly four months after we restarted the engagement. The buyer was a 32-year-old search funder who had raised committed equity from a group of fourteen individual investors specifically to acquire and operate a single electrical contracting business. He had spent fourteen months looking before his banker introduced him to Dave’s CGK process. The deal was structured as a stock sale, financed with the search fund’s equity plus bank debt arranged through a regional lender experienced in electrical contracting acquisitions.
The headline price was slightly below the competing roll-up offer, but the structure was meaningfully better. About 85 percent of it came as cash at closing, funded by the search fund’s committed equity plus the bank debt. About 5 percent was held back in escrow for 12 months to cover indemnification claims and a small working capital adjustment. About 10 percent was a seller note paid back over five years at a competitive interest rate, secured by the business and acting as a bridge that gave the searcher near-term flexibility on cash flow and gave Dave continued financial connection to the success of the business through the transition years. There was no rollover equity, which is how search-fund deals typically structure: a clean 100 percent buyout, no minority equity overhang. Wire hit on a Monday morning in June.
Dave stayed on as a paid advisor to the buyer for six months after closing, which let him introduce his Operations Manager, his EV and solar install crew, his four anchor GC relationships, and the new master-electrician qualifier his successor journeyman had hired during the wait period. He worked the master-electrician license bridge with the buyer’s qualifier during that period. After six months, Dave stepped off the advisor role and kept a small monthly consulting retainer for major-customer introductions and EV/solar segment guidance through the end of the calendar year.
What happened to Dave’s people.
Dave cared most about his Operations Manager (the lead foreman who had stepped up during the wait period), the journeyman who had passed the master electrician exam during the same period and was now the named qualifier under the new ownership, the small EV-and-solar install crew that had become the growth segment of the business, and the four anchor GC relationships. The search funder buyer was a single operator who would actually run the business himself, which made the people part substantially cleaner than it would have been under a PE roll-up that needed to optimize headcount inside the first year. We had screened buyers partly on this dimension from the start: we excluded two early bidders whose track records on integration suggested they would consolidate Dave’s small specialty crew into the broader commercial team within the first quarter.
The search funder buyer kept all 52 employees, honored the existing pay structure across journeymen, apprentices, and the EV/solar specialty crew, and committed to maintaining the apprentice pipeline arrangement with the local trade school. Dave’s Operations Manager was confirmed in his role with an expanded remit, equity participation in the search fund’s hold structure, and a meaningful comp bump. The new master electrician qualifier became the senior named licensee on day one. The four long-tenured GC relationships were retained at 100 percent through the transition, partly because Dave personally introduced the searcher to the GC principals, and partly because the searcher’s plan to actually operate the business gave the GCs the relationship continuity they cared about. The EV and solar segment grew, not contracted, in the first year post-close because the searcher had specifically valued that segment in his diligence and committed capital to expanding it.
Dave’s daughter, the electrical engineer in Austin, came home for the wire-day weekend and met the searcher and his wife over dinner. Dave’s wife told her father about the closing the next morning, although by then he sometimes did not remember her name. Dave and his wife took the trip to her father’s hometown in Iowa they had been postponing for years and stayed for the rest of the summer, splitting time between her parents’ care and a slower pace neither had ever known.
What Dave told us afterward.
Why owners who sell an electrical business with CGK keep coming back
About four months after closing, Dave called the Managing Director who had run his deal. He said two things that the Managing Director still tells new sellers about.
The first was about the nine-month wait. He said: “I had two brokers tell me they could take me to market in two weeks. The reason I sold with you is that you told me the truth about my master license sitting in my name with no successor, and the truth about how single-installer-dependent the EV and solar segment really was. You told me what would happen to the price if I went out without fixing those things. I would have left a real number on the table going to market the way I wanted to.”
The second was about who he sold to. He said: “I almost signed with the PE roll-up because the headline price was bigger and they sounded institutional. The fact that you walked me through what each buyer would actually do with the business, who would actually run it day one, what the searcher’s hold structure would mean compared to a fund timer, and how a clean 100 percent buyout with a small seller note would actually pay out compared to a multi-year earnout, is a conversation I never even thought to have until you raised it. I sold to a buyer who is going to operate this business himself for the next ten years, not flip it in five.”
This is what we mean when we say we sit with you in the decision, not just the transaction. Dave is one composite story, but the pattern is real. The owners we work with who decide to sell an electrical business usually find their way to us through versions of Dave’s situation, and the relationships start with a long listening session and a free walkthrough, not a pitch.
Ready to sell an electrical business? Where are you in Dave’s story?
If you are starting to think about how to sell an electrical business, we should talk. There is no commitment and no pressure. The first conversation is free. The valuation walkthrough that follows is free when you are seriously thinking about selling, whether that is in a year, five years, or longer. We only charge for formal written valuations, and only when you actually need one for estate planning, a partner buyout, or another documentary purpose. Submit the form and a senior CGK Managing Director will reach out within one business day.
If you are Dave at month 1: just exploring
You are not sure if you want to sell yet. Your kids are not coming home, your master electrician license is in your name with no clear successor, you are curious about what your EV and solar growth segment might be worth on top of your traditional commercial book, or you have just been approached by a search funder or roll-up and want to understand what you might actually have. Most of our best engagements start here. Submit the form and we will schedule a working session. You walk away with a real number and a clear sense of what to do next, with no obligation to do anything.
If you are Dave at month 9: ready to go
You have done the work to clean up the business. The financials are tight. Your operations manager can run the day without you. Your master electrician successor is named and in place. Your EV and solar certifications have real bench depth. Your GC relationships are well-documented. Maybe a buyer has been calling you. You want to run a real process. Submit the form and we will be in touch within a business day to talk about timing, scope, and what your first 30 days as a CGK seller would look like.
If you are not sure where you are
Most owners are not sure. Submit the form and start with the conversation. We will figure out together where you are. We are equally happy to tell you to wait twelve months as we are to take you to market in two weeks.
Or call us directly at (888) 858-7191.
Start your own story
A senior CGK Managing Director will respond within one business day. Strictly confidential. For owners of electrical businesses doing $1.5M+ in annual revenue. The first conversation and the valuation walkthrough that follows are free for any seller seriously thinking about selling, on any horizon.
Confidential. No obligation. Direct routing to a named CGK business broker, not a junior screener.
One of these eight people would lead your engagement.
When you decide to sell an electrical business with CGK, one named senior Managing Director stays with you from the first call through the wire transfer, just like Dave’s Managing Director stayed with him for nine months and then for the engagement that followed. Our Managing Directors come from Wall Street investment banks, hedge funds, Fortune 500 corporate finance, and operating-business leadership. Cornell MBA. U Chicago Booth MBA. CFA. CMT. Naval Academy. Goldman Sachs. Merrill Lynch. Deutsche Bank. AIG. T. Rowe Price.
What sellers say after they sell an electrical business (and other businesses) with CGK
I could not be happier with the experience I had selling my business with CGK. Greg did a detailed analysis of my business and helped me price and position it right for the market. After receiving multiple offers at full asking price, the rest of the process went very smoothly, and we closed in less than two months.
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.
Dave’s daughter, the electrical engineer in Austin, is the one who first sent him a clip of CGK on Bloomberg. She had been watching the segment between meetings and recognized the firm name from a podcast about how to sell an electrical business that she had listened to weeks earlier. She sent him the link with a note that read “Dad, this is the firm.” CGK Business Sales is featured on Inside the Blueprint, the syndicated business television series. Our episode aired on Bloomberg TV and Fox Business News. Watch the segment, then start a confidential conversation.
The CGK office Dave called was in his local Texas market. Yours might be one of these.
When you sell an electrical business with CGK, whichever office you reach, you get the entire firm. Dave worked with a CGK Managing Director based out of his local Texas market, but his deal benefited from a buyer pool we sourced firm-wide, including the search funder who ultimately won. Click any city to learn about our local presence and the named Managing Director leading that market.
Other Questions Dave and Other Electrical Sellers Ask Us
Practical answers to what comes up before, during, and after the kind of engagement Dave went through, when you sell an electrical business with CGK.