How much do most brokers and M&A advisors charge? What is the ideal fee structure so that the broker’s interests are aligned with yours? Can a broker’s or M&A advisor’s fee arrangement cause bias or misaligned interests with you, the business owner?

You don’t have to search too long to find opinions alleging that M&A destroys value. NYU Professor Aswath Damodaran goes as far as to say that asking an investment bank to fairly value an acquisition target is akin to “asking a plastic surgeon to tell you your face is perfect.”

Does a broker need to know the local market to sell your business? Does being local speed up the sale process? Is a local network required to sell a business?

The first step after deciding to sell your business is to hire a business broker or M&A advisor. Brokers and M&A intermediaries offer various types of engagement agreements; how do you know which type is right for your business sale?

How were we supposed to count this? Successful or unsuccessful? Or do we ignore it? We placed this one on the sideline so we could decide later and attempted to continue counting. We ran into more and more problems and eventually stopped counting. Why?