Sell Your Company in 150 Days – Part 1: Select a High-Quality M&A Firm

Stage 1: Select a High-Quality M&A Firm for Representation

ECP Ventures offers a disciplined, diligent, structured 10 Stage 150 Day sales transaction process for business owners to sell their businesses with sell side M&A representation.

Select an M&A Advisor NOT a Business Broker

How should a business owner evaluate and select an M&A advisor? The first step is to understand the difference between a Business Broker and an M&A Advisor. A Business Broker is exactly that. They broker businesses. That means they treat a business as a commodity. They typically learn the minimum about the business and then dump it on the market (post and go approach). All too often the business broker's primary focus is on "scraping a fee" instead of doing a proper "value conveyance".

Business Brokers often do numerous illicit things including charging upfront fees or guaranteed fees, placing restrictive "tails" in their listing agreements, including excessively long-term periods in their listing agreements (hunting license) and selling companies for less than their true value to capture a fee.

None of these styles of conduct are in the best interests of the business owner and the business owner loses control of their offering.

Never ever agree to a "tail" clause in a listing agreement. A "tail" is a contractual obligation to pay a broker a listing fee AFTER they have failed to sell your company during the term of their listing agreement.

The ECP Approach

An M&A Advisor is a true fiduciary for the business owners. An M&A Advisor is a financial professional with extensive experience and expertise in conducting transactions. At ECP we conduct a discovery meeting to introduce our firm, our level of experience and how we conduct transactions (10 Stages – 150 Days) on behalf of our clients.

Our role is not to broker a business. Our role is to inform and illuminate a business owner so that they can make a fully informed decision. We provide prospective clients with an evaluation of current market conditions and the likelihood of attracting buyers in their sector. We commence by asking a business owner to share their top 10 objectives and we evaluate their objectives very carefully to determine if we can successfully assist them.

We encourage all prospective clients to meet with at least five M&A advisors so that they have an educated basis of comparison (experience, fees, strategy, articulation, savvy) before making a final selection.

At ECP we are purpose driven and not fee driven. We are a Christian M&A firm and we operate with a servant heart. We never charge an upfront fee or a guaranteed fee or expect our clients to take a financial risk.

We are 100% success fee based. We only collect a fee at closing if we have achieved our clients' quantitative objectives and their qualitative objectives. Our clients remain in total control of their offering throughout the entire process.