How to Choose the Best Brokers

By By Glen Cooper, CBI, CBA, BVAL

How to Choose: Who are the Best Business Brokers?

deal business brokers are sales professionals and financial analysts, creative marketing strategists and skilled contract negotiators. They are well organized, yet spontaneously creative, discreet yet openly accessible. They handle many clients, but treat you like you are the only one.

Please remember, however, that these are the qualities of ideal business brokers! At our office, it takes a team to be this good!

Brad Kaplan recently suggested that I explore author Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and create this list of “7 Habits of Highly Effective Business Brokers.” We think you’ll find it to be a useful guide as you evaluate which business broker to hire.

1) Professionalism.

The best business brokers are committed to positive, ethical and confidential action. They leverage their knowledge, sales skills, analytical ability, and marketing savvy with positive attitudes. They respect the ethical codes and laws that serve as business boundaries and have the integrity to honor agreements with both buyers and sellers. They work to preserve your confidentiality.

2) Commitment.

The best business brokers sell businesses full-time. They are enthusiastically focused on selling your type of business. They are able to visualize who will buy your business. They have the experience to do the right things at the right times, in the right ways. They are not part-time real estate brokers, sometime business consultants or ‘wanna-be’ investment bankers. They make a commitment to being business brokers. It’s a full-time job.

3) Organization.

The best business brokers are organized. They have systems for preserving confidentiality and for finding, screening and qualifying buyers. They have systems for packaging and promoting your business and for reporting their sales efforts to you. They have systems for managing negotiations and for getting your transaction completed. Systems are required in our business to successfully sell your business.

4) Creative Negotiation.

The best business brokers know how to negotiate. They help clients and customers forge mutually beneficial agreements by searching for creative solutions. A position halfway between seller and buyer is not the only way to compromise. Sometimes a wholly new approach is best: a third alternative, like the apex of a triangle. Skilled business brokers know how to find these solutions.

5) Careful Preparation.

The best brokers do their homework. They listen to your needs and fully understand your business before trying to sell it. This is accomplished through well-developed listening skills and competent analysis. Your business’ future is presented with clarity and style. Buyers are impressed. The best broker can often turn a transactional opportunity into a transformational opportunity for both seller and buyer.

6) Teamwork.

The best brokers are cooperative. They are team players with you in the sale of your business. They respect the roles of your other advisors: attorneys, accountants, bankers, appraisers and even your relatives. They are team players with each other. They are natural at achieving unity with those around them in any situation.

7) Endurance.

The best brokers last a long time. Brokers who last are those who balance the physical, spiritual, mental and emotional experiences of the profession and of life itself.

In April 1984, the Maine Sunday Telegram ran a front-page Business section article about our firm “making happy marriages between small business sellers and the growing number of people who want to own a business in Maine.” In November 2001, Inc. magazine quoted Maine seller Stewart Blackburn as saying, “I got to the point where I realized that there was no point in going with anything less than the most competent broker.” (He was referring to us, thank goodness!)

It’s been a long journey from those fledgling days in the early 1980’s to our more senior position today. Our practice continues to teach us lessons about how to better serve you, our seller clients.