How Innovative Business Brokers Leverage Technology

Business brokers are typically defined by the presence of their engagements on deal listing sites.

But when you look under the hood, there’s a lot more than meets the eye.

In many respects, the best business brokers are the most sophisticated deal distributors in the small and mid-sized business M&A space.

In doing so, they present a host of best practices that other sell-side M&A advisors can (and probably should) emulate.

→ They can coherently invite 1,000+ buyers to review a teaser for one of their clients

→ They have sophisticated methods of qualifying and vetting each interested buyer

→ They use software and automation at every step of the process

And so much more…

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Axial’s business development and product teams are constantly hearing about ways in which the best brokers are ahead of the curve.

So we decided to survey our broker community to better understand how the cohort at large infuses sophistication and technology into their dealmaking processes.

The survey results are broken down into three sections:

1. Breaking Down Broker Deal Marketing
2. Buyer Targeting
3. The Technology & Tools Brokers Leverage

We hope you enjoy the report!

Breaking Down Broker Deal Marketing

Which of the following M&A processes do you typically run?

How many buyers do you reach out to as part of a broad auction process (excluding inbound interest)?

Do you engage strategic buyers differently than financial buyers?

Buyer Targeting

Is there a threshold for deal size you use to target different types of buyers?

Not including your own website, how many listing sites do you typically post transactions on?

Which listing sites do you typically use?

What do you do to screen buyers efficiently?