From mandate to money in the bank — run like the $100m sales are.
Holding an offer? It joins the process on the same deadline as everyone else — it never sets the price alone. Holding nothing? Then nobody has been asked yet.
The shape of a completed process: the whole market asked, one clock, one winner.
Below $5m, businesses are listed. Above $20m, they are properly run to market. In between sits the band this practice is built for.
Every stage overlaps the next, because the work does. Nothing waits for a hand-off. The timetable here is indicative — yours is set in the mandate.
Stage 00 is the honest one. Some businesses should not go to market yet. If the books are messy or the story is unproven, we fix that first because going out early is how value gets left on the table. We only start when the machine is right.
What separates a good process from a bad one is not effort. It is what was built before anyone was called.
A worked example: one company, one day, the same EBITDA. Nothing about the business changes. What changes is the process it is sold through.
Illustrative worked example. The gap is not a forecast — it is what evidence and a contested room add to the same EBITDA.
A broker lists your business and waits. I map every party with a reason to own it, and approach them directly.
Ends a five-year fight in one transaction.
Same customers, different product. Your revenue bolts on.
Buys five years of head start rather than grinding it out.
Runs your model overseas and needs an Australian entry.
Rarely wins — but makes everyone else bid properly.
Comes inside the tent, on the same deadline as everyone else.
Four gates. Each one says exactly what a buyer receives — and exactly what they must have done to earn it.
One anonymous page, sent before anything is signed — enough for a buyer to price their interest. Nothing that identifies you; nothing a competitor could act on.
Identity is revealed only now. The Information Memorandum and financials follow — watermarked per viewer, tracked page by page, so I know who is really bidding before they say a word.
Client names and key terms — only for the two or three who have proven, with a written number, that they are real.
The most commercially sensitive material, opened only for the final contenders whose offers justify it. Diligence is answered from the file built at the start — and price and terms are finalised under real competition. Exclusivity comes last: given once, only for a number worth protecting.
A threshold is agreed in writing before anything is signed. The fee is built around beating it.
What the business is worth, and the gaps a buyer would find — closed first. No fee, no mandate. If the number is not there, I tell you in writing, and you keep the work.
Every dollar comes back out of the success fee at completion. From month three you can leave on 30 days’ notice — the total is capped by your decision.
A minimum applies up to the threshold. The real money is made only on the value the process finds above it. No sale — no success fee.
The financial model a buyer’s analyst can open and audit. The Information Memorandum. The buyer research. The staged data room, the version control, the one Q&A register so no two buyers ever get different answers. All of it can be systemised — and all of it must be flawless, because a weakness found late is repriced at the buyer’s number.
Knowing what a buyer is actually solving for, and building the case in their language. The approach call. Reading the room and the silences. Holding tension between bidders without breaking rapport — and steering to the outcome you want, not the one they opened with. This part cannot be systemised. It is a person, in the room, for months.
Most advisers improvise both. I industrialise the science — so all the judgement goes into the art.