Main Street
business brokers.

Main Street business brokers work almost exclusively on a success-fee basis — you pay nothing up front, and the fee comes out of the closing proceeds. Typical fees range from 8% to 12% of the total sale price, with the exact percentage depending on deal size (larger deals often use a modified Lehman scale that decreases as size increases). Some brokers charge a small engagement fee ($1,500–$5,000) that credits against the success fee at close; a broker asking for large retainers without success-fee credit is a signal to look elsewhere.

Six to nine months is the typical Main Street timeline from engagement letter to signed purchase agreement. SBA-financed closes add another 60–90 days for lender underwriting. If your books aren't yet ready — reconstructed P&Ls, add-back schedules, customer-concentration analysis — plan on 12–18 months of preparation before you engage a broker. Preparation is where multiples move; well-prepped businesses routinely close 20–40% higher than unprepped ones.

Yes, and it happens — especially for very small businesses (under ~$250K SDE) where the fee friction outweighs the broker's added value. But the median seller who goes it alone leaves money on the table. A broker's job is confidentiality, competitive tension, LOI negotiation, and diligence orchestration — four things a first-time seller can't produce on their own. If the price is meaningful to your retirement, the broker's fee is a rounding error on the value they add.

Start with CBI (Certified Business Intermediary) from IBBA — the profession's baseline certification, requiring coursework and closed-deal experience. Above CBI, M&AMI (Merger & Acquisition Master Intermediary) indicates lower-middle-market experience. State licensing varies: some states (California, Florida, Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Idaho, Hawaii) require an active real-estate broker's license to legally represent a business seller; most states do not. Beyond credentials, verify: three-year closed-deal history in your industry, current active engagements, references you can actually call, and success-fee-only structure.

Four things, in order of dollar impact. First, confidentiality: a well-run process keeps employees, customers, and competitors from learning until closing — a leak can kill a deal and hurt the business. Second, competitive tension: the broker runs a controlled outreach to a curated buyer list, generating multiple LOIs so you're negotiating from strength, not scarcity. Third, LOI-to-close orchestration: the broker manages the buyer's diligence requests, the lender's underwriting, and the seller's tax structuring in parallel — three streams that stall each other without coordination. Fourth, price defense: the broker knows the industry's comparable transactions and pushes back on unreasonable valuation compression during diligence.

No. Your Exit Path is a matching platform. We maintain a vetted directory of independent Main Street business brokers and M&A advisors, and connect sellers to the two or three brokers most likely to close their specific type of deal. We do not represent either party in the transaction and do not take a piece of the success fee — brokers pay us for the qualified match. Sellers use the platform free.

Deal size, mostly. Main Street brokers work businesses under ~$5M in SDE (roughly $20M in transaction value). Investment bankers work the lower-middle market and above (~$5M+ EBITDA, $25M+ transaction value). The workflows overlap — CIM, buyer outreach, LOI, diligence, close — but the buyer pools, fee structures, and process cadence differ. Above $5M EBITDA, an investment banker's competitive process typically produces a higher multiple than a broker-led one; below that, the fee overhead of investment banking eats the gains.