Brokers vs Proprietary

I've found that talking to brokers directly and being very up-front with them is helpful. Some are extremely lazy, which can be good or bad (good for valuation, bad for quality of deal flow). If you're willing to put in the work and respect their expertise (usually it's local rapport and relationship-building with the sellers), you'll get a lot out of them. If you're expecting a bulge-bracket-quality CIM with no errors, good luck! Even the big national brokers (Generational Equity, Benchmark International), while they do really good work, will have errors in their books on small deals just because the economics don't work if they spend too much time on quality control.

Personally, I'm shocked at how many people try to source directly as an exclusive strategy. It seems like a poor understanding of comparative advantage to me. If you role with the punches and treat the brokers as partners, it's like having hundreds of interns cold-calling business owners on your behalf.

While it may be easier and faster to buy a listed business, per the comments above, for over 15 years I have specialized in finding and closing lower middle market non-listed deals for my clients and have found that the very best businesses for sale are on the "hidden" market, those not listed with a broker. Over 80% of the these businesses that sell are never listed. Why? They are scared to death of confidentiality issues and don't want to pay a 8-10% fee. And the ones that have been listed for over a year, usually have more than a price issue. Most business owners will never talk to the many, many letters/emails/phone calls from individuals (such as SearchFunders) for the very same reasons, as most are tire kickers and end up wasting their time. Most if not all of my clients have either been involved in business transactions or have "searched" for 6-8 months and realize the best way to buy a business is to be the only buyer in the deal with a truly motivated and realistic business owner. Reach out if you want to know more and talk to the many satisfied clients that I have.