What your broker is actually doing between LOI and close
Here's what I get asked a lot: once the LOI is signed, what is the broker actually doing?
The short answer is holding the deal together. Between LOI and close, the broker is the one keeping the buyer, the seller, the lender, the attorneys, and the CPAs all moving in the same direction. Diligence is where the fires start — a number that doesn't tie, a customer that turns out to be bigger than anyone said, a seller who gets cold feet the week before close. That last one is more common than people think. A sale takes 6 to 9 months, and the LOI-to-close stretch is where most of them wobble.
My instinct in that phase is simple: fix what's fixable, and don't let a fixable problem become a reason to walk away. If the diligence issue is one of the four killers — financial discrepancies, customer concentration, key-employee risk, or an undisclosed liability — you deal with it head-on and re-price or restructure if you have to. If it's noise, you say so and keep everyone moving.
Searchers — what's the moment between LOI and close where your deal almost fell apart, and what saved it?
The short answer is holding the deal together. Between LOI and close, the broker is the one keeping the buyer, the seller, the lender, the attorneys, and the CPAs all moving in the same direction. Diligence is where the fires start — a number that doesn't tie, a customer that turns out to be bigger than anyone said, a seller who gets cold feet the week before close. That last one is more common than people think. A sale takes 6 to 9 months, and the LOI-to-close stretch is where most of them wobble.
My instinct in that phase is simple: fix what's fixable, and don't let a fixable problem become a reason to walk away. If the diligence issue is one of the four killers — financial discrepancies, customer concentration, key-employee risk, or an undisclosed liability — you deal with it head-on and re-price or restructure if you have to. If it's noise, you say so and keep everyone moving.
Searchers — what's the moment between LOI and close where your deal almost fell apart, and what saved it?