M&A guides for cleaner sell-side preparation.
Use these playbooks to prepare CIMs, organize due diligence, compare advisor workflows, and reduce issues before buyers enter the process.
M&A Process
8 practical guides
What Is a Confidential Information Memorandum (CIM)?
If you've ever been involved in selling a business, you've encountered the CIM. It's the document that tells the story of a company to prospective buyers 鈥?and getting it right is one of the most important parts of a sale process.
M&A Exit Readiness Checklist
Most business owners who want to sell in the next 2-3 years are less ready than they think. This checklist covers the areas buyers scrutinize most 鈥?and where sellers most often get tripped up.
How to Prepare a Business for Sale: A 12-Step Guide
Getting a business ready for sale is a process, not an event. Most owners who sell well started preparing 12-24 months before they ever talked to a buyer. Here's what that preparation actually looks like.
What Does a Boutique M&A Advisor Do?
A boutique M&A advisor helps owners prepare, market, negotiate, and close a business sale. This guide explains the role, fee model, process timeline, and how boutique advisors differ from business brokers and investment banks.
How Long Does It Take to Sell a Business?
The honest answer: longer than most sellers expect. A well-run process for a lower-middle-market business typically runs 9-12 months from launch to close 鈥?and that's before you factor in the 12-18 months of preparation that should happen first.
EBITDA Multiple Valuation: A Practical Guide
In lower-middle-market M&A, almost every deal conversation eventually comes back to one question: what multiple? Understanding how EBITDA multiples work 鈥?and what moves them 鈥?is foundational for any advisor working in this space.
M&A Due Diligence Checklist for Buyers and Sellers
Due diligence is where deals get confirmed 鈥?or fall apart. This checklist covers the areas buyers investigate most thoroughly in lower-middle-market transactions.
Lower Middle Market M&A: A Practical Overview
The lower middle market 鈥?businesses valued roughly between $5M and $50M 鈥?is where most boutique M&A advisors spend their careers. It's a large, active segment with distinct characteristics that differ from both small business brokerage and large-cap M&A.
AI & Advisory Tools
8 practical guides
How AI Is Changing M&A Advisory in 2025
AI is not replacing M&A advisors. But the gap between advisors who use it well and those who don't is starting to show up in how many deals they can handle at once 鈥?particularly at the boutique end of the market. Here's what's actually changing.
AI CIM vs. Traditional CIM: An Honest Comparison
The claim that AI can write a CIM is both true and misleading. It can generate a first draft. Whether that draft is actually useful depends entirely on how well the input data is structured 鈥?and how much advisor work goes in afterward.
Best M&A Software for Boutique Advisors (2026)
Boutique M&A advisors don't need enterprise software built for 500-person investment banks. They need tools that work for a small team running 5-15 deals at a time 鈥?fast to adopt, easy to use, and worth the subscription. Here's what actually gets used.
Using AI to Speed Up the Exit Readiness Process
Exit readiness assessment has always been time-intensive 鈥?gathering client information, scoring it against a framework, writing a summary. AI is making this faster without taking the advisor's judgment out of it.
White-Label M&A Software: What Advisory Firms Need to Know
There's a moment in almost every advisory engagement where a client receives a tool or a report and notices it doesn't say your firm's name. That's the white-label gap. Here's what it means in practice and what to look for in a platform.
Automating Client Diagnostic Reports: A Guide for Advisors
Writing a client diagnostic report from scratch takes hours. An automated approach 鈥?where the client answers structured questions and the AI generates the analysis 鈥?gets you to a working draft in minutes. Here's how to think about the tradeoffs.
Synergy Analysis in M&A: Methods and Examples
Here's a number that surprises sellers: on a $10M deal, the difference between a strategic and a financial buyer offer can be $2M or more. The reason is synergies 鈥?and understanding how they're quantified changes how you frame the sell-side narrative.
How to Build a Scalable M&A Advisory Practice
Most boutique M&A advisory practices are built around the founder's personal capacity. That creates a ceiling. Breaking through it means systematizing the parts of the work that don't require senior judgment 鈥?which turns out to be more of the process than most advisors realize.
Seller & Buyer Education
8 practical guides
10 Signs Your Business Is Ready for an M&A Exit
Most business owners think about selling years before they're actually ready. These 10 indicators separate businesses that will close smoothly 鈥?at a fair price 鈥?from those that will struggle in a sale process.
Business Valuation Explained: How Your Business Value Is Calculated
Business owners often have a number in their head for what their company is worth. Buyers have a different number. The gap between those two figures is usually explained by a few specific things. Here's how valuation actually works.
How Buyers Evaluate a Business in M&A
Understanding how buyers think changes how you prepare for a sale. Here's what they actually look at 鈥?and what they're trying to figure out 鈥?when evaluating a business for acquisition.
Strategic vs. Financial Buyers: What Sellers Need to Know
The type of buyer you attract to a deal changes the price, the structure, and what happens to the business afterward. Here's how strategic and financial buyers actually differ 鈥?and how to figure out which mix is right for a given situation.
What Is a Letter of Intent (LOI) in M&A?
The LOI is one of the most important documents in an M&A process 鈥?and one of the least understood by sellers going through a deal for the first time. Here's what it is, what it does and doesn't bind you to, and what to watch for.
How to Choose an M&A Advisor: A Seller's Guide
Most sellers interview two or three advisors, pick the one who quoted the highest valuation, and later wish they'd asked different questions. Here's how to actually evaluate your options 鈥?and what the right questions are.
SBA Loans and Business Acquisitions: What Sellers Need to Know
SBA financing opens your buyer pool to a whole category of motivated individual buyers 鈥?but it adds 60-90 days to your close timeline and may require you to hold a seller note. Here's what that actually looks like from the seller's side of the table.
Quality of Earnings Report: A Seller's Guide
A QoE report is the document that either validates your EBITDA or quietly picks it apart. For deals above $5M, buyers and their lenders will commission one regardless. Here's what it covers 鈥?and why more sellers are paying for their own before a process begins.