r/SellMyBusiness

Specifically, for e-commerce, marketplace based businesses. What factors do you consider when looking at potential brokers?

Just closed my first acquisition a few months back Q1 of this year, actually and went through the whole due diligence process. Spent weeks cobbling together a checklist from scratch: bits from DealRoom templates, random blog posts, a pile of reading. Honestly, it kept me organized, but I still missed stuff. Things like UCC liens and earn-out clauses? Thought I had them covered. The template didn’t flag them properly, and I ended up paying a lawyer more than I wanted to clean it up. Biggest takeaway: a checklist is only a starting point. It forced me to look at financials

Small fitness studio focusing on personal training style workouts. Selling annual memberships. The business has been around for about 2.5 years, basically breaking even in 2025, and since the beginning of the year they have been doing well and are turning a profit thanks to a new lead generation service that they started using. Now they are selling the business because the owner is moving back to their home country. They priced the business basically at a 2.5x multiple of the projected annual profit, based on an average of their last 7 months. Thoughts?

Edit: they priced the biz at 2.5x the projected annual profit, not revenue.

Hello guys, I don't use Reddit really often but I see there is quite a community for M&A here so I thought I could ask my questions here.

I have been doing buy-side M&A for a couple of years, with good success, a couple of regular clients signed etc.

I also have a partner who is a very experienced sell-side broker, works for one of the top private advisory firms in the US and together we have starting basically doing hourly consulting work. Basically anything from sourcing to closing.

It started going okay at first, but soon we found that finding clients is not as easy as we thought. We know how to do the job given our experience, but do not know how to acquire new clients.

Are there any tips any of you can give me, maybe some guidelines I should follow when trying to get new clients. Any help is appreciated.

Hi everyone,

I am helping my parents evaluate the potential sale of a family-owned hospitality business and real estate property in western El Salvador.

Before explaining the situation, I want to disclose that English is not my first language, as my native language is Spanish. I used AI to help me organize and polish the wording of this post, but the facts, figures, questions and circumstances described below are my own.

This post is primarily intended to ask for advice. My family has experience operating the property, but we have no experience marketing or selling a hospitality asset internationally. I am concerned that offering it only through ordinary local real estate channels might fail to reflect the value of the operating business and, especially, the property’s development potential.

The property is located in Los Naranjos, in the municipality of Juayúa, El Salvador. It is situated near the road connecting Santa Ana and Sonsonate, within the Ruta de las Flores tourism region, and approximately five minutes by car from Cerro Verde National Park.

It currently operates as a resort, restaurant and lodging destination.

Some basic information about the property:
•Approximately 10,300 square meters of land
•Existing hotel accommodations and guest rooms
•Independent cabins
•Several restaurant and dining areas
•Commercial kitchens and food preparation areas
•Coffee shop, terraces and recreational spaces
•Storage and service facilities
•Existing customer base and operating history
•Independent 2024 appraisal of approximately US$2.29 million for the land and improvements
•Significant unused or underutilized portions of the land that may offer additional development potential

Depending on permits, technical studies and local regulations, the property could potentially support hotel expansion, eco-lodging, wellness or nature retreats, event facilities, vacation cabins, residential tourism or another mixed-use hospitality concept.

The property is valuable not only because of its present operation, but also because of its size, location, existing infrastructure and potential for further development. For this reason, I am unsure whether it should be presented primarily as:

An operating hospitality business
A commercial real estate investment
A hotel or resort property
A tourism development opportunity
Or a combination of all of these

I would greatly appreciate advice regarding the following questions:

1. What would be the best way to market a property of this nature to international buyers?
2. Should we work with a hotel broker, commercial real estate broker, business broker or M&A adviser?
3. Are there reputable international platforms that specialize in resorts, boutique hotels or tourism development properties in Central America?
4. What documents and financial information would serious buyers expect before evaluating the opportunity?
5. Should we prepare an updated appraisal, feasibility study or highest-and-best-use analysis before putting the property on the market?
6. How should the asking price be approached when a large part of the value comes from the land and existing improvements rather than only from current cash flow?
7. Would it be better to market the property publicly or conduct a more confidential process through specialized brokers and qualified investors?
8. How can we verify that a broker or intermediary genuinely has access to international hospitality investors?
9. What commission structure would normally be reasonable for a transaction of this size?
10. Are there any major mistakes that families commonly make when selling a hospitality property internationally?

We are not necessarily looking for the fastest possible sale. My main objective is to understand how to prepare the property correctly, protect my parents’ interests and reach qualified investors who can appreciate both the existing business and the long-term development opportunity.

Thank you for any practical advice, recommendations or experiences you may be willing to share.

I’m looking to exit my lead gen agency by the end of next year, and I'm currently auditing my assets. My revenue is solid, but my backend feels like a house of cards.

My Google Workspace, CRM (GHL), and domain infrastructure were all set up 'DIY' over the years. I'm worried that during due diligence, a buyer will see this as a liability rather than an asset.

Has anyone here sold a business where they had to first 'clean up' their technical foundation to prove authority and deliverability? What’s the most cost-effective way to unify everything so the infrastructure looks institutional and ready for handover?

Hey, so I made an app, first one ever it's been live for Android about 2 months while I worked out some kinks and went live on iOS last week. I basically built it to help my daughter with her mental health. I love what I've built especially since I have no experience, and have a ton of hope for what it can become but I've ran into some financial issues the past few months and I have gotten behind on my rent and could really use the money if it's worth selling at this early stage. How would I go about trying to sell it?

I'm a co-founder in advanced talks to sell our company. The buyer wants the active founders to roll a meaningful chunk of our shares rather than take all cash (think somewhere in the 40-60% range) and stay on afterwards (unsure in what capacity as of yet).

I'm after honest first-hand experience from people who have.

If you sold and rolled equity into the buyer's structure, I'd really value your take on any of these.

Even one answer helps:

- How much did you roll, and looking back was it too much, too little, or about right?

- Did your rolled stake end up worth more or less than the cash you gave up to roll it? What drove the difference?

- The second exit: did it happen on the timeline you were promised, or much later? And was the per-share payout bigger or smaller than your first one?

- Could you choose when to sell your rolled stake, or were you dragged along with the buyer's timing whether you liked it or not?

- What was it actually like working in the business afterwards, as an exec or on the board, reporting into a structure you used to own?

- Could you leave before the next sale if you wanted to, and what happened to your shares if you left (full value, or forced to sell cheaply as a leaver)?

And the big ones; what do you know now that you wish you'd asked before signing? If you could redo the deal, what single term would you fight hardest to change?

Genuinely want to hear the ones that went badly as much as the wins. Just trying to go in with my eyes open. Thanks in advance.

So I am getting to the point where I want to look into selling my business that I’ve built over the last 20 years. The biggest hurdle is that I am an owner operator and do a lot in the day-to-day and have a real hard time with finding good talent. For reference we do between 5-6m/yr and my net is 20-25% plus after expenses, we are a b2b company in a mid-market area. So obviously I run lean mean. Everyone always says just hire a general manager, I’ve been looking for the last 10 years and no one is the right fit! It’s not that easy. I don’t know why people act like it is. Anyway, the point of my post is I’ve been contacted by a couple brokers, they all seem to want to start with some of the local/regional competitors and the bizbuysell route. I am super paranoid that as soon as they contact one of my competitors word will get out immediately, also I am worried that the competitors will start a dialogue just to get market research, that’s already happened to me by a strategic buyer who approached me, they said it was a great deal and six months later just ghosted. In my years in this business I’ve seen when other competitors have tried to sell, people in our industry seem to know immediately. The NDA‘s aren’t worth anything as I think we all know. People talk. I’d really like to get some feedback from someone who sold their business either to a local competitor or had some knowledge/expertise to share in this specific area. Thanks!

6 years old running delivery business 120+ employees on own company visa with Abu Dhabi Branch.
Profitable business
Every Month minimum Profit 50k+ upto in some peak months 150K
As per last two years profit was above 1 Million.
Own Fleet purchase Toyota Hiace And Nissan Urvan on bank. Which will be finish mortgages in 2027 for 12 vehicles and in 2028 for 23 vehicles. By 2028 you will not pay any mortgages and your profits will be double.

Asking Price 12 Million.

Built a nutritionist SaaS called BiteTally from India over the last year. I started by targeting independent nutritionists, but after a lot of outreach I found myself speaking with people around NCAA Div 2 and Div 3 programs in the US, where many schools have limited or no dedicated nutrition support.The feedback was surprisingly positive. But the problem was never the product. It was almost always pricing.
I'm at the point where I'm wondering whether I should keep pushing or whether someone closer to the market could take it further than I can.

Has anyone here sold a small SaaS business before?Not a massive exit — just a niche product with a real use case

Looking for a limited scope sell-side QoE provider. This is for a small industrial manufacturer. For inital budget we're targeting ~$5K. This could turn into a full QoE in a few months.

I've got a group in india I've used for things like this, but I'd like to use someone domestic.

Thanks in advance

I’m looking to evaluate the worth of a social selling business. We have 3 channels on Whatnot. A social selling auction platform. We’re considering selling it but not sure how to evaluate its worth for a deal.

You can change the name of the channels and customize them to your business if you did purchase it so its customizable to the purchaser.

Theres 575,000 followers and 160,000 positive reviews for an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars. Its not the largest channel on the app but it is in the top .01% of sellers on the platform in terms of audience reach and rating

How do I go about determining a price to sell something like this? I know ebay accounts sell in the ball park of $1 per feedback, but whatnot is so new I dont even think theres benchmarks for this to use?

Any advice would be appreciated!

pretty much as the title says. Any one have luck using such platforms. bizbuysell, businessesforsale etc... I find they either charge too much money or look like they came out of the 90s.

So I’ve been working on an e-commerce site sporadically since October 2025 and my revenue has blown up this quarter. Did 8k profit in April and 18k in May. Reaching similar figure in June most likely. I really want to get out of this business but I’m not sure if I can actually achieve an exit since it may be too early to actually find someone who is willing to take it on at a figure I feel comfortable with. I can easily scale it as it’s pretty much all organic traffic with $0 in adspend along with a few other ideas for growth via advertising. I have another business opportunity that I want to liquidate this one for as I know that one might be a bit more sustainable long term and it’s an industry I’m more familiar with. If anyone can advise me on selling this one or general comments are welcomed

Just that. Was interested if anyone sold with a high percentage of seller financing (and if you did, how did that work out for you?)