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The Smart Way to Sell Your Business in 2026: The CT Acquisitions Approach

Updated October 2026 · Christoph Totter, CT Acquisitions

You built it over 10, 20, 30 years. The decision about what happens next deserves better than a pitch from whoever wants the listing. You shouldn’t have to sign a long exclusivity contract just to find out what your business is worth. And you shouldn’t have to sell to whoever writes the highest check, then watch them gut the team you spent a decade building.

Some founders should sell now. Some should buy a competitor first. Some should spend time building value before any buyer sees the numbers. We work all three paths, and when you sell, we go after a top-of-market price and the right buyer. Both.

The five pillars of how we work

A note from me, before we go further

I’m Christoph. I run CT Acquisitions. I’ve watched a lot of owners get put through a process they didn’t need, pay fees they didn’t expect, and end up with buyers who weren’t right for the company they spent their lives building.

I don’t run an investment bank, and CT Acquisitions is not itself a licensed business broker. We are an M&A advisory firm. On the sell side we advise owners and run confidential buyer outreach through our network. On the buy side we find and vet acquisitions for search funders, family offices, lower middle-market private equity, and strategic acquirers, including some of the largest consolidators in their categories. And we run exit planning for owners who want to build value first. When a sale needs a licensed broker, we work alongside a partner brokerage.

If at any point this feels like a sales pitch, push back. I’d rather have a direct conversation than one where you’re nodding while quietly disagreeing.

How a traditional broker sale works (and where it costs you)

A traditional business broker lists your business and takes it to market. That usually means:

The fee structure has more than one line. Standard broker commissions on businesses under $1M sale price are 8-12%, with 10% being typical. Mid-market success fees run 3-6%, plus monthly retainers of $5K-$25K for 6-12 months. On a $5M sale, the Double Lehman scale (10% of the first $1M, then 8%, 6%, 4% and 2% of each following $1M) comes to $300,000 out of your check at close, before any retainer.

You sign a long exclusivity contract. Many listing agreements lock you in for 6-12 months, often with a tail fee that survives after you leave. Read the term, the termination rights and the tail definition before you sign anything, with anyone, including us.

The listing price is set to win the listing. Brokers compete with other brokers for the engagement, and the easiest way to win is the highest number. If that number has no sold comparables behind it, the price usually comes down later, in diligence, when you have the least room to push back.

Your business gets shopped. A public listing and a wide teaser campaign put your details in a lot of hands. The wider the marketing, the more people know your business is for sale. Employees get nervous. Customers ask questions. Competitors smell blood.

The process optimizes for one number. Highest bidder wins. The buyer who fits your team, your customers, and your legacy, the one who’d be the right home for what you built, doesn’t always pay the highest headline number on day one. So they lose the auction. And you sell to whoever writes the biggest check, regardless of what they plan to do with your company.

The deal goes stale. Sophisticated buyers know what “been on the market” looks like. Buyers read a long time on market as seller fatigue and use it in late-stage negotiations.

None of this means brokers are bad. For smaller, simpler sales a good broker is often the right call. It means the structure matters, and you should see it clearly before you sign.

How we work, path by path

Sell side: a confidential sale for owners

When you hire us on the sell side, we advise you on preparing the business, build a valuation on sold comparables, and run confidential outreach to the right buyers from our network of 500+ capital partners, so they compete for your business:

• Search funders (individuals raising money to buy and run a single company).
• Family offices (private investment offices for wealthy families, often with 10-25 year hold horizons).
• Lower middle-market private equity firms.
• Strategic acquirers, including some of the largest consolidators in their categories. In home services, for example, we have direct mandates with tier-one strategics that other intermediaries pitch into blind.

We know our buyers. We know who wants to operate the business themselves and treat the team like family. We know who holds for 20 years and reinvests. We know who wants you to stay on as CEO with rollover equity. We know who’s looking for a strategic add-on. That lets us put your business in front of the buyers most likely to pay well and fit well, privately. You and your attorney negotiate with our advice and approve every term. Sell-side mandates are paid on success at closing. Where the sale needs a licensed broker, our partner brokerage handles the brokerage part, paid on success only.

Buy side: when a buyer is looking for a business like yours

Private equity firms, family offices, search funders and strategic buyers hire us to find and vet acquisitions. If your business fits one of those searches, we may introduce you to that buyer. No fee to you on buy-side introductions. You can take the meeting, learn what a serious buyer sees in your business, and decide for yourself whether to go further.

Exit planning: when the answer is “not yet”

If your books, your customer mix or your management depth would cost you on price today, the smart move is often to wait and fix it. Exit planning means working through add-backs, customer concentration and owner dependence, so that when you do go to market, buyers underwrite a stronger business. Scope and terms are agreed in writing before any work starts.

How fees work, by path

No fee to you on buy-side introductions; sell-side mandates are paid on success at closing. The first valuation call is free, with no contract to sign, and you will know the terms in writing before any paid work starts.

What we’re not (so you can compare cleanly)

We’re not a listing broker. We don’t post your business on marketplaces or blast a teaser to everyone with a checkbook. CT Acquisitions is not itself a licensed business broker. For sell-side sales that need one, we work with a partner brokerage whose brokers are licensed in Florida; for California sales, it co-brokers with a DRE-licensed broker. The partner is paid a success fee only: no retainer, no upfront fee, no marketing fee.

We’re not an investment bank. We don’t run a broad auction with dozens of bidders and a large retainer. We advise you and run confidential outreach to the buyers in our network whose mandates fit your business, and you and your attorney approve every term.

We’re not pushing you toward a sale. We’re an M&A advisory firm that works sell side, buy side and exit planning. If buying a competitor or building value first is the better move for you, we say so, even when it means there is no sale for us to run this year.

Top-of-market price AND the right buyer. Here’s how that works.

We go after a top-of-market price first. Fit is how we decide which fairly-priced buyers you meet.

Care for your team. Some of our buyers are operators who’ll keep your people, honor existing compensation, and treat the company like a long-term hold. Others cut costs from day one. We know which is which. You’ll only meet the ones that fit what you want.

Legacy and brand continuity. If your name is on the building and you want it to stay there, we have buyers who specifically buy because of brand strength and won’t touch it. If you don’t care, fine, we have buyers for that too.

Rollover equity, where the deal structure supports it. Often called “getting paid a second time.” You take 60-80% of the sale price in cash today, and the remaining 20-40% gets converted into shares of the new combined business. Three to seven years later, when the buyer sells the larger company, your shares pay out a second time. Sellers who structure this well often make more on the second exit than they did on the first cash payout. Rollover doesn’t fit every deal. Search funder acquisitions often involve seller financing instead, where you get paid over time and earn interest. Strategic acquisitions sometimes involve earnouts tied to performance. The right structure depends on the buyer and your goals. We walk you through the options that fit before any introduction.

Your role going forward. Want out clean soon after closing? We have buyers for that. Want to stay on as CEO for 3-5 years and ride the rollover? We have buyers for that. Want to stay on the board as chairman? We have buyers for that too.

A fair question worth answering directly: “If your buyers know you’ll match on fit, won’t they assume they can underbid because they’re ‘the right cultural match’?”

No, and the structural reason matters. On a sell-side mandate, fit buyers still compete with each other on price, and we are paid on success at closing, so a weak price is a bad outcome for us too. We won’t recommend a buyer at below-market multiples just because the cultural fit is good.

If you want a second opinion on what fair-market is, we’ll show you the sold comparables behind our read, tell you what your sector multiples are running, and still recommend an independent review (a Quality of Earnings report) for $5,000 to $15,000 before you sign any letter of intent.

The truth nobody in this industry says out loud

The market is the market. A pre-qualified buyer knows what your business is worth within a tight band before they walk in the room. They look at your sector multiples, your EBITDA quality, your customer concentration, your growth profile. They have seen dozens of businesses like yours.

What moves your price is not a bigger listing. It is clean numbers, a defensible story, and competition among the buyers who have a real reason to want your business. What moves your outcome is choosing the right path at the right time.

You have three options:

• Sell now, through a confidential process with the right buyers, if your numbers and your timing support it.
• Buy first, if adding a competitor or a bolt-on makes the business you eventually sell worth more.
• Build value first, if fixing the books, the customer mix or owner dependence would change what buyers offer. And if you want, keep upside later through rollover.

Who this is for

Owners of profitable, founder-owned U.S. businesses who want an honest read on what their business is worth and which path fits, in private, and who want a top-of-market price and care about who buys their business when the time comes.

The size range we work in is broad. Our buyers’ mandates run from search funders looking at $500K EBITDA businesses (often even $1M revenue is enough if the unit economics are clean) all the way up to lower middle-market private equity and strategics looking at $5M to $25M EBITDA. The right fit depends less on size and more on whether your business matches one of our buyers’ active mandates: sector, geography, growth profile, owner transition timeline, and a few other factors we’ll cover on the call.

Who this isn’t for, honestly

If your business is in a category where we don’t have an active buyer mandate, we’ll tell you on the first call. Sectors where our network is currently strong: home services, industrial services, healthcare services, niche manufacturing, B2B services, and a few others.

If you want your business listed publicly with as many bidders as possible, a listing broker is the better fit. That is a valid strategy. It trades confidentiality for reach.

If your books aren’t ready, no clean financials, no separation of owner-discretionary expenses, no defensible add-backs, we won’t take you to buyers yet. A buyer can’t act on a business they can’t underwrite. That is what exit planning is for, and we know good accountants who specialize in sale prep.

If you’re looking for a service that matches a precise emotional script (“we’ll honor everything your father built, exactly as you imagined it”), we’re not that. We’re matching on real criteria, not selling you a story. Sometimes the right buyer for your business will do things differently than you would have. That’s part of selling.

What you sign, and when

The first conversation costs nothing and asks nothing of you.

The valuation call is free, with no contract to sign. You don’t commit to a path by taking it. What happens after depends on the path you choose:

• If a buyer from one of our buy-side searches wants to meet you, there is no fee to you for the introduction. You decide whether to take the meeting and whether to go further.
• If you hire us to sell, you sign a written engagement before any work starts. It sets out the scope, the term and the success fee paid at closing. Read it, ask questions, and have your attorney review it.
• If the sale needs a licensed broker, our partner brokerage signs on alongside us and is paid a success fee only: no retainer, no upfront fee, no marketing fee.
• If you choose exit planning, the scope and terms are agreed in writing before we start.

This is how our business works on purpose. We would rather you choose a path because it fits than because a contract pushed you into it.

You can spend 30 minutes on a call with us and walk away with three things you didn’t have before: a clear read on what your business is worth in today’s market, built on sold comparables, a sense of which path and which buyer types fit your goals, and a plain answer on what each path would cost you.

If none of that is useful to you, you’ve lost 30 minutes. If any of it is, you’ve shortcut what most sellers spend months finding out.

The straightforward path

1. 30-minute discovery call. We learn your business, what you want from the next chapter, and what kind of buyer fits both financially and culturally.
2. Valuation and path. We show you a valuation read built on sold comparables and tell you which path we think fits: sell now, buy first, or build value first.
3. Terms in writing. If you want to go ahead, you see the scope and the fee for that path in writing before any work starts.
4. We do our part. For a sale, confidential outreach to the right buyers in our network, with our partner brokerage handling the brokerage part where a licensed broker is required; or a buy-side introduction; or an exit plan with clear milestones. You and your attorney approve every term. The timeline is set at kickoff, based on buyer fit, preparation and diligence.

No fee to you on buy-side introductions; sell-side mandates are paid on success at closing.

Two things to know

We can’t help everyone. We work with profitable businesses where we can find a real buyer. If your numbers aren’t ready or your business isn’t a fit for our buyers’ mandates, we’ll tell you straight away and save you the time.

We won’t shop you. No public listing, NDA first, and your approval before any buyer sees your details. Your discretion is the asset we protect most, because we know what a leak costs.

Ready to have the conversation?

30 minutes, free, with no contract to sign. You leave with a read on your market value and a clear view of which path fits your goals.

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Frequently asked questions about how we work

Do I pay CT Acquisitions anything?

It depends on the path. No fee to you on buy-side introductions; sell-side mandates are paid on success at closing. Exit planning scope and terms are agreed in writing before work starts. The first valuation call is free.

Do I have to sign anything to talk to you?

No. The first call is free, with no contract to sign. If you later hire us to sell your business, you sign a written engagement that sets out the scope, the term and the success fee before any work starts.

Is CT Acquisitions a licensed business broker?

No. CT Acquisitions is an M&A advisory firm. For sell-side sales that need a licensed broker, we work with a partner brokerage whose brokers are licensed in Florida; for California sales, it co-brokers with a DRE-licensed broker. The partner is paid a success fee only: no retainer, no upfront fee, no marketing fee.

How many buyers will I meet?

On a sell-side mandate, we run confidential outreach to the buyers in our network of 500+ whose mandates fit your business, and you approve each one before they see your details. On a buy-side introduction, you meet the buyer whose search fits your business.

How long does the process take?

It depends on the path and on how ready your business is. We set the timeline at kickoff, based on buyer fit, preparation and diligence. We can move quickly on introductions because we already know the buyers’ mandates before we pick up the phone with you.

What size businesses do you work with?

Our buyers’ mandates run from search funders looking at $500K EBITDA (sometimes $1M revenue is enough if unit economics are clean) up to lower middle-market PE and strategics looking at $5M to $25M EBITDA. Fit depends on sector, geography, growth profile, and owner transition timeline more than size alone.

Which sectors do you cover?

Home services, industrial services, healthcare services, niche manufacturing, B2B services, and a few others. If your sector isn’t one we currently have active buyer mandates in, we’ll tell you on the first call and save you the time.

What if I don’t like the offer?

You don’t have to accept it. No buyer can make you sell, and we won’t push you to. If the offers don’t meet your number, we’ll tell you what would change them, and building value first through exit planning is always an option.

Will you help with rollover equity or seller financing?

Yes. Rollover equity (keeping 20-40% of the sale in shares of the new company that pay out again when the buyer exits) is a primary match question, not an afterthought. Seller financing (common in search funder deals) and earnouts (common in strategic deals) are similar. We walk through the options that fit your goals before any buyer introduction.

What’s the catch?

No hidden one. If you hire us to sell, we are paid a success fee at closing, set out in writing before any work starts. The honest limits: (1) if your sector isn’t one of our active buyer categories, we can’t help; (2) if your books aren’t clean, we won’t take you to buyers yet; (3) we won’t fabricate a cultural fit, sometimes the right buyer will do things differently than you would have. Those are real trade-offs we’re upfront about. Everything else is as described.