Wider range than in most industries, because two distributors with the same revenue can have very different balance sheets. Where you land comes down to the six things above — who the customers belong to and what your supplier agreements say about a sale, more than anything else.

We put together an opinion of value from your own numbers rather than a multiple stuck on your revenue. It takes a few weeks and it costs you nothing to find out.

What we will not do is price it at what you would like to get. A defensible number brings offers. An aspirational one spends the listing’s best weeks being ignored, and every conversation after that is about coming down.

They stay in the business, up to an agreed level. You and the buyer set a working capital target — usually off your own twelve-month average — and if you deliver more than the target at closing you are paid the difference; less, and it comes off your price.

This is the term sellers most often meet for the first time in the letter of intent, and by then the buyer’s advisor has already picked the method. Looking at your own working capital pattern early is the cheapest leverage in the whole transaction. Your CPA should be in that conversation.

Not from us. Information is released in stages behind a signed agreement — a blind profile with no company name first, and nothing that identifies you until a buyer has been screened. Your employees, customers, suppliers and competitors do not learn about the sale from the process.

In distribution this matters more than in most industries, because a competitor who learns you are selling can go straight to your accounts, and a supplier who hears it secondhand may start asking questions you would rather answer on your own timing.

Because you will do this once. The buyers who have been looking for a business like yours move quickly when one finally appears, and that wave passes once — which is why the strongest offers almost always arrive in the first sixty to ninety days.

If the business is not ready to stand up to questions when those buyers show up, you spend your best weeks explaining instead of negotiating. We do not publish until the financials are recast, the operations are written down, and the questions buyers are going to ask already have answers.

Industry estimates put the share of listed businesses that actually sell at somewhere between 20 and 40 percent, depending on the source and the size of the business. Most of what decides which side of that you land on happens before the listing goes out.

It is a discount rather than a disqualification, and how big a discount depends on what sits behind the relationship. A large account with a written agreement, a long reorder history and more than one person inside your company servicing it is a different risk from the same account held together by the owner.

If you have twelve to eighteen months, widening the base is the single most valuable project you can run. If you do not, documenting the relationship properly is the next best thing.

Run the business exactly the way you were running it when the buyer made the offer. That is not a throwaway line. A soft quarter during due diligence is the most common reason a good deal gets renegotiated down or falls apart, and in a business measured on turns and margin it shows up immediately.

Everything else is ours: buyer questions, the document room, the lender, the attorneys, the landlord. We coordinate it through to closing so the deal does not stall in the last mile. Your job is the work.

Not on proof of funds alone. Someone who can write the check but cannot run a distribution business puts your people, your accounts and — if any part of your price is financed by you — your own money at risk. We qualify buyers on whether they can actually operate what they are buying.

And the biggest number is not automatically the best offer. How it gets paid, what sits in escrow, what is tied to future performance, how working capital is settled and how long you are expected to stay all change what an offer is really worth to you. We negotiate the terms, not just the headline price.

Usually for a defined transition, and often longer here than in a trade business — supplier and account relationships take time to hand over properly. A buyer is not trying to keep you around; they are trying to keep what is in your head and in your contact list.

The more of that sits in your systems and your people before we go to market, the shorter the stay a buyer will agree to.