How to choose the best business broker for your business

The best business broker for you is the one who regularly sells businesses your size, in your trade, to the kind of buyer who would want yours. There’s no single best broker. A broker who does great work for a plumber doing $1 million a year can be the wrong pick for a lawn company doing $5 million, even in the same town.

Size decides who buys your business. Your trade decides what they pay for. The right broker knows both, plus the licenses, equipment, and buyer list that come with a business like yours.

Key Takeaways

• Buyers change with sale price. In sales of $1 million to $2 million, 50% of buyers were buying their first business. In sales over $5 million, 59% were private equity firms (IBBA and M&A Source Market Pulse, Q2 2025).
• In Florida, a broker paid to sell your business generally needs a Florida real estate license under Florida Statute 475.01.
• Your trade’s licenses shape the deal. A plumbing company may depend on one licensed person. A lawn company depends on certified crew members.
• Private equity made up 76% of landscaping deal volume in 2025 through August 31 (KPMG). A broker with no ties to those buyers can’t bring them to the table.
• Ask any broker for three to five recent sales like yours, and who bought them.

Table of Contents

• What does “best business broker” actually mean?
• Two “small” businesses, two very different sales
• Your size decides who buys your business
• Your trade decides what buyers pay for
• Licenses: the broker’s and your business’s
• Equipment, crews, and the risks buyers check
• How the broker markets your business should match your buyer
• How to check whether a broker fits
• Not sure who fits? Talk it through with us

What does “best business broker” actually mean?

Search for the best business broker and you’ll get lists of the biggest firms. Those lists tell you who is large and well known. They can’t tell you whether that broker has ever sold a business like yours.

“Best” only means something once you say best for what. A broker fits your business when five things line up:

• Size: They regularly sell businesses at about your revenue and price.
• Buyers: They know the kind of buyer most likely to pay the most for yours, and they have those buyers’ phone numbers.
• Trade: They understand how buyers in your industry judge a business.
• Licenses and equipment: They know how your trade licenses, trucks, and gear affect the deal.
• Marketing: They reach buyers the way those buyers actually look for businesses.

If you want to see the big firms side by side anyway, we compared them in our guide to the top business brokerage firms. For the full range of specialists who help owners sell, see finding the right people.

Two “small” businesses, two very different sales

Brokers loosely group businesses by size. “Main Street” usually means businesses doing roughly $1 million to $10 million a year in revenue. The “lower middle market” usually means roughly $10 million to $50 million. Some groups, like the IBBA, draw the lines by sale price instead, so you’ll see different cutoffs depending on who you ask.

By the revenue measure, a $1 million plumber and a $5 million lawn company are both Main Street. They still need very different brokers. Here’s how the two sales tend to differ.

	Plumbing company, $1M revenue	Lawn and landscape company, $5M revenue
Profit buyers look at	Owner’s total take-home, roughly $250K to $300K	Profit before interest, taxes, and depreciation. At a 10% to 15% margin, that’s $500K to $750K
Rough price range	About $600K to $750K	About $2M to $3M
Most likely buyer	One person buying their first business, usually with an SBA loan	A competitor, a repeat buyer, or a company backed by private equity adding territory
What the buyer pays for	Licensed techs, service agreements, the phone ringing	Maintenance contracts, crews, tight routes, the fleet
Big license question	Who holds the plumbing license the business runs under	Whether certified applicators stay with the business
Equipment	A few vans and tools	Trucks, trailers, and mowers that may need their own appraisal
How it gets marketed	Public listing, plus careful screening for buyers who can get a loan	Quiet outreach to a short list of named buyers
Right broker	Main Street broker who knows trades and SBA lenders	Broker who has sold landscaping companies to competitors and private equity

These ranges are rough examples, not values for your business. The plumbing column uses BizBuySell’s plumbing sales data: across 226 reported sales, median revenue was about $1.17 million, median owner earnings were about $312,000 (about 26% of revenue), and businesses sold for a median of 2.24 times owner earnings (average 2.49). The median plumbing sale reached $837,500 in 2025 (BizBuySell). The lawn column assumes a 10% to 15% profit margin and about 4 times profit, the average for service businesses selling between $2 million and $5 million (Peercomps data through May 2025). To see how the math works on your own numbers, read what owner earnings (SDE) means.

Your size decides who buys your business

The IBBA and M&A Source survey business brokers every quarter. Their Q2 2025 Market Pulse survey covered 326 brokers and advisors and 272 closed sales (IBBA release). The buyer mix changed sharply with sale price (Calder summary):

Sale price	Who was buying
$1M to $2M	50% first-time buyers. 43% were “buying a job” to run themselves.
$2M to $5M	Most likely a company in the same or a related line of work (23%) or a repeat buyer (23%). 33% were adding to a business they already owned.
Over $5M	59% private equity. 64% were adding to a business they already owned.

Prices moved with size too. Businesses selling for under $500,000 went for a median of 2.3 times earnings. Businesses selling between $2 million and $5 million averaged about 3.65 times owner earnings, according to Peercomps data through May 2025.

That’s why size matters so much when you pick a broker. A broker who mostly sells to first-time buyers knows SBA lenders and how to get a business through a bank’s review. A broker who sells to private equity knows how those buyers price a deal, and how terms like rollover equity and earnouts change what you actually walk away with.

Your trade decides what buyers pay for

Two businesses with the same revenue can sell to completely different buyers because of what they do. Landscaping is a good example. Private equity firms accounted for 76% of landscaping deal volume in 2025 through August 31, according to KPMG’s facilities services update.

Those firms are buying in Florida. Bland Landscaping, backed by Comvest Private Equity, bought Jacksonville’s Koehn Outdoor to expand into Northeast Florida and South Georgia (PrivSource). A broker who has never talked to those buyers can’t put your business in front of them.

Each trade also has its own rules about what buyers pay for:

• Plumbing and HVAC: Service and repair work sells for more than new construction work, because it repeats. Service agreements count.
• Landscaping: Commercial and HOA maintenance contracts are worth more than one-time installs. Route density matters, because tight routes mean more stops per crew per day.
• Roofing: Buyers look hard at how much revenue comes from storms, since storm work can disappear in a quiet year.
• Manufacturing: Buyers dig into customer concentration, equipment age, and how much work is under contract.

A broker who knows your trade knows which numbers to put up front. We wrote trade-specific guides for owners in Florida: plumbing, landscaping, HVAC, roofing, electrical, pest control, and manufacturing.

Licenses: the broker’s and your business’s

There are two license questions, and owners often only think of one.

The broker’s license

In Florida, selling a business for a fee counts as real estate brokerage. Florida Statute 475.01 defines a broker as someone who, for pay, sells or negotiates the sale of “business enterprises or business opportunities” (Florida Statutes). So a broker you pay to sell your business needs a Florida real estate license. The law has a few exceptions, such as an attorney or CPA acting in that role, and some securities dealers on larger deals (Florida Statute 475.011).

You can look up any license for free on the state’s DBPR site. It takes two minutes. For what the letters after a broker’s name mean, see business broker credentials explained.

Your business’s license

This one shapes the whole deal, and it works differently by trade.

• Plumbing, HVAC, and roofing: The business runs under a state contractor license held by one person, called the qualifier. If you’re that person, the buyer needs their own licensed qualifier, or you stay on until they have one (Florida CILB form). Electrical works the same way under its own board.
• Lawn and landscape: The license sits with your people. Each worker who applies fertilizer for hire needs a state fertilizer certificate, and crews spraying plant beds need a separate pesticide certificate (UF/IFAS, FDACS). Buyers want to know those people are staying.

Equipment, crews, and the risks buyers check

A $5 million lawn company owns a lot of equipment. Trucks, trailers, and mowers can be a big part of the price, and buyers often want them appraised separately. Your broker should know how to present the fleet, and how its age affects what buyers will offer.

A $1 million plumber usually has a few vans. The value is mostly in the techs, the customer list, and the service agreements. The broker’s job there is to show the business doesn’t fall apart when you leave.

Each trade has its own risks that buyers check first:

• Few big customers: A lawn company with three HOAs making up half its revenue will get hard questions. Read more about customer concentration risk.
• Seasonal labor: Lawn companies that depend on seasonal visa workers need to show how they staff each year.
• The owner as top tech: If you still run the most calls yourself, buyers will discount for it. See how to reduce owner dependency.

A broker who has sold businesses like yours already knows which of these questions are coming. They help you answer them before a buyer asks.

How the broker markets your business should match your buyer

There are two basic ways to find a buyer. One is a public, unnamed listing on sites like BizBuySell. The other is quiet, direct outreach to a short list of buyers the broker already knows.

Public listings work for the smaller plumbing company. First-time buyers shop on those sites, and a good Main Street broker knows how to sort the real buyers from the window shoppers.

For the $5 million lawn company, a public listing may reach the wrong buyers. It can also tip off crews and customers. The better buyers for that business are often reached by phone, by a broker who knows them.

Ask every broker to walk you through how they’d find your buyer. Ask to see a sample of what they send out. If the only plan is “we’ll list it and see,” that fits some businesses and not others.

How to check whether a broker fits

You don’t need to become an expert. You need to ask a few direct questions and listen for specific answers.

1. Recent sales like yours: Ask for three to five sales in the last few years in your trade and size range.
2. Who bought them: First-time buyers, competitors, or private equity. This tells you which buyers they really know.
3. Buyers active now: Ask them to name companies buying businesses like yours in Florida today.
4. Who does the work: The person pitching you isn’t always the person running your sale. Ask who you’ll talk to every week.
5. Their minimum fee: A firm with a high minimum is built for bigger sales. A firm with no minimum may not have the buyer list for a larger one.
6. Their Florida license: Look it up on the DBPR site.
7. Two or three opinions: Compare what each broker thinks your business is worth and who will buy it. Be careful with the one who quotes the highest number.

For the full list, see 9 questions to ask a business broker before you hire one. If you’re weighing a broker in town against a firm that sells one trade nationwide, read local vs regional vs national business brokers.

Not sure who fits? Talk it through with us

The right broker is the one who’s right for you and your business, and nobody else’s. That depends on your size, your trade, your buyers, and what you want after the sale. Whether you want to stay on for a while, step back right away, or keep the business local changes who you should call.

If you own a business in Florida, you can set up a call with us to figure it out. A real person will ask about your revenue, your trade, your licenses, and what you want next. Then we’ll introduce you to a broker whose past sales look like your business. There’s no cost and no pressure to move fast.

Set up a call to find the right broker for your business.