International Business Brokerage & Realty

Process

Prep through close, in order.

This is the path for an MSP or IT services firm in our size band. It is a sequence, not a promise that your file will clear every gate.

  1. Prep

    Trailing financials, a split of MRR versus project and product revenue, the contract list and whether those contracts can be assigned, top-client percentages, retention, owner hours in delivery, an RMM and PSA export, and a cyber baseline. Dirty books and a weak cyber posture are what kill MSP deals later. Fixing them in diligence is the expensive way.

  2. Teaser

    A short blind note. No company name. Enough geography, rough size, MRR mix, and reason for a sale that a relevant buyer can decide to sign an NDA. A teaser is not a listing on a public business-for-sale board.

  3. NDA

    Names, contracts, and financial detail come after a confidentiality agreement. We do not mail a client list to “see who is interested.”

  4. CIM

    The confidential information memorandum is the story, the numbers, and the risks in one document. Software can help assemble a draft from exports and statements. A person reads it before it goes out. Meetings with serious buyers happen off this document.

  5. LOI

    A letter of intent is an agreement to negotiate, usually with a period of exclusivity. Compare cash at close, earnout, rollover, escrow, the working-capital peg, and any employment or transition requirement. A higher multiple with a large earnout and a seller note is not automatically the better offer.

  6. Diligence

    Quality of earnings, legal review, cyber review, and customer conversations. Active buyers of technology-services firms often plan on something like 45 to 60 days of QoE work. That range is from buyer-side process commentary reviewed for our 26 September 2026 knowledge brief, including Evergreen’s public discussion of selling a technology services business. It is not a clock IBBR can impose. Surprises here reopen price.

  7. Close

    Definitive agreements, consents, funds, and a written transition. The first 90 days are part of whether the price was real.

How long, according to published guidance

Breakwater’s public site says a sale often takes 6 to 8 months and that running past 12 months is not uncommon. Our 26 September 2026 knowledge brief summarizes the same third-party picture for MSP sales as roughly 6 to 12 months from preparation through close. Use that as a planning range. A single buyer who already knows the firm can be faster. A file that is not ready can be longer, or can stop.

Where this desk stops: a platform auction for a much larger MSP is a partner or a referral, not a process we pretend to run at investment-bank scale. See broker versus M&A advisor.

Start sell-side Exit checklist