Defining what you are actually buying, and why

Start with why, because it decides everything else

Buyers who begin by looking at what is for sale tend to spend a year viewing businesses and buy none of them. Buyers who begin by writing down what they are trying to achieve tend to look at fewer businesses and buy one.

The reason is not discipline for its own sake. Almost every subsequent decision, what to pay, how to structure it, which lender will fund it, how long it takes, depends on which of a small number of quite different objectives is actually in play.

Buying yourself a job. Replacing employment with ownership, drawing an income from a business you run day to day. Perfectly sound, and it means the salary you need has to come out of the same earnings the lender is measuring.
Buying an asset to run. Acquiring something with management in place, where the buyer is an owner rather than an operator. Different risk profile, different price, and considerably harder to fund if the management is thin.
Buying growth for a business you already own. Capacity, coverage, contracts or people. The strongest position with a lender, and the constraints are different, as set out in bolt-on acquisitions.
Buying a platform to build on. A first acquisition intended to be the base for others. Funded on its own merits, and the plan behind it changes how a lender reads the buyer.

These are not interchangeable, and a buyer who has not chosen between them will describe a business to a broker in terms that fit none of them.

The brief and the funding case are one document

This is the part most buyers discover in the wrong order. The document that tells a business broker what you are looking for and the document that tells a lender who you are contain the same information, because both readers are asking the same question: is this person going to complete a transaction?

A brief that answers the following will do both jobs.

Sector, specifically. Not "services". Fire alarm maintenance. Commercial pest control. General practice accountancy with a compliance bias. The narrower it is, the more credible the buyer, and the more useful the sector knowledge behind it.
Geography, and why. A radius from home, a region where the buyer already has coverage, or a location that suits the operating model. Density matters enormously in field-based businesses, and a lender in the sector knows it.
Size, in terms of what the business earns rather than what it bills. Turnover ranges are easy to state and tell nobody anything about affordability.
What the buyer brings. Relevant operating experience, a qualification, an existing business, a management team, or capital. Ideally more than one.
The contribution available, where it is coming from, and how quickly it can be evidenced. What counts is set out in equity contribution.
The deal-breakers. A business that depends entirely on one customer. A retiring owner who wants to leave at completion. A site with an environmental history. Stating these early saves months.
Timing. When the buyer can realistically complete, and what has to happen first.

Work out the affordable range before the wish list

The most common wasted year in an acquisition search is spent looking at businesses the buyer could never have funded. It is avoidable in an afternoon.

The arithmetic runs from the earnings, not from the price. A lender takes the target's profit, strips out what will not repeat, removes the seller's own drawings and puts back a realistic salary for whoever will do that work after completion. It then lends an amount that can be serviced out of what is left, with headroom. The buyer's contribution sits underneath, and any money the seller is willing to leave in sits alongside. Add those together and you have the realistic price range, before anyone has looked at a listing.

That number frequently surprises people in both directions. A buyer with modest savings and relevant experience buying a business with contracted recurring income can often reach further than they expect. A buyer with more capital chasing a business whose earnings depend on the owner may find the opposite. What drives the difference is set out in valuation basics and in senior term debt.

Worked exampleTake a buyer with a fixed contribution looking at two businesses at the same asking price. One has contracted maintenance income and a manager who is staying. The other bills the same amount, most of it won personally by the owner, who is retiring. The first can usually carry more debt against the same earnings than the second, so the same buyer can afford it and cannot afford the other. The shape of that difference is the point here, not the numbers, which are invented.

What a vague brief costs

A buyer who tells six brokers they are "open to anything in the South West under a million" will be sent everything. They will spend their evenings reading particulars for businesses they were never going to buy, and their credibility with each broker will decline with every enquiry that goes nowhere.

Sellers notice the same thing. In owner-managed businesses, particularly where the owner is retiring, the choice of buyer is not purely financial. An owner selling something they built has a view about who takes it on, and a buyer who can explain clearly why this business and what they intend to do with it is in a different category from one who is browsing.

Lenders notice it last and most expensively. A credit paper that cannot articulate why this buyer is buying this business is a weak paper regardless of the numbers, because the answer to "why this one" is the same as the answer to "why will it still work under new ownership".

Where the businesses actually come from

Most acquisitions in these sectors are not found on a public listing site. They come through sector brokers who hold registers of sellers, through industry contacts, through trade associations, through accountants who know which of their clients are thinking about retiring, and through direct approaches to businesses that were not formally for sale.

The last of these is worth taking seriously. A well-judged approach to an owner who has been thinking about stopping but has not started a process avoids competition entirely, and it works far more often than most buyers expect. It requires the buyer to be specific about what they are looking for, which is the point of the brief.

For accountancy practices specifically, Accountants For Sale is Simon's other business and is where that search belongs. The sector pages under sectors set out what each market looks like from a buyer's side.

Get the boring things ready first

Two things slow down more deals than any commercial disagreement, and both can be dealt with before a target is even identified.

The first is evidence of funds. Bank statements over a meaningful period, a mortgage offer if property is being released, board approval and accounts if the money is coming from an existing company, and clarity on whether family money is a gift or a loan. Perfectly legitimate money held in an account with a complicated history takes weeks to explain.

The second is the buyer's own paperwork: an honest CV describing what each person has actually been responsible for, the existing business's accounts if there is one, and a clear statement of who does what after completion. A team with nobody owning the numbers is a gap a lender will find.

Having both ready turns a two-week delay into an email. What the rest of the process looks like from there, and how long each part genuinely takes, is in timelines.

What goes wrong at this stage

The search started before the funding did. Offers made without knowing what is fundable get withdrawn or renegotiated, and both damage the buyer with the seller and the broker.

The criteria were written to include everything. A brief designed not to miss an opportunity is a brief that cannot be acted on.

The buyer's own role was never decided. Buying a business that needs a full-time operator when the buyer intends to keep their job is a plan with a contradiction at the centre.

Nothing was written down. A brief that exists only as a conversation drifts, and every broker hears a slightly different version.

Working out what is fundable before you go looking

The most useful thing a buyer can know early is the shape of the deal they can actually complete, because it turns a search into a shortlist.

What we have is knowledge of this market and of specific people who fund acquisitions in these sectors, so we can tell you what a business of that size and that income profile is likely to support before you spend a year looking at the wrong ones.

Tell us what you are looking for and what you are bringing to it. We go to the lenders and brokers who fund that kind of purchase, and we come back to you with who can fund it and what they will want to see.

We introduce buyers who are acquiring through a limited company or a NewCo. If you are buying personally, as a sole trader or as a partnership, we will point you to an authorised firm directly instead.