How UK business brokers actually earn their fee

In a full mandate: (1) valuation and preparation of the information memorandum, (2) marketplace listing and confidential marketing, (3) screening buyer enquiries and running the NDA workflow, (4) coordinating buyer meetings and site visits, (5) negotiating heads of terms, (6) supporting due diligence, and (7) managing completion choreography. Roughly 160–350 hours across 6–12 months for a typical mid-market deal.

160 to 350 hours across the full 6–12 month cycle for a sub-£2m deal. Larger deals scale up — a £10m mandate can absorb 500+ hours of adviser time. At £100–£150/hour fully loaded, that's £16,000–£75,000 of real cost, before factoring in the mandates that never complete.

Genuine value on three specific things: (1) confidential buyer outreach to their direct rolodex where relationships matter, (2) heads-of-terms negotiation experience, and (3) keeping the deal warm through due diligence. The rest — IM drafting, teaser advertising, enquiry screening — is standardised work that AI now automates.

IM drafting, teaser copy, marketplace listing setup, initial enquiry screening, buyer FAQ responses, data room curation and standard document generation — the ~60% of a broker's hours that follow a template. Sell Ltd's Chris does all of this and hands the human-relationship work back to you or a paid specialist.

Curated strategic buyer relationships (matters at £5m+), complex earn-out negotiation, sensitive live negotiations under time pressure, and the human warmth that keeps a nervous buyer engaged through DD. If your deal has these features, budget for human corporate finance time on top of the AI platform.

About half of UK broker mandates don't reach completion — driven by seller cold feet, buyer financing failure, DD surprises, market changes and negotiation deadlock. Brokers price the retainer partly to cover this failure rate.

On deals where the broker genuinely delivered curated strategic buyers you couldn't have reached, and negotiated meaningfully better terms — yes. On deals where the broker essentially posted your business to BusinessesForSale and the buyer came from an internet search — probably not.

Track four things: (1) named strategic buyer introductions vs marketplace enquiries, (2) heads-of-terms negotiation impact on price and structure, (3) responsiveness on due diligence, (4) actual hours logged. Most broker contracts let you request time logs — ask for them at each milestone.

Occasionally — some brokers offer hourly consulting or a fixed IM-drafting fee. Uncommon in the UK SME market but worth asking. Corporate finance boutiques above £5m more often accept hourly arrangements for specific tasks.

Chris logs every step — every buyer touch, every draft, every screening decision. You see a full audit trail. On a typical sub-£2m sale, Chris + the seller together spend 20–40 hours of actual attention versus the 160+ a broker would log.

Loaded cost to the broker is typically £70–£120/hour (junior analyst) to £200+/hour (senior partner). The rate you pay is a multiple of that to cover overhead, failed mandates and profit. AI compresses that stack.

Yes. Some sellers use Sell Ltd for preparation and marketplace, then engage a corporate finance boutique on a success-only basis for the final auction of strategic buyers. Best of both — but only economically sensible on larger deals.