How to Save on Business Broker Fees

Business brokers typically charge a percentage of the sale price — frequently with a minimum fee, and often with marketing charged on top. On the sale of even a small business, broker costs can easily swallow a five-figure slice of the price you worked years to build. Here’s how sellers reduce or eliminate that cost.

Know what a broker actually does

Strip away the packaging and a broker’s role has four parts: valuing the business, advertising it, screening buyers, and shepherding the deal to settlement. Every one of those can be obtained separately — usually for far less.

Value the business independently

Your accountant can prepare or sanity-check a valuation based on your actual financials — usually for a fraction of a broker’s cut, and with no incentive to underprice for a quick sale.

Advertise where buyers search — without the percentage

Business buyers search Seek Business, AnyBusiness and BusinessForSale. You don’t need a broker to appear there: our business sale package lists your business on those platforms for a once-off $1,495 until sold — no commission when it sells.

Screen buyers yourself with a simple process

Use a confidentiality agreement before releasing financials, and ask early qualifying questions (funding, timeline, experience). Serious buyers expect this; time-wasters filter themselves out.

Keep the professionals who matter

Don’t skip your accountant and solicitor — they’re essential for the contract, transfer and tax treatment, and their fixed fees are money well spent. The saving comes from removing the percentage-based middleman, not from cutting corners.

More detail in our guide: how to sell a business privately. If the business premises are part of the sale, see selling commercial property privately too.