M&A Concierge exists because the gap between business owners and engaging the right advisor is wider than it should be, and because the cost of getting the advisor wrong is higher than most owners realise.
M&A Concierge is an independent exit advisory and M&A advisor matching service for Australian business owners with $2M–$25M EBITDA businesses considering a sale. The service was founded by a practitioner with direct experience running M&A transactions across multiple sectors as an advisor, co-founding a business valuation firm, and subsequently selling it as the vendor, management consulting, and leading SME organisations. The matching methodology is built on Australia's most comprehensive M&A advisor database, with AI analytics cross-referencing business owner profiles against advisor track records, sector and industry coverage, and deal size experience. The fee is paid by the advisor, a uniform referral fee reflecting the quality of the match, so there is no financial incentive to favour any firm, only to get the business owner the best fit.
M&A Concierge was not conceived in a boardroom. It was built from the accumulated experience of someone who has sat at every point in the transaction ecosystem: as an advisor running sale processes across multiple sectors, as a business owner who sold their own business, as a valuation professional, and as a consultant helping organisations navigate complexity.
Building a good business does not guarantee it sells, sells for a good price, or sells on favourable terms. The range of outcomes in a sale process is extremely wide, shaped by preparation, process, and advisor selection more than the underlying quality of the business itself. The right advisor can double your chances of successfully transacting and move the outcome by millions. The wrong one can cost you the deal entirely.
"Most business owners approach a sale having built something genuinely valuable over many years. Very few have the framework to evaluate the advisors who will determine whether that value is realised."
The gap is not a lack of good advisors. Australia has exceptional M&A advisory talent across the mid-market. The gap is information: owners who do not know what they do not know, and a referral landscape built on a limited network from their accountant or lawyer, a Google search, or an LLM. Neither gives a business owner what they actually need: insider knowledge of the advisory market, how firms operate, who has done what in which sectors, and whose track record is genuinely relevant to their transaction.
M&A Concierge exists to close that gap.
Closed deals as an M&A advisor across multiple industries: conducting thorough preparation, managing buyer outreach and relationships, creating competitive tension, and successfully negotiating and executing transactions on behalf of business owner clients in the Australian mid-market.
Not just someone else's. Our founder has been through the process as a vendor: understanding the importance of confidentiality, being process-driven, buyer engagement and momentum, and the personal pressure of having years of work on the line. That experience revealed, firsthand, where and how advisors are most valuable through a transaction, and where the gaps tend to appear.
Co-founder of a business valuation firm, with deep experience in valuation fundamentals, what drives multiples, the difference between value and price, and how to use valuation as a tool to derive better outcomes in a transaction.
Experience as a management consultant: analytical rigour, structured problem-solving, and the ability to assess a business quickly and accurately against the criteria that matter to acquirers.
Experience leading small and medium enterprises: understanding the operational realities, the personal stakes, and the decision-making context of the business owners M&A Concierge serves.
The information asymmetry between business owners and the advisory market is significant. Owners are making one of the most consequential financial decisions of their life, often for the first and only time, against advisors who do this every day. The gaps below are where deals fail, prices disappoint, and outcomes fall short of what was achievable.
From the outside, M&A advisory firms can look interchangeable. In practice, the differences in sector relationships, buyer networks, process discipline, and deal size experience are the variables that most influence whether a transaction happens and what it achieves.
Only one in three businesses that go to market in Australia successfully transact. Most owners discover this statistic after their process has stalled, not before they engaged the advisor who ran it. Understanding why deals fail is part of understanding how to avoid it.
Success fees, retainers, lehman-scale variations, break fees: the fee landscape for M&A advisory is more complex than most owners anticipate. Negotiating it without context means agreeing to terms that may not reflect market norms for a transaction of their size or align with their transaction objectives.
A valuation is what your business is worth on paper. The price achieved in a transaction is shaped by which buyers are in the room, whether they see strategic or financial value, and how the process is run. The same business can achieve materially different outcomes through different advisors.
A well-designed sale process creates competitive tension, surfaces the right buyers, and is structured around the shareholder's objectives, not a standard template. Most owners have no basis for evaluating whether the process being proposed is appropriate for their transaction.
Most advisor referrals come from accounting firms with existing relationships with one, maybe two advisory firms, not from a systematic assessment of who is best suited to a specific transaction. The referral source points you to whom they know, not who is best to sell your business.
The conflict of interest in most referral relationships is structural, where the person making the recommendation has a financial stake in which option you choose. In traditional referral agreements, the relationship between the firm and the advisor matters more than the fit between the advisor and your transaction.
M&A Concierge was designed from the beginning to remove that conflict. The fee structure is not a coincidence: it is the founding principle of the service.
"We are paid by the advisor you ultimately engage, a uniform referral fee. There is no financial incentive to recommend one firm over another; the only thing that drives a recommendation is whether the match is right."
This model also means there is no fee to the business owner beyond the initial advisory call. If the call reveals that now is not the right time to go to market, that is a legitimate and honest outcome, not a lost referral fee. The advisory call has its own value regardless of what follows.
The initial 90–120 minute advisory session is $490 + GST. This is the only direct charge to the business owner, and it covers not just the call itself, but the recommendation, the introductions, and ongoing support through to the engagement of an advisor. No retainer. No ongoing fee.
When a business owner engages an advisor we have introduced, the advisor pays M&A Concierge a uniform referral fee. The only thing that drives a recommendation is whether the match is right.
Advisors do not pay to be on the database. They do not pay to be recommended. The recommendation is based on fit: sector, deal size, buyer network, process approach, and current mandate capacity. Nothing else.
If the advisory call reveals that the timing is wrong, the business is not ready, or the owner's objectives don't align with going to market, we will say so. A referral is not a guaranteed outcome of the call: an honest assessment is.
The matching methodology behind M&A Concierge is built on two foundations that most referral sources lack: a comprehensive structured database of Australian M&A advisor activity, and almost a decade of direct relationships within the advisory market.
Most advisor recommendations are based on who the referrer knows. Ours are based on what advisors have done: completed transactions, sector coverage, deal size distribution, buyer network composition, and process design and execution, cross-referenced against what your specific transaction requires.
The database is not a directory of firms that have paid to be listed. It is a proprietary research asset built over time, covering the Australian mid-market advisory landscape across 100+ industry sectors. It is continuously updated to reflect current performance, not historical reputation. Change to firms that have paid to be listed.
AI analytics identify the most relevant candidates from the database for each business owner profile. Those candidates are then assessed against the insights from the advisory call: objectives, timeline, deal complexity, personal circumstances, and current advisor capacity, before a recommendation is made.
Active advisor coverage mapped by completed transaction activity, sector relationships, and verified deal history, not capability claims alone.
The mid-market segment where advisor selection has the greatest influence on outcome and the information gap is widest.
A considered recommendation, not a directory. The number depends on the transaction: some situations call for one specialist; others benefit from a choice between firms with different strengths and approaches.
M&A Concierge is designed for a specific type of owner at a specific stage. Not every business is the right fit, and clarity on that serves everyone better than a broad service that is not precisely calibrated to the situations where it adds the most value.
Not curious, genuinely evaluating. You may be twelve months away or three years away, but the decision to explore is real. The advisory call is designed for owners at this stage: informed enough to have the conversation, not so far along that the key decisions are already made.
This is the mid-market segment where M&A Concierge's database and relationships are concentrated. Below this range, business brokers are often the more appropriate channel. Above it, the advisory market is more accessible and the information gap is smaller.
You recognise that engaging an advisor is a significant decision and you want to make it from a position of knowledge rather than instinct. The advisory call is for owners who want to understand how the process works, what advisors cost, and what a good match looks like, before they are sitting in pitch meetings.
M&A Concierge is most valuable before you have committed to an advisor. Once a mandate is signed, the matching work is done. If you are evaluating advisors and have not yet made a decision, this is the right time.
M&A Concierge is not the right service for businesses well below $2M EBITDA, as the business broker market typically serves that segment. It is also not designed for owners who have already engaged an advisor, owners seeking an independent valuation (M&A Concierge is not an accredited valuer), or owners who are not genuinely considering a transaction in the foreseeable future.
One advisory conversation gives you the foundation to make that decision from a position of knowledge: not instinct, not a referral from your accountant, not a Google search, and not an LLM.
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