Someone Wants to Buy Your Business. Slow Down.

If you run a decent private business in Australia right now, your inbox already knows what this article is about. The emails arrive weekly, sometimes daily. Someone you have never heard of has been following your company with great interest and wonders whether you have considered your exit options. It is flattering the first time. By the twentieth you sense something has changed in the market, and you are right. An unsolicited offer to buy your business is no longer a rare event. It is the output of an industry that has been built to find owners exactly like you. I have sold three companies I built, and I have sat on the other side representing buyers, including large multinationals, through due diligence and M&A. How you respond to that first email can be worth more than a decade of trading.

Why everyone suddenly wants your boring business

The approaches are not random and they are not really about you. Over the past few years an enormous amount of capital has organised itself around buying small and mid-sized private companies. Private equity firms are running buy-and-build strategies, acquiring a platform business in a sector and bolting on smaller competitors to create something worth a higher multiple. Search funds, often a single operator backed by investors, are hunting for one good business to buy and run, a model that has spread rapidly from the US business schools that invented it. Family offices want direct ownership of cash-generating companies. And a generational wave of retiring owners has convinced all of them that the next decade is a once-off buying opportunity. Many of these acquirers run outbound origination teams whose entire job is to identify private companies from databases and approach the owners directly, before a competitive process exists. The sectors they love most are the ones Australian founders dominate: trades and home services, professional services, healthcare, specialist software and anything with recurring revenue and an owner over fifty. When you understand the machine, the flattering email reads differently. You were not discovered. You were listed.

What it feels like when the email is about your baby

Here is the part the broker blogs never tell you, because their authors have never sold their own company. Selling a business you built is not a transaction. It is one of the most stressful things you will do in your working life, and the first time is the hardest by a distance. I remember it clearly from my first exit. The business was my baby. I had built it, carried it through the years when it nearly did not make it, and knew every customer and every line of the P&L personally. Then a buyer arrives with a team who do this every month, and suddenly you are making the largest financial decision of your life while running the company, fielding diligence requests at midnight and pretending to your team that nothing is happening. The stress compounds quietly until you cannot see the wood for the trees. During one of my deals a mentor watched me spinning, told me to chill, and then sat with me for thirty minutes and did nothing but breathe with me until my head cleared. It sounds soft. It was one of the most commercially valuable half hours of that entire transaction, because the decisions I made that week were the ones that actually determined the outcome, and I nearly made them in a fog. If you take one thing from this article, take that. The buyer is calm because it is Tuesday for them. You need process and people around you precisely because it is not Tuesday for you.

The trap inside the flattering email

An unsolicited approach is a deal on the buyer's terms, at the buyer's timing, with no competition. Every advantage sits on their side of the table. Having represented acquirers, including multinationals, through due diligence, I can tell you exactly how prepared the other side is. They know the multiples in your sector this quarter. They have a playbook for owners like you, refined across dozens of approaches. They have modelled your business from public data before the first call. You, meanwhile, know a number a mate at golf mentioned two years ago. And because no other buyer is in the room, the price only has to beat your uncertainty, not the market. The most expensive mistakes happen early and casually. Owners share detailed financials with a stranger to keep the conversation going. They blurt out a number that becomes the ceiling for every future negotiation. They sign an exclusivity clause buried in a friendly letter of intent and take their business off a market it was never properly on. I have watched owners lose seven figures not in the negotiation itself but in the first two phone calls, before they even realised a negotiation had started. The buyer's warmth is real, but it is professional warmth. Their job is to buy well. Nothing about their process is designed to get you the best price, which is a large part of what a sell-side advisor should do in M&A when a genuine process eventually runs.

What to do in the first fortnight

The right response to a credible approach is neither hanging up nor leaning in. It is a short, professional acknowledgement and then silence while you do your homework. First, verify who you are dealing with. A real acquirer has a track record you can check: completed deals, a funded platform, named investors, principals with a visible history. A vague "group of investors" with a Gmail address and urgency is not a buyer, it is a fishing expedition, and advisers who deal with these approaches daily will tell you to investigate before you reveal anything. Second, say nothing of substance. No financials, no customer names, no growth plans and absolutely no number, no matter how casually they ask what it would take. Third, get your own valuation reference point before you respond further, because you cannot recognise a good offer without knowing what the market would actually pay. And fourth, decide what you want before you decide what they get. If a sale within a few years fits your life, this approach might be a useful accelerant. If it does not, the conversation is intelligence, not a transaction, and you can treat it that way without guilt. Across three sales of my own, the deals went best when I had decided what I wanted before the buyer decided for me, and worst when I let their timetable become mine.

An approach is not a process

If the homework suggests the buyer is credible and the timing genuinely suits you, the single most valuable move is to convert their private approach into something with competitive tension. That does not always mean a full auction. Sometimes it means quietly testing two or three other logical acquirers. Sometimes it just means the buyer knowing, credibly, that you have advisers and alternatives. One interested party is a hostage negotiation. Two is a market. The difference routinely shows up as twenty or thirty per cent on price and vastly better terms, because a buyer with competition cannot load the deal with the earnout structures that quietly eat your price when they know you have nowhere else to go. I have seen this from both chairs. As a seller, the moment a second party entered one of my processes the tone of the first buyer changed within days. Representing buyers, I watched how differently we priced a business when we knew we were alone versus when we suspected we were not. The buyers know this arithmetic better than anyone, which is exactly why the outreach model exists. Proprietary deal flow, the industry term for reaching you before anyone else does, is prized precisely because it is cheaper. Your job is to stop being proprietary.

The best response is being ready before they call

The deeper lesson of the buyer wave is not about handling one email. It is that every owner should now assume the approach is coming and run the business accordingly. The owners who do brilliantly out of unsolicited interest are the ones who were already prepared: clean financials, revenue that does not depend on them personally, documented operations, a realistic sense of value and a clear picture of what they want from an exit and when. Everything in how to prepare a business for sale doubles as a playbook for this exact moment, because preparation is what turns an ambush into an option. Having now been through diligence from both sides of the table, I can tell you the difference is stark. An unprepared owner facing a professional buyer has two bad choices, engage from weakness or decline and wonder forever. A prepared owner has a third: engage from strength, on their timeline, with alternatives, and with the emotional load of the process planned for rather than discovered mid-deal. That readiness also changes how the approach feels. It stops being a verdict on your future and becomes what it actually is, a data point about your market, delivered free.

The bottom line

An unsolicited offer to buy your business is a compliment wrapped around an asymmetry. The buyer has process, information and practice. You have the asset and, if you move carefully, the choice. Verify who is asking, reveal nothing early, never name a number, and if the conversation deserves to continue, make sure it continues with competition and advice on your side of the table. Look after yourself through it too, because selling your own baby is emotionally harder than anyone admits, and clear heads make better deals. I needed a mentor to teach me that mid-transaction. You can learn it before the email arrives. Most of all, use the approach as the prompt it is: the buyers believe businesses like yours are worth pursuing, which means the years you spend making yours durable, documented and independent of you will be paid for, possibly sooner than you planned.

FAQs

Should I respond to an unsolicited offer to buy my business?

A brief professional acknowledgement is fine, but say nothing of substance until you have verified the buyer and taken advice. Responding is not committing. The mistakes that cost real money are sharing financials early, naming a price and signing exclusivity before alternatives exist.

Why am I suddenly getting so many offers for my business?

Because an industry now exists to generate them. Private equity buy-and-build platforms, search funds and family offices run outbound teams that identify private companies from databases and approach owners directly, hoping to buy before a competitive process pushes the price up.

How do I know if a buyer approach is legitimate?

Check for a verifiable track record: completed acquisitions, named principals with a visible history, identifiable funding. Be cautious with vague investor groups, requests for sensitive information up front and any pressure to move quickly. Credible buyers survive scrutiny and accept a measured pace.

What should I never tell an unsolicited buyer?

Detailed financials, customer information, your growth plans and any number for what you would sell for. An early number becomes the ceiling of every later negotiation. Share substantive information only under confidentiality, with advice, once the buyer is verified and the process is on your terms.

Does an unsolicited offer mean my business is worth more than I thought?

It means someone believes they can make money buying it, which is useful information but not a valuation. Buyers approach directly precisely because negotiating without competition lets them pay less than the market would. Get an independent view of value before treating any offer as generous.

Fielding an approach right now?

If a buyer has approached you and you are not sure whether it is an opportunity or an ambush, I will give you a straight read before you respond. I have sold three companies I built, represented buyers including multinationals through due diligence and M&A, and I know exactly how hard this process is from the inside. Start a conversation.