Anne R.
Premium Plan"A traditional broker would have charged between $43,400 and $52,080 for the same result. We kept the difference."
After 20 years of building our restaurant from the ground up, the time had come to think about retirement. Our kids had grown up and moved on, and so had we — at least in our minds. We just hadn't figured out the how yet.
Our first calls were to local business brokers. We'd never sold a business before, so it seemed like the logical place to start. But every conversation ended the same way: 8 to 12 percent commission. On a business we'd spent two decades building, that meant handing over somewhere between $43,000 and $52,000 before we even closed. We weren't comfortable with that. We'd worked too hard to give that much away.
We briefly considered selling it ourselves to avoid the fees — but honestly, we had no idea where to start. We didn't know how to market a business, how to find serious buyers, or how to manage any of the legal and confidentiality requirements that come with a sale. We needed help. We just didn't want to pay broker-level prices for it.
That's when we found ListBizForSale.com.
We reached out and walked through the different plans they offer. What stood out immediately was that there was actually a plan designed for exactly our situation — owners who want professional support without giving up control or paying a commission. After reviewing everything, we chose the Premium Plan.
For $500 per month, we got more than we expected. Our business was listed anonymously, so our customers and employees had no idea anything was happening. The team created all of our marketing materials and listed us across their full buyer network. They handled every incoming buyer inquiry, screened each one, and only forwarded us the contacts worth our time. No buyer received any information about our business without first signing a Non-Disclosure Agreement — something we never would have managed consistently on our own. And once a month, we had a dedicated hour with an advisor who kept us up to date on where things stood and answered every question we had along the way.
We sold within four months for $434,000. Our total cost to sell was $2,000 — the three-month minimum for the Premium Plan.
If you've spent years building your business and you're starting to think about what comes next, we'd encourage you to have a conversation with the team at ListBizForSale.com before you call a broker. There's a better way to do this — and we're proof that it works.