I think I managed to singlehandedly offend the entire Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) community this week.

It all started after I wrote a series of articles about the similarities between selling a home and a business (thanks again for your comments on my post earlier this week which helped me sharpen my thesis). My argument was all of the staging, marketing and negotiating steps in selling a home are a lot like selling a business. My intent was to demystify the process of selling a business for someone who had never gone through it.

In the process, I inadvertently offended some of the people in the M&A industry. Here’s a quote posted on The Globe & Mail’s website from one of the offended brokers which is representative of the earful I got from his peers:

“I take issue with the statement that selling a home is similar to selling a business. The implication that I got from the article was that it is just as easy too. I am a business brokerage professional and can tell you that the two are very, very different. It is much more difficult and different a process to sell a business.

Here are some reasons why it is different: valuing a business (there is no ‘market comparable’ data like in real estate) and every business has different revenues, costs, etc. Confidentiality, most businesses need to be sold in secrecy so staff and customers don’t find out. Financing – it is very difficult to obtain acquisition financing, inventory financing, credit, etc. And more… employee issues, tax issues, asset sale vs. share sale, non-compete agreements, and so on. To suggest that the two are similar does a disservice to the readers, with all due respect. Most homes listed for sale do eventually sell. The reality is that the majority of businesses do not because people don’t understand these important differences. I hope this comment remains on the board and is not filtered out.” — Steve Skrlac, MBA, CFA

If I made it sound easy to sell a business, I regret that. Nothing could be further from my experience. It took four years to reshape my last business into something sellable and another eight months of active negotiations with potential buyers to get a deal done. It was a slog.

Yesterday, we marked the end of the six part series comparing selling a home to selling a business with an online debate hosted by The Globe & Mail between Ron Dersch, an M&A professional and myself. Ron is a good guy and knows his stuff. Thank you for joining the discussion (The Globe & Mail has posted our debate if you missed it).

Do you plan to use an M&A professional or business broker when it comes time to sell your business? If so, what questions do you have about using a broker? If not, why not?