By Tully Ryan, CEO, IQExit | Murphy Business M&A Advisor 
 
Last week I had the privilege of presenting at the Murphy Business & Financial Conference in Clearwater, Florida, in front of some of the sharpest minds in business brokerage, M&A advisory, and the lower middle market. My presentation topic was Understanding Today's M&A Buyer Landscape. 

As a side note, I am not built to lecture. I don’t use notes or talking points; Instead, I moderate. (the same style I use in every client meeting).  I've spoken in front of larger audiences, but this small room was packed with industry leaders, so we rolled up our sleeves and got after it. What came out of that conversation is worth sharing with every wealth advisor, CPA, banker, and business owner in our region.  



The Numbers Tell a Story Most People Aren't Hearing. 

12 million U.S. businesses are set to change hands by 2040, representing $25–$42 trillion in enterprise value across Main Street, the lower middle market, and family-owned companies. 30–50% of generational wealth is locked in business equity, not investment portfolios. Of the owners driving this wave, 48% aged 45–75 say they want to exit within three years. Yet 63% will prepare less than one year before their sale. 

Nearly half of these business owners are already inside what I call the Exit Formation Window,  the critical 18-36 month period before a transaction when preparation gaps can still be identified and fixed. Most are not ready. And most of the advisors, bankers, and attorneys in their lives don't know it yet either. 

That collision of unprecedented seller supply and compressed preparation time is not a market cycle. It is a structural shift and it is defining who wins and who loses in the largest wealth transfer event in modern history. 

One Urgent Takeaway For Context. 

In 2021, a willing seller could close a deal. In 2026, only a qualified seller can. 

Buyers are not the bottleneck. $2.2 trillion in PE dry powder is ready to deploy. The bottleneck is seller readiness and that is a problem that starts with advisors, not buyers. 

The Credibility in the Room Made This Conversation Better. 

Few people in the country have seen more business owners at the threshold of a transaction than Monty Walker — CPA, CBI, CGMA, founder of Walker Business Advisory Services, and one of the most respected business transaction tax and exit planning experts in the country. He is a subject matter expert for the International Business Brokers Association on business transaction taxation, structuring, and planning. His peers call him "the Tax Evangelist" — and when Monty speaks, the industry listens. 

What he told us, based on decades sitting across the table from owners at the most critical financial moment of their lives, is that roughly  90% of the business owners who call him, or are introduced to him by other trusted advisors, are simply not prepared to go to market. Not in minor ways. In ways that cost them time, money, and in many cases, the deal itself. That statistic is not an indictment of business owners. It is an indictment of a system that waits until the urgency of a transaction to begin work that should have started years earlier. 

Also in the room: Mark Pompeo, Senior Vice President of Small Business Lending at Live Oak Bank, one of the most active SBA and business acquisition professionals in the country, and someone I've known for nearly a decade.  Mark noted the trend that PE is increasingly going down market, chasing smaller deals, a shift that is corroborated by data.  Mark emphasized that this is still a relationship business. Relationships between buyer and seller matter.  Mark asserted, “For most sellers, legacy means more than the price when selecting a buyer and negotiating an LOI”  He referenced Live Oak’s survey results where 65% of sellers stated that legacy played the most significant role when selecting a buyer, while only 18% reported price being the deciding factor.  

What This Means for Every Advisor in a Business Owner's Life.
 
The M&A buyer landscape has fundamentally shifted. Buyers are abundant. Capital is selective. Seller qualification, not buyer sourcing, is now the deal-defining variable.  

The pervasive lack of seller preparation factors into the current trend where the due diligence process is not just the buyer’s confirmation, it is also a filter.  

Customer concentration. Owner dependency. Messy books. New SBA rules: These are not negotiation issues. They are preparation issues, and they take 18 to 36 months to fix. Proactive discussion of these issues should happen at client meetings, well in advance of a meeting about listing to sell.  

At IQExit, we call this Exit Readiness Intelligence, a framework that helps advisors bring clarity to their business owner clients before the urgency of a transaction removes all the good options. The advisors who engage upstream become the architects of their clients' largest financial events. The ones who wait become spectators. 
 
For every CPA, wealth advisor, banker, and attorney in a business owner's life: 
Nearly 50% of your client base may already be in the Exit Formation Window. 
Are you in the conversation or will you find out from a wire transfer? 
 
Tully Ryan is the CEO of IQExit and a Murphy Business M&A Advisor based in Wilmington, NC. IQExit is building Exit Readiness Intelligence infrastructure for business ownership transitions. Grateful to Murphy Business Sales for the platform and to my peers for the sharp dialogue.