Sell Your Manufacturing, Engineering & Distribution Business

The Precision Firm is a specialist sell-side M&A advisor for manufacturing, engineering, and distribution owners only — we do not list restaurants, retail, or service businesses. Every engagement is led personally by Matt Lowd or Dave Carlson, both former operators who have built and sold their own companies. Generalist brokers apply Main Street SDE multiples and treat your equipment as used furniture; we value industrial businesses on normalized EBITDA, defended balance sheets, and real comparable transactions in your sub-sector. The result, on average, is a higher closing price, better deal structure, and a confidential process that protects your business from start to wire.

The typical timeline to sell a lower middle market industrial business is 6 to 12 months from engagement to close, broken down roughly as: 1 to 2 months of preparation, valuation, and CIM build; 3 months of confidential buyer outreach and LOI generation; 3 months of negotiation and diligence; and 1 to 3 months of legal documentation, financing, and closing. Faster is possible when financials are clean and a strong buyer emerges quickly. Slower happens when documentation is incomplete, customer concentration is high, or the seller is testing the market without a real commitment to transact.

The Precision Firm operates on a 100% success-based fee — there are no upfront retainers, no monthly fees, no listing fees, and no charge for the valuation or the consultation. You pay only when your business sells, and the fee is a percentage of the final transaction value disclosed and agreed in writing before we begin work. This model exists to align our incentives fully with yours: we earn when you exit at the right price, on the right terms, with the right buyer. If your business does not sell through our process, you owe nothing.

The most expensive mistakes we see are: going to market with incomplete or messy financials, breaking confidentiality by telling employees or key customers too early, relying on a single buyer instead of running a competitive process, mispricing the business in either direction, allowing operational performance to dip during diligence, ignoring deal structure in favor of headline price, and skipping tax planning until after the LOI. The single largest preventable error is starting the process 6 months before you want to be done — a properly run industrial sale needs 12 months of runway, and the best outcomes come from owners who engage 18 to 24 months before they plan to exit.

The best time to sell is when three things align: business performance is strong with year-over-year growth and clean financials, market conditions favor sellers (active PE deployment, strategic consolidation in your sub-sector, reasonable lending environment), and you are personally ready for what comes next. Most owners wait too long, often until burnout, a health event, or a customer loss forces the decision — and a forced sale always trades at a discount. The right move is to engage 12 to 24 months ahead, get a real valuation and exit-readiness assessment, and time your market entry deliberately.

Buyers fall into four categories. Private equity platforms and add-on acquirers actively deploy capital into CNC, aerospace, medical device, automation, and industrial distribution roll-ups. Strategic acquirers — competitors, OEMs bringing capabilities in-house, suppliers integrating vertically, and international firms entering the U.S. market — often pay the highest multiples because of synergy value. Independent operators and search funds with SBA or investor backing acquire businesses in the $1M–$5M EBITDA range. Family offices and long-term holders pay for legacy and culture and often offer the most flexible structures. We run a process that puts your business in front of every relevant category to maximize competitive tension.

Yes. We represent manufacturing, engineering, and distribution sellers across the United States. Our buyer network — PE platforms, strategics, family offices, and independent sponsors — is national, and most lower middle market industrial transactions involve buyers and sellers in different states. Geography is rarely a constraint on the right buyer for an industrial business.

No — not unless and until you decide to tell them. Confidentiality is the foundation of our process. Initial buyer outreach is blind (sub-sector, revenue band, and geography only), buyers sign NDAs before receiving anything that identifies your business, customer names and employee details are released only in late-stage diligence, and we coordinate all site visits and communications to protect your team and your customer relationships. Most of our clients close their transactions without a single employee learning about the process until announcement day.