“Having been on the purchasing side myself, it's quite easy to poke holes in the story of a business. Your numbers need to meet the story that you're telling. If it's a growth story, you need to have shown that historical growth. If 40, 50% of your clients are from five to 10 companies, that's a weakness. And is it the owner's relationships that are holding this business together? Am I buying the business or am I buying the owner?”
Build a Better Agency Podcast · Agency Business · November 2026
Context
Asked what hurts a deal when an agency sells, he lists the main buyer concerns: client concentration and dependence on the owner.
Transcript
Right.
If an agency is going to sell in three to five years, what do buyers find in the books that hurts the deal?
Oh, well, having been on the purchasing side myself, I can tell you that sometimes it's quite easy to poke holes in the story of a business. Your numbers need to meet the story that you're telling. And if it's a growth story, you need to have shown that kind of historical growth or at least hitting the metrics that provide evidence that you're going to grow in future. However, there's other things. So if there's a high concentration of high-value clients, so for example, if 40, 50% of your clients are from five to 10 companies, then that's a weakness that needs to be to be ironed out. The other component is, is it the owner's relationships that are holding this business together? Or has it been truly passed on to the business itself? So am I buying the business or am I buying the owner?
Right. And if I'm buying the owner, he or she's got to stick around, which at that point they probably don't want to do, right?
Sure. But again, all I hear is discount, discount, discount, right? I mean, it's it. And if you're not collecting, you know, your receivables, I wrote a recent post where I say it'll hit you twice. Not only are you keeping working capital in the business that you would, you know, would preferably…
Right.
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