Peterson Acquisitions
At a Glance
Worth a look if you are buying in one of its office markets and want a broker who treats buyers as clients, as long as you go in knowing the buyer-side help is a paid product and the sell-side fee is unpublished.
- Pricing
- Custom Pricing, Publishes no fee, rate or retainer for its sell-side work, so the cost arrives in a conversation; its home page prints a bare line reading National Average: 11% - 25% under a section on choosing a broker, with no sentence saying what it measures. Its seller questions say it works only under an exclusive engagement. Its buyer-facing coaching and educational products are paid, which is a different relationship from free content.
- Best For
- Buyers who want a named local broker in the Midwest or Mountain West rather than a national inbox, and who are willing to pay for buyer-side coaching
- Kind
- Independently run offices under one name, so the broker varies by market.
- Footprint
- Names Arizona, Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri and South Dakota. It works beyond the states it names, so one it does not name is worth asking about rather than ruling out.
- Sells
- Privately held businesses at $1M to $100M of transaction value across a variety of industries. No firm-level sold count or founding year appears anywhere, every number on the founder page is his own operating history, and the deals it displays run from $68,000 to $68M, both ends outside its stated band.
- Publishes a size band you can check yourself against.
- Seller Fee
- Publishes nothing. Neither the rate nor the structure appears on its own site.
- Buyer Fee
- Says nothing about a buyer fee. Its buyer-facing pages say nothing either way about what a buyer pays.
- Works For
- Represents buyers. Names a buy-side service a buyer engages, so somebody on this list can be working for you. None of them publishes what it costs, so ask that first.
- Before It Shows You Anything
- Wants proof of funds before it shows you a business. Proof of funds or a personal financial statement, alongside the NDA. Expect to show what you can actually spend before you see a single set of books.
- An application rather than a form, which the firm says it uses to qualify a buyer before any confidential information is released, asking for a financial profile showing what you can commit alongside your experience and timeline.
- Roadmap Stages
- 2. Define & Test Your Thesis4. Source & Screen Deals
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Lists named offices with named brokers and street addresses in Minneapolis, Denver, Phoenix, St. Louis and Sioux Falls, so its geography is checkable rather than claimed
- One of the few brokers running a buyer intake track, so a searcher can be a client rather than a name on a mailing list
- Publishes a blog, a podcast and a book, so its view of the process is readable before any call
Cons
- Publishes no fee of any kind for the sell side, so the cost is unknown until you ask
- Its buyer-side help is a paid product, which is not the same as a broker working for a buyer free
- An office network means the broker varies by market, so a reference from one office says little about another
What Searchers Say
Office list with named brokers, service list, and the absence of any published fee all read from its own locations, services and sell-side pages. Two of those pages deserve a buyer's attention. A 2024 release attributes its best-broker-in-the-US title to several publications including ChatGPT, naming none, and its recruiting pages sell metro territories on an earn-while-you-learn model to people without M&A experience, so ask who at the office has personally closed the last three deals.
How to Approach
Peterson Acquisitions is an office network rather than a single firm, and it works for the seller rather than for you, so this is how that side of the table comes in and what it is deciding about you.
The Typical Arc
- You reach one office rather than the brand, and that office runs its own process.
- A teaser and an NDA with the local broker who holds the listing.
- The CIM and the seller meeting, to that office's standard rather than a house one.
- Your offer, through that broker, whose duty runs to the seller.
What It Weighs
- The same three things any listing broker weighs: funds, criteria, and speed.
- Whether you are buying in that office's market, since the listings are local.
- Whether to refer you to a sister office, which is an introduction rather than a handoff.
How to Prepare
- Ask which office holds the listing and who your broker actually is.
- Write the one page a broker asks for before you inquire. Buyer Profile Builder
- Set criteria specific enough for a listing to match. Buy Box Builder