What Business Buyers Want in 2025 and How Smart Sellers Can Win

Lessons From Real Buyer Conversations

Quiet Light Advisor Chris Wozniak breaks down what he’s hearing in real-time from valuation calls and recent buyer conversations. From how trends shape valuations to the truth behind market narratives, Chris gives a behind-the-scenes look at how educated sellers and data-driven insights are leading to better conversations—and better outcomes.

If you’re wondering how buyers are behaving, what sellers are asking, or whether your business even has value, this is the video for you.

Key Takeaways:

• [0:00] Are buyers more cautious in 2025—or is that a myth?
• [0:27] Why buyer reactions vary listing by listing
• [0:58] The questions sellers always ask during valuation calls
• [1:33] How market headlines influence seller expectations
• [2:02] The power of Quiet Light’s internal deal data
• [2:50] Why Quiet Light valuation advice reflects real, proven outcomes
• [3:54] What sellers really get from a business valuation
• [4:47] Why most valuation calls aren’t about the number
• [5:11] Handling distressed deals—and what matters most
• [6:07] When valuation is more conversation than calculation
• [7:02] A real story: From “I don’t think this is worth anything” to a $1.7M sale
• [9:28] What advisors really bring to the table

TRANSCRIPT

00:00 Are Buyers Cautious in 2025 – Or Not?

It seems like buyers, people think like, “oh they might be apprehensive in this uncertain time” or you know whatever and like are you seeing that? Like when you’re having conversations with buyers? Do they seem more risk averse or do they seem more hesitant or is that kind of a false narrative? You know, I think if we do our job, like really really taking a minute to think about the valuation, maybe the way to look at it would be like, my recent launches for instance. Um, I think it really, largely just depending on the business, um how the buyers react. 

00:27 Why Buyer Demand Varies

I just had a launch yesterday, and it, it’s really not, I I didn’t know how our buyer pool would react to it. It’s a unique one, and we we got a really great response, um but I had one a few weeks ago, and I’m kind of baffled by the sort of, a little bit of, lack of response on it – at least people taking the next step once they kind of go through the materials because it’s a great business. There’s nothing that buyers are doing that isn’t more of a reaction to the particular listing or launch that that I can see.

00:58 Seller Questions on Valuation Calls

Okay in an average valuation call, is there like, you know, one or two questions that sellers always ask – or maybe it’s something else. Like they’re kind of surprised that that contributes to their valuation. They’re like, “Oh I didn’t realize that mattered.” Well, timing is one, you know, depending on their situation. I would say sellers wanting to understand the market, where it just seems like sellers really want to understand or get my opinion of what the market’s doing –  like the online M&A Market. You know, maybe they Googled M&A online market and get some stats or read, you know, some articles or whatever because I don’t think they would ask that question. 

01:33 How Headlines Affect Seller Expectations

And I didn’t really used to get asked that question a lot on on calls, on valuation calls, but I get it much more often now, so there’s got to be a reason um that they’re asking. So, I think it’s probably something they’re reading. Maybe it’s something in their own business um that they’ve been affected, like their business has been affected. So, maybe they take a more general viewpoint on “Does that affect valuation?” And if so, is that affecting the market? 

So, I I just keep blinders on and I focus on Quiet Light. 

02:02 Real Deal Data From Quiet Light

The best I can offer a seller in that scenario, when they want to know about the market, is just to talk about, like, Quiet Light’s Market. It’s very effective because it’s valuable information because I I know that I can look the seller in the eye and give them stats and comparables, and you know, because, I mean, I go through like, you know, when an advisor closes a deal, we have to fill out a like a 40 or 45ish question close sales report, and I let the sellers know that we all do that. All the advisors at Quiet Light. So, that’s a lot of data. You know if we close 100, 125 deals a year, and we’ve been doing that, collecting that information, for you know, whatever, five years let’s say, that data is priceless really. And like, so I can I can feel really confident when I tell them like it’s wide open, and we, all the advisors, talk a lot. We’re always on Slack, you know, asking questions, brainstorming all that stuff enough, in my opinion, to provide really good comps. 

02:50 Valuations Based on Real Outcomes

It’s enough data to go, you know, you you, Mr Mrs Seller, read that the M&A online M&A Market is down 35% from, you know, whatever 2023 or whatever it is, and you know we can I can go in and say, well, you know, we weren’t at Quiet Light. Um, so that the information they’re reading could be accurate, but like as far as I’m concerned, you know, all we can go on is our little environment. So, I think sellers like to hear that because they know they’re getting what I think is, like, really precise – probably mostly like 98 99% accurate information. We can give them stats based on data that I know we’ve curated and aggregated and put together, so everybody’s open about, you know, their deals, and we kind of know what’s going on. So, I think that’s really valuable for for sellers. Yeah, and it’s like you might be assigned to one advisor, but you’re sort of actually, behind the scenes, being assigned to the whole team. 

03:54 What Sellers Get From a Valuation

Yeah, for sure and all our information, and yeah so I love that about Quiet Light. Having, um access, and everybody’s open about their deals, and we kind of know what’s going on. So, I think that’s really valuable for sellers. Yeah um one thing that came out of our customer research was that um the word valuation didn’t actually necessarily mean what we say. When we say valuation, so like when we say to someone, come get a business valuation because it’s more of like an analysis consultation. Uh, I mean, obviously maybe you’ll get a number at the end of it as well, but like can you walk through – like someone said, “Why should I get a business valuation?” Or like, “What even is that?” Like what are they actually getting? They send through the sell form and then what happens? Technically speaking, I guess evaluation is trying to determine the asking price for a business. I mean at the end of the day, that’s really what it is, but I think a valuation call, so it’s a lot of listening and understanding.

04:47 Why It’s Not About the Number

What it is the seller is, it’s understanding what their goal of the call is. It doesn’t have to be, I need to, I want to figure out what the multiple is, and what a potential as prices – sometimes it’s just exploratory. Sometimes it’s wanting to know if um they should wait on selling or should do it now. Like I just got off a call earlier today. Two sellers in Israel, they had an Amazon business, and I think what they wanted to convey to me was they just, they wanted to be open with me about what’s gone down with their business in the past year. Like, unfortunately, all the tough things that have happened to them and you know things that were completely, honestly, outside of their control – just it was a perfect storm of tough things that happen. So, sometimes I think they want to talk to you about that and then get your take on it, you know, get my perspective on it. And then, also you know, usually kind of in a situation like that to see if they have any hope of salvaging some type of purchase price which would be more of a distress kind of situation, an evaluation call is definitely like exploration conversation. It’s, sometimes, I don’t even talk that much about, like, you know, getting into the nitty-gritty of like, you know, revenue and SKS, or you know, any any kind of drill down that you get into. Um sometimes, the conversation really, a lot of valuation calls for me, I don’t even get to a purchase price.

05:11 Distressed Deals: What Matters

It’s more like talking through things, and I kind of digest all that and give some ideas back to the seller. Then it’s like, let’s run your P&Ls, and then you know, try to figure out a multiple based on all the information you’ve given me. In my head, I’ll start at a certain multiple probably in that conversation just, you know, as I’m thinking and then when I kind of digest everything we talk about and think more through it, like you know, over the course of a day or something, that maybe, probably, moves the multiple up or down a little bit. So, it’s you know, I know that’s like a subjective sort of method, but that’s kind of how I do it. Um and then, you know, then you just present it to them. Any example of a deal where, like something like, without you, it would not have crossed the Finish Line. This deal would have been hard to accomplish without an advisor/broker, whether Quiet Light or not. At the very beginning, when I talked to this seller, she got on the call sort of thinking “I know this isn’t probably worth anything but I at least wanted to talk to you.” 

07:02 From No Value to a $1.7M Sale

When I hear that, you know, I try not to make assumptions, but it’s, you know, it’s kind of like, okay, let’s you know, let’s hear it. You know what you got going on, and there’s a chance of maybe isn’t worth much, or something like that, but that’s why you have these calls. So, you know, we get into the call, and like, she’s got this really proprietary, um, educational product that she’s been offering for like years, like I think like, I can’t remember, but maybe eight or nine years or something, and so I’m learning about it. I’m like, “Well, this is really cool, and it, you know, it’s very, she has a specific educational background that allows her to write about this stuff, and then, so you know, so I’m kind of thinking about that and thinking, just thinking ahead. Like, how does that transfer? That’s going to be, you know, something we need to talk about because, you know, so much of it is literally her and her, you know, her intelligence and experience. But you know, we get talking more, and they, you know, they’re getting comfortable, and so then we kind of start talking about the numbers, and they tell me like they’re making, I forget the revenue, but they were netting like $450,000 doing this. And so, I kind of said, I was like, “So, you’re wondering if this, if your company, has any value, literally like at all?” And she was like, “yeah, you know I just don’t, I don’t know how, it you know, how we would sell this even.” If it had value, and so that was a situation that doesn’t happen that often, but it was, like, is a trending one. Like is there anything massively wrong? Is there a reason why we’re having this call? Like, you know, you’re nervous about something. It was no no no great. The trends were really solid, and I and then, I was like, “Do you have tax returns?” And they were like, “yeah,” and I was like “do they look like your P&Ls?” You know I’m expecting “not really.” And they say “yeah, actually we we do and we’re very conservative on on our tax returns they look exactly like our P&Ls.” So, I was like, okay, SBA pre-qualified, probably growing trends, it’s a digital product, real niche, I was like I think we could, off the cuff, I like, I think we could get you, you know, a three and a half multiple, so that would be, I think it sold for 1.7 million, I think, at the end of the day. 

09:28 What Advisors Bring To The Deal

So, that was a fun call because it’s, going in, you have a seller that thinks, potentially, it’s not worth much, or they just had no idea, you know, leave the call with something, an asset that’s worth a million seven, million six, million 7, so that’s a, I mean, sort of answers your question from the standpoint of what we can we bring as advisors, um, to the to the table [Music]