For many business owners, mergers and acquisitions still feel like a distant, one-time event; something to think about when retirement is near or when an unsolicited offer lands in their inbox. For CFOs, however, M&A should be viewed very differently. Exit readiness, buyer alignment, and value creation are not end-of-the-journey considerations; they are strategic levers that can be pulled years in advance.
Understanding who is buying businesses today, and what those buyers truly value, allows CFOs to play a far more influential role. Whether acting as an internal finance leader or a fractional CFO, this knowledge enables CFOs to shape decisions that materially improve outcomes long before a deal is ever discussed.
The Buyer Landscape Is Broader Than Most Founders Realize
Many sellers assume there are only two types of buyers: private equity firms and strategic acquirers. In practice, today’s M&A market includes a wider range of buyer profiles, each with distinct motivations, timelines, and definitions of value. CFOs who understand these differences can help founders avoid misalignment and position the business more deliberately.
Private equity buyers operate on strict timelines tied to fund lifecycles. Their focus is on acquiring businesses that are already performing well, improving them operationally, and exiting within three to seven years. They tend to value what exists today rather than what might exist tomorrow. For CFOs, this means that clean financials, repeatable processes, margin visibility, and scalability matter far more than aspirational growth stories.
Strategic buyers think differently. They are often willing to pay more because they are buying synergies like market access, geographic expansion, product fit, or cost efficiencies. For CFOs, this opens an entirely different value-creation playbook. Decisions around systems, data structure, reporting standards, and even ERP selection can materially affect how attractive the company appears to a strategic acquirer.
Family offices bring patient capital and a long-term mindset. They often prioritize values, culture, and legacy alongside financial returns. CFOs advising founders with these priorities can help shape governance, risk management, and sustainability in ways that appeal to this buyer group—often trading speed and aggressiveness for stability and continuity.
Search funds are increasingly active, particularly in the sub-$5M EBITDA market. These buyers are often operators first and investors second. They care deeply about management transition, operational clarity, and day-one continuity. CFOs can add significant value here by professionalizing reporting, documenting key processes, and reducing founder dependency.
Timelines Drive Behavior, and Risk
Each buyer type brings a different time horizon, and misunderstanding those timelines can create friction or disappointment after a deal closes.
Private equity buyers are almost always planning an exit. Strategic buyers may hold indefinitely or divest if synergies fail to materialize. Family offices often plan to hold for a decade or more. Search funds may not plan an exit immediately, but most eventually do.
CFOs can add value by helping founders understand that selling a business is rarely an instant clean break. For many deals, the seller remains involved for years. Aligning expectations around time, role, and outcomes is just as important as negotiating price.
True Buy-and-Hold Is the Exception, Not the Rule
In most cases, true buy-and-hold outcomes occur through internal transitions rather than third-party sales. Management buyouts and ESOPs are the most common examples. ESOPs, while powerful tools for legacy and employee retention, require scale and structural maturity. Smaller businesses may find management buyouts more practical.
CFOs play a critical role in evaluating whether these options are viable, modeling long-term outcomes, and ensuring the business can support the financial and operational complexity such structures require.
Value Goes Far Beyond the P&L
While revenue, EBITDA, and cash flow remain central to valuation, buyers increasingly scrutinize factors that sit outside traditional financial statements.
Buyers look for strategic fit, operational readiness, cultural alignment, and integration ease. Systems compatibility, data quality, and reporting consistency can materially influence both valuation and deal certainty. In some cases, companies intentionally adopt industry-standard systems or reporting frameworks not because they are perfect internally, but because they reduce friction for future buyers.
This is where CFOs can have outsized impact. By improving forecasting accuracy, cash-flow visibility, and scenario modeling, CFOs help management teams make better decisions today while simultaneously increasing buyer confidence tomorrow.
Designing the Exit Backwards
One of the most valuable contributions a CFO can make is helping founders articulate what they actually want from an exit—beyond the purchase price.
Do they want to protect employees? Preserve culture? Maximize liquidity? Step away entirely or remain involved? Each answer points toward a different buyer profile.
Rather than chasing as many buyers as possible, CFOs can help clients focus on a small number of well-aligned buyers and shape the business to fit those profiles. Alignment creates leverage, reduces risk, and often results in better outcomes for all parties involved.
Valuation Is a Function of Opportunity, Not Just Multiples
Private equity often relies on straightforward EBITDA multiples. Strategic buyers, however, may value a business based on what it can become inside their ecosystem. Cost savings, cross-selling, and operational efficiencies can justify paying significantly more for the same underlying earnings.
CFOs who understand this dynamic can help management identify and articulate these opportunities clearly, often turning “hidden” value into tangible deal leverage.
Market Conditions Reinforce the Need for Readiness
Despite macroeconomic uncertainty, M&A activity remains strong. Private equity holds record levels of dry powder. Public market valuations remain high. Interest rates, while volatile, are becoming more accommodative. At the same time, demographic shifts are driving an unprecedented wave of owner exits.
For CFOs, this environment reinforces a critical truth: readiness creates optionality. Companies with clean data, strong forecasting, and operational clarity can move quickly when opportunities arise. Those without it often miss windows, or accept suboptimal outcomes.
The CFO as a Value Architect
Ultimately, the CFO’s role in M&A is not to time the market or negotiate a single transaction. It is to design a business that has options.
By understanding buyer psychology, aligning strategy with long-term goals, and building financial and operational clarity, CFOs elevate themselves from scorekeepers to strategic partners. They help founders make better decisions today while quietly increasing tomorrow’s exit value.
In an M&A landscape that continues to evolve, the CFO who understands who’s buying, and why, becomes one of the most powerful value creators in the organization.
Learn More with FinFactor
In this episode of FinFactor, Blaine Bertsch talks with Rafael Pinho of TD Pine Advisors about the modern M&A landscape and what different types of buyers—private equity, strategic, family offices, and search funds—are really looking for in today’s deals. They dive into the psychology, timelines, and goals that drive acquisitions, explaining how sellers can tailor their exit strategies to match the right buyer and maximize value.
You’ll learn how to evaluate buyer fit beyond financials, understand valuation nuances, and spot emerging trends like the rise of search funds and operator-led acquisitions. This conversation offers CFOs, founders, and finance leaders a clear roadmap for navigating M&A with confidence and clarity.
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