---
title: "9 Best Business Brokers in Nashville: Fees and Deal Sizes 2026"
lang: en
canonical_url: https://www.papermark.com/blog/best-ma-advisors-nashville
last_updated: 2026-08-29
published: 2026-08-29
category: [mergers-and-acquisitions]
author: "Marc Seitz"
summary: "Compare 9 verified business brokers in Nashville by deal size, fee model and sector focus, plus what Tennessee buyers pay and how to run a quiet sale in 2026."
---

# 9 Best Business Brokers in Nashville: Fees and Deal Sizes 2026

Nashville has an advisory market shaped almost entirely by one industry, which is good news if you own a healthcare company and worth understanding if you do not. This guide profiles 9 verified business brokers in Nashville with deal bands, fee models and sector focus.

The healthcare cluster is the defining feature. HCA Healthcare is headquartered here, hundreds of healthcare companies have grown up around it, and three of the boutique investment banks on this list, Bailey & Company, Brentwood Capital Advisors and VelocityHealth Securities, are healthcare specialists rather than generalists. If you own a home health agency, a behavioural health platform or a healthcare IT business, Nashville buyers already know your sector.

The rest of the economy is broader than the healthcare framing suggests. Music and entertainment, hospitality and tourism, automotive manufacturing to the south in Spring Hill and Franklin, logistics and distribution, and a construction and home services sector that has run hot for a decade on corporate relocations and population growth.

Tennessee also levies no personal income tax on wages, which does not change the multiple a buyer pays but does change what you keep. And the buyer pool is national: a well-run Nashville process markets to Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas and New York as much as to Middle Tennessee. Unsolicited buyers pay unsolicited prices, and the point of hiring one of the business brokers in Nashville below is to turn one interested party into four or five.

  Every adviser on this list will ask where your documents are going to live
  before they take the mandate. A **data room for Nashville M&A** is the
  permissioned workspace that holds your payer contracts and provider
  agreements, or your music and publishing catalogue and royalty statements,
  while several buyers review them at once.

## Quick list of business brokers in Nashville

- **Bailey & Company**: Brentwood healthcare investment bank covering services, IT and pharma services.
- **Brentwood Capital Advisors**: Healthcare and business services bank with over 250 completed transactions.
- **VelocityHealth Securities**: Nashville healthcare boutique working $5M to $500M enterprise values.
- **Viking Mergers & Acquisitions**: Armory Drive office covering $1M to $100M transactions.
- **CGK Business Sales**: Church Street office taking companies from $1.5M of revenue upward.
- **Icon Business Advisors**: Lower middle market M&A firm publishing its fee range.
- **Nashville Business Brokers**: Non-franchise brokerage with over 200 businesses sold.
- **Alliant Capital Advisors**: Brentwood headquartered brokerage with a Nashville office.
- **Tennessee Business Brokers**: Franklin boutique led by an IBBA award-winning intermediary.

## How to get yes from business brokers in Nashville

Nashville advisers are selective because their opportunity cost is high. A firm running eight to twelve processes a year with senior attention takes the engagements it believes will close, so the first meeting is about removing reasons to say no.

Earnings quality decides that faster than anything else. Tennessee buyers and SBA lenders scrutinise add-backs hard, particularly trucks, family payroll, and rent paid to an entity you also own. If you cannot put an invoice or a payroll record behind a line, assume a buyer strips it and reprices at closing. On a business earning $1.5M, a $200,000 add-back haircut costs roughly $1M of value at a 5x multiple.

Concentration is the second filter, and in healthcare it takes a specific form: payer mix. A practice with 60% of collections from one commercial payer, or a services business dependent on a single health system contract, carries risk that a buyer will price. Disclose it at the start, because a problem raised in week one is a negotiation and a problem found in week ten is a repricing.

Third, be ready to move. Nashville processes run against national buyer lists, and a seller who takes two weeks to produce a contract schedule loses the momentum a competitive process depends on. Staging everything in a permissioned workspace is the fix, and our review of the [best virtual data rooms](https://www.papermark.com/blog/best-virtual-data-rooms.md) covers what each tier costs.

Bring these to your first meeting:

1. Three years of tax returns plus current year to date financials
2. An add-back schedule with documentation behind every line
3. Revenue by customer or payer for the last two years
4. Your lease, equipment list and any vehicle or fleet titles
5. A staff roster with roles, tenure, credentials and pay, names redacted
6. Contracts, licences and any franchise or provider agreements

_No credit card required._

## How to find business brokers in Nashville

Tennessee does not issue a standalone business broker licence, so credentials come from the trade bodies and the securities regulator. The International Business Brokers Association awards the Certified Business Intermediary designation and publishes production awards: Tennessee Business Brokers' principal, Karen Schorkopf, holds the IBBA Platinum Chairman's Circle Award and its Deal Maker Award for 2020 to 2022. M&A Source awards the Merger & Acquisition Master Intermediary for larger transactions.

At the bank tier, ask about registration instead. VelocityHealth Securities is a FINRA and SIPC member broker dealer, and Brentwood Capital Advisors also operates as a FINRA and SIPC member, which is what allows a stock sale rather than an asset sale.

- **IBBA and M&A Source**: National bodies with an ethics code and the CBI and M&AMI credentials.
- **Tennessee real estate licence**: Required where real property or a lease assignment transfers.
- **FINRA registration**: Ask which broker dealer the engagement runs through and check individuals on BrokerCheck.
- **Deal band honesty**: Ask for the median closed transaction over 24 months, plus the smallest and largest.
- **Healthcare specialism**: If you are in healthcare, a generalist broker is leaving buyers on the table.
- **Fee model**: Straight percentage for Main Street, retainer plus success fee above roughly $2M.
- **References**: Two sellers who closed recently, including one deal that got difficult.

## How to approach business brokers in Nashville

Approach brokers the way a buyer will approach you: with information, in stages, and without giving away more than the stage requires. You are interviewing them at least as much as they are screening you.

Confidentiality deserves real care here because the healthcare community in particular is small and heavily networked. In home health, behavioural health and physician services, a rumour reaches your referral sources and your best clinicians within days, and referral relationships are the asset you are selling.

1. Pick five firms whose stated deal band brackets your revenue and earnings.
2. Open with a blind summary: sector, revenue, earnings, county and timing.
3. Ask each for a written opinion of value with the comparable transactions behind it.
4. Ask what the buyer list looks like, split between strategics, private equity and individuals.
5. Ask which senior person signs the engagement and who runs the weekly call.
6. Check the engagement letter for exclusivity length, tail period, expenses and fee schedule.
7. Set the document policy before signing: tracked links, watermarks, no unrestricted downloads.
8. Agree on a weekly written buyer activity report, not just phone updates.

## Comparing the business brokers in Nashville

| Firm | Typical deal size | Focus sectors |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Bailey & Company | Middle market | Healthcare services, healthcare IT, payer, pharma services |
| Brentwood Capital Advisors | Middle market to large | Healthcare services and technology, business services |
| VelocityHealth Securities | $5M to $500M enterprise value | Biotech, diagnostics, medical devices, healthcare IT, pharma |
| Viking Mergers & Acquisitions | $1M to $100M | Professional services, distribution, construction, franchises |
| CGK Business Sales | $1.5M revenue and up | Healthcare, hospitality, trades, logistics, manufacturing |
| Icon Business Advisors | Lower middle market | Services, healthcare, manufacturing, construction, technology |
| Nashville Business Brokers | Roughly $199K to $4M+ | Auto repair, flooring, printing, construction, brewing |
| Alliant Capital Advisors | Main Street to lower mid | Diversified, staffing and services |
| Tennessee Business Brokers | Main Street to middle market | Medical, event venues, fitness, electrical, surgery centres |

## 1. Bailey & Company

Bailey is a pure healthcare investment bank, which in Nashville is less a niche than the mainstream. Its four coverage groups map directly onto how healthcare buyers organise themselves.

- Deal size: Middle market M&A, capital raises and financial restructuring
- Sectors: Healthcare services, healthcare IT and tech-enabled services, payer services, pharma services, medtech and life sciences
- Location: 5511 Virginia Way, Suite 200, Brentwood
- Website: [Bailey & Company](https://bnco.com/)
- Notable: Co-founded by Jeff Bailey and Jack Bailey, with Tim Scallen as chief executive

## 2. Brentwood Capital Advisors

Brentwood Capital is the longest-established healthcare bank on this list and the one with the largest published deal volume, spanning healthcare services, healthcare technology and family-owned business services companies.

- Deal size: Middle market through large transactions
- Sectors: Healthcare services, healthcare technology, business services, family-owned companies
- Location: Nashville, Tennessee, with Chicago transaction activity
- Website: [Brentwood Capital Advisors](https://brentwoodcap.com/)
- Notable: Founded 1999; states over 250 transactions totalling more than $40 billion in value. FINRA and SIPC member

## 3. VelocityHealth Securities

VelocityHealth is the most explicit about its band, which makes it easy to self-select: $5M to $500M of enterprise value, healthcare only, with an international team that is unusual for a Nashville boutique.

- Deal size: $5 million to $500 million enterprise value
- Sectors: Biotechnology, diagnostics, distribution, healthcare IT, medical devices, pharmaceuticals including generics and specialty pharma
- Location: Nashville headquarters, with team members in Jacksonville, Milan and Taipei
- Website: [VelocityHealth Securities](https://velocityhealth.com/)
- Notable: Founded 2000; states over 100 completed healthcare transactions. FINRA and SIPC member broker dealer

## 4. Viking Mergers & Acquisitions

Viking runs a full Nashville team on Armory Drive and splits its work between brokerage and larger M&A mandates, which makes it one of the few local firms that credibly handles both ends of the range.

- Deal size: $1M to $10M+ for brokerage, $10M to $100M for M&A
- Sectors: Professional services, wholesale and distribution, building and construction, franchises, manufacturing, technology
- Location: 3011 Armory Drive, Suite 125, Nashville
- Website: [Viking Mergers & Acquisitions](https://www.vikingmergers.com/market/business-brokers-nashville-tn/)
- Notable: Founded 1996; states over 950 facilitated transactions. Nashville office led by managing partner Kyle Kerrigan

## 5. CGK Business Sales

CGK works the high Main Street and lower middle market from Church Street, and its Nashville healthcare list is unusually granular: medical practices, home health, behavioural health, dental, veterinary and pharmacy.

- Deal size: $1.5M+ in annual revenue, up to roughly $100M
- Sectors: Healthcare services, hospitality and restaurants, auto repair, trades and home services, distribution and logistics, transportation, manufacturing, insurance agencies, property management
- Location: 424 Church Street, Nashville
- Website: [CGK Business Sales Nashville](https://cgkbusinesssales.com/nashville/)
- Notable: Nashville practice led by Wes McDonough; states a 9 in 10 engagement close rate

## 6. Icon Business Advisors

Icon is the newest firm here and the most transparent about money, publishing both the multiples it sees and the fees it charges, which is rare enough to be worth noting.

- Deal size: Lower middle market, with typical valuations of 3x to 7x EBITDA
- Sectors: Services, healthcare, manufacturing, construction, technology
- Location: Nashville, Tennessee, serving the Southeast and nationally
- Website: [Icon Business Advisors](https://iconbusinessadvisors.com/)
- Notable: Founded 2023 by Daniel Askew; states M&A advisory fees generally between 4% and 6% of transaction value

## 7. Nashville Business Brokers

A non-franchise brokerage running multiple offices under one corporate umbrella, working the band from a couple of hundred thousand dollars up to several million.

- Deal size: Listings roughly $199,000 to $4,000,000 and above
- Sectors: Auto repair, hardwood flooring, printing and embroidery, countertop fabrication, drywall, brewing
- Location: Nashville, Tennessee
- Website: [Nashville Business Brokers](https://nashbb.com/)
- Notable: States over 200 businesses sold and aggregate exits exceeding $100 million

## 8. Alliant Capital Advisors

Alliant runs a confidential brokerage model out of Brentwood with a Nashville office, and covers a wider regional footprint than most Middle Tennessee firms.

- Deal size: Main Street through lower middle market
- Sectors: Diversified, including staffing and services businesses
- Location: Brentwood headquarters, with Nashville, Huntsville, Auburn and Gulf Coast offices
- Website: [Alliant Capital Advisors](https://alliantbrokers.com/)
- Notable: Works with operator buyers, strategic buyers and private equity investors

## 9. Tennessee Business Brokers

A Franklin boutique with the strongest individual credential record on this list, covering Main Street through genuine middle market work across five states.

- Deal size: Main Street through middle market
- Sectors: Medical services, event venues, equipment repair, fitness centres, electrical, surgery centres
- Location: Franklin, Tennessee, serving Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi and Missouri
- Website: [Tennessee Business Brokers](https://www.tennbusinessbrokers.com/)
- Notable: Principal broker Karen Schorkopf holds the IBBA Platinum Chairman's Circle Award and Deal Maker Award for 2020 to 2022

## Which Nashville buyer type fits your business

| Buyer type | Usually targets | What they focus on |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Individual SBA buyer | Under $5M purchase price | Owner transition, lender qualification |
| Search fund or sponsor | $1M to $3M EBITDA | Recurring revenue, management depth |
| Healthcare private equity platform | $2M+ EBITDA | Payer mix, compliance, provider retention |
| Private equity add-on | $1M to $5M EBITDA | Fit with an existing platform |
| Health system or strategic | Any size in sector | Referral base, contracts, geography |
| Relocated corporate strategic | Any size in sector | Customers, contracts, Middle Tennessee footprint |

## Why you need secure document sharing in a Nashville sale

Nashville processes run against national buyer lists. If your adviser contacts thirty healthcare sponsors plus a dozen strategics, forty parties may sign NDAs and expect documents they will never collect in person. Diligence pulls collections by payer, provider and physician agreements, licences and accreditation records, the staff roster with credentials, the lease, and for a music or publishing business the catalogue schedules and royalty statements behind the revenue line. Emailing a confidential information memorandum widely leaves you with no way to withdraw it and no record of where it went.

The parties asking for those files are frequently competitors in the same metro. The likeliest buyer for a Middle Tennessee home health agency is another home health agency an hour away, the acquirer of a behavioural health platform is often the platform already operating in the next county, and a health system evaluating your practice recruits from the same clinician pool you do. Send the file to forty parties, thirty-five of whom will never bid, and you have handed your payer mix and your referral base to businesses you will still be competing with next quarter.

A leak here costs you people before it costs you price. Healthcare in Nashville is a small and heavily networked community, and word that a practice or agency is for sale reaches clinicians, referring physicians and payer contacts within days. Clinicians start taking recruiter calls, referral sources quietly divert volume to a practice whose ownership is not in question, and a landlord or franchisor who hears it before you tell them has leverage in the consent you are about to need. Email attachments cannot be recalled, cannot be watermarked, and tell you nothing about who actually opened them.

## Data room for Nashville M&A

![data room for a Nashville business sale](https://img.papermarkassets.com/upload/file_35DtVER7SdS1G6unRE8unv-papermark-data-room.png)

_Folder-level permissions let an adviser open the general file to forty buyers and contracts to two._

A **data room for Nashville M&A** is the permissioned workspace where your adviser stages the diligence file and runs a national buyer list through it at once, without any of them seeing what the others see. This is what advisers mean when they ask whether your documents are ready.

Papermark is a secure, fully customizable, and developer-friendly data room for modern dealmakers, built for exactly this: a **secure data room** that keeps the sensitive parts of the file locked while the process runs. NDA agreements sit on the link itself, so a buyer signs before the CIM renders. Dynamic watermarking burns each viewer's email and the timestamp onto every page, the most effective deterrent against a competitor circulating your payer mix or referral data. Granular file-level permissions release the general folder to everyone while contracts, provider agreements and payroll detail stay locked to the two parties still standing after bids.

Page-by-page analytics also tell your adviser where to push. When one sponsor spends twenty minutes on the payer concentration pages and another has not opened the file since day two, the follow-up list writes itself. The audit log gives you a permanent record of every view, download and permission change, which matters when your file contains patient-adjacent or contract-sensitive material.

The [Data Rooms plan](https://www.papermark.com/pricing.md?view=datarooms) is **€149/month**, or **€99/month billed annually**, with a 7-day free trial, and includes 3 team members, unlimited data rooms, unlimited documents, a custom domain, dynamic watermarking, NDA agreements, and granular file-level permissions. Open a [secure data room](https://www.papermark.com/data-room.md) before the teaser goes out and reuse it through diligence.

### Why Papermark as a data room provider for Nashville M&A

Most virtual data rooms were built for bankers and priced for them. Papermark is a **secure data room for modern dealmakers**, and it is more customizable and more branded than any other VDR on the market.

- **Security first.** SOC 2 Type II, granular file-level permissions, dynamic watermarking on every page, and NDA agreements that sit on the link itself.
- **Open source and self-hostable.** The codebase is public, and Enterprise can run it in your own environment, which matters when a buyer's IT team asks where the documents actually live.
- **Branded and white-labelled.** Custom domain and full white-labelling, so the room carries your firm's name rather than a vendor's.
- **AI and MCP.** 43 typed MCP tools over the Model Context Protocol let Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT or your own code drive the room, plus a REST API for everything else.
- **Chat with your data room.** Papermark AI answers questions across the room and the documents in it, so you are not scrolling a folder tree to find one clause.
- **Built for Nashville deals.** Permissions are set per file, so the sensitive parts of the file can stay locked to final bidders while the general file stays open.

## Did not find the right business broker in Nashville?

If your company sits outside these firms' bands, or you would rather test the market before signing an exclusive, the alternative is approaching buyers directly with an attorney and a CPA supporting you.

If none of the nine above fits, the [M&A advisors database](https://www.papermark.com/ma-advisors) lists every firm we have researched by city and by industry, with deal sizes and sectors side by side. Filter to **Nashville** to compare these against each other, or widen to a nearby metro if the local bench is thin.

## FAQ

### How much do business brokers charge in Nashville?

Main Street brokers handling businesses under $1M charge 8% to 12% of the sale price, with the smallest deals at 12% to 15%. Icon Business Advisors publishes M&A advisory fees of 4% to 6% of transaction value for lower middle market engagements.

### Do business brokers need a licence in Tennessee?

Tennessee does not issue a standalone business broker licence, but the Tennessee Real Estate Commission licenses brokers who handle real property or lease assignments, which covers a large share of small business sales. Stock sales run through a FINRA registered broker dealer.

### Do Nashville business brokers charge an upfront fee?

Main Street brokers usually work on success fee only. Lower middle market advisers charge $2,000 to $10,000 a month at the smaller end and $5,000 to $25,000 for a full investment banking engagement, generally credited against the closing fee.

### Why are so many Nashville M&A firms focused on healthcare?

Because the city is the centre of the US healthcare services industry, with HCA Healthcare headquartered here. Three firms on this list, Bailey & Company, Brentwood Capital Advisors and VelocityHealth Securities, are healthcare specialists rather than generalists.

### What is my business worth in Nashville?

Most small businesses trade at 2x to 4x seller's discretionary earnings, and IBBA Market Pulse has put the median small business sale near $350,000 at roughly a 2.7x SDE multiple. Icon Business Advisors states that lower middle market companies typically value at 3x to 7x EBITDA.

### How long does it take to sell a business in Nashville?

Six to twelve months from engagement to close is realistic. Due diligence alone runs 30 to 90 days after a letter of intent, and an SBA financed deal under $5M adds another 45 to 60 days for underwriting.

### How does payer mix affect a healthcare sale?

It is often the single biggest driver of the multiple. A practice with 60% of collections from one commercial payer carries contract risk a buyer will price, and buyers routinely ask for two full years of collections by payer in the first diligence request.

### Do I need a business broker to sell my business?

Not legally, but a single unsolicited buyer creates no price competition. A broker-run process typically puts four or five credible parties on the table, and a fee in the 4% to 12% range is small against that spread.

### Does Tennessee having no income tax change my sale price?

It does not change the multiple directly, but Tennessee levies no personal income tax on wages, so you keep more of the same headline price than a seller in California, where the top state rate exceeds 13%.

### What is a CIM and when do buyers get it?

The confidential information memorandum runs 20 to 40 pages covering the business model, financials, customers and growth plan. Buyers see it only after signing an NDA, which is why advisers deliver it through a tracked link.

### What documents do I need to sell my business?

Three years of tax returns, current financials, an add-back schedule, revenue by customer or payer, your lease, an equipment list and a staff roster. Diligence adds another 40 to 80 requests, which is why sellers stage a data room first.

## Related resources

- [M&A advisors database](https://www.papermark.com/ma-advisors) with every firm we have researched, by city and by industry
- [Best virtual data rooms](https://www.papermark.com/blog/best-virtual-data-rooms.md) for comparing providers before you go to market
- [Papermark data room](https://www.papermark.com/data-room.md) for sharing your CIM and diligence file securely
- [M&A due diligence checklist](https://www.papermark.com/blog/m-and-a-due-diligence-checklist.md) covering what buyers will request
- [Selling to private equity](https://www.papermark.com/blog/selling-to-private-equity-yes-or-no.md) for owners weighing a platform or add-on deal
- [Letter of intent in an acquisition](https://www.papermark.com/blog/letter-of-intent-acquisition.md) explaining the terms you will negotiate
- [Sell-side due diligence](https://www.papermark.com/blog/sell-side-due-diligence.md) on preparing before buyers arrive

---

_Markdown version of [this article](https://www.papermark.com/blog/best-ma-advisors-nashville) for AI agents and LLMs._
_More Papermark content: [llms.txt](https://www.papermark.com/llms.txt) · [full index](https://www.papermark.com/llms-full.txt)._