What does a business broker do in Australia?

A business broker is a licensed agent who sells a business on the owner's behalf. The work runs from appraising the business and building the information pack, through advertising it without naming it, screening enquiries and gating what each buyer sees, to negotiating the offer and holding the deal together until settlement. A broker is not your accountant or your solicitor, and generally does not give tax advice — you engage those separately.

By the bizflip team · Published 3 September 2026 · Facts checked 3 September 2026 · Sources listed below

A business broker is a licensed agent who sells a business on its owner's behalf. In every Australian state and territory, doing that for a fee requires a licence — usually the same real estate or estate agent licence used to sell property, because the licensing Acts treat a business as another kind of thing an agent can be appointed to sell. Queensland's Property Occupations Act, for example, says in plain terms that a real estate agent licence authorises the holder to buy, sell and negotiate the sale of "businesses or interests in businesses", not only real property.

What that licence lets a broker do, and what the job looks like week to week, are two different questions. This page covers the second one.

Appraise the business and set an expectation

The first piece of work is a number. A broker normalises the last two to three years of earnings — adding back the owner's above-market or below-market wage, one-off costs, private vehicle use, a family member on the payroll who will not come with the sale — and applies a multiple drawn from what comparable businesses have actually sold for. The output is an appraisal, not a formal valuation, and the two are not interchangeable: a valuation for a bank, a family law matter or the tax office is a different document prepared to a different standard.

The Australian Institute of Business Brokers' code requires its members to support any appraisal or valuation with evidence, and to represent a business fairly by highlighting both its strengths and its weaknesses. A number produced to win the listing rather than to reflect the market is the single most common complaint owners make about brokers, and it is worth asking to see the comparable sales the figure rests on. Our guide to how much a business is worth sets out the arithmetic if you want to check the working yourself.

Build the information pack

Buyers do not buy from a listing. They buy from a document — the information memorandum, sometimes called an IM or a CIM — that explains what the business does, who its customers are, how it makes money, what the owner does day to day, and what the buyer would be taking on. Assembling it is the least glamorous and most useful thing a broker does, because it forces the seller's records into a form a stranger can assess.

Alongside the IM sits the document set the buyer's accountant and solicitor will ask for: profit and loss statements, balance sheets, tax returns and BAS, the lease, employee records, supplier and customer contracts, licences and permits. Our guide to the documents needed to sell a business lists them in full. A broker who starts gathering these after an offer arrives has left the hardest part until the moment it does the most damage.

Market the business without naming it

Almost every business sale is advertised anonymously. The listing describes the industry, the region, the turnover band and the earnings, but not the trading name or the exact address — because staff, customers, landlords, suppliers and competitors finding out that a business is for sale can damage it before it ever sells. Managing that tension is core broker work: enough detail to attract a genuine buyer, not enough to identify the business.

In practice this means writing the anonymous advertisement, placing it across the business-for-sale portals, running it past the broker's own buyer database, and handling the enquiries that come back. Under the AIBB code a member must not advertise a business without the seller's consent, and must have written instructions before acting at all.

Screen buyers and release information in stages

Most enquiries on a business listing are not buyers. They are competitors, tyre-kickers, and people who will never assemble the funds. Filtering them is where a broker earns a large part of the fee.

Business Queensland's advice to sellers is the standard sequence: do not share everything until you have researched and qualified the buyer, give them a ballpark figure and watch the reaction, ask politely about their financial capacity, and have them sign a non-disclosure agreement before you release confidential documents. A broker runs that sequence dozens of times per listing so the seller does not have to.

Information then comes out in tiers. The anonymous advertisement is public. The information memorandum and headline financials go to a buyer who has signed an NDA. Named customer contracts, supplier pricing and identified employee records wait until that buyer has made an offer and shown they can fund it. A staged, permissioned document set is how most brokers now administer those tiers, with access granted and withdrawn per buyer — our guide to how to sell a business in Australia sets the sequence out end to end.

Negotiate, and hold the deal together to settlement

Once an offer arrives the broker's role changes from marketing to deal management: relaying and testing offers, structuring price and terms — deposit, restraint of trade, handover period, any earn-out — and keeping both sides talking through due diligence, when the buyer's accountant starts finding things. Most business sales that fall over do so here, not at the offer stage.

The broker also coordinates the other parties: the seller's solicitor and accountant, the buyer's advisers, the landlord whose consent the lease transfer needs, the financier, and whoever is handling licence transfers. The AIBB code requires members to keep clients promptly informed of substantial developments and to provide a written plan setting out the sale strategy, process and expectations — which is a reasonable thing to ask for at the start regardless of whether your broker is a member.

What a broker does not do

They are not your solicitor. The sale contract, the lease assignment, the restraint of trade and the warranties are legal documents, and a broker preparing or advising on them is outside their lane. Engage a commercial solicitor separately.
They are not your accountant. Normalising earnings for a listing is not the same as advising on capital gains tax, the small business CGT concessions, GST on a going concern, or how the sale interacts with your superannuation and your retirement.
They generally do not give tax advice, and you should be wary of one who does. The tax treatment of selling the assets versus selling the shares of your company alone can move your after-tax proceeds substantially, and it turns on facts about your structure that a broker does not hold.
They do not guarantee a sale, or a price. A broker sells a business at what the market pays for it, and roughly speaking most listed small businesses do not sell at all.
They do not do the buyer's due diligence for them, or vouch for the accuracy of your figures. A broker who has done the job properly has verified material facts as far as is reasonable — the AIBB code requires that of members — but the buyer still checks.

Licensing, membership and what each one proves

A licence is legally required to act as an agent and take a fee. It is issued by a state or territory regulator, it can be checked on a public register in a few seconds, and it proves the holder met a training and character test — nothing more. Professional membership, of the Australian Institute of Business Brokers or anything else, is voluntary. It is not a licence and cannot substitute for one, though it does bind the member to a code of conduct with a complaints path. Our guide to what qualifications an Australian business broker should have sets out what each state actually requires.

What it costs, and the alternative

Broker fees in Australia are usually a commission on the sale price, often with a minimum, and sometimes with an upfront marketing or engagement fee on top. The detail — the ranges, the minimums, what is negotiable — is in our guide to business broker fees in Australia, and it belongs in that conversation before you sign an agency agreement, not after.

Whether you need one at all is a separate question. Selling a small, simple, owner-run business to a buyer you already know is a very different task from taking a $3 million business to market confidentially, and the answer differs accordingly — see do I need a business broker and how to sell a business without a broker.

Before your first broker meeting, it is worth having your own number. bizflip's valuation calculator is free and its methodology is published, so you can see how the figure was built rather than being handed one.

Sources

Every load-bearing claim in this guide, and where it comes from:

A Queensland real estate agent licence authorises the holder to "buy, sell (other than by auction), exchange, or let businesses or interests in businesses" and "to negotiate for the buying, selling, exchanging, or letting" of them, as an agent for others for reward. — Queensland Legislation — Property Occupations Act 2014, s 26
Queensland real estate agents may "buy, sell, exchange or rent houses, businesses, land or any interest in these" and "negotiate on behalf of a buyer, seller, landlord"; eligibility requires being 18 or older and passing the required training courses. — Queensland Government (Office of Fair Trading)
The AIBB Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct requires members to hold written instructions from clients before engaging in selling or buying a business, to provide a written plan outlining sale strategy, process and expectations, to keep clients promptly informed of substantial developments, to take reasonable steps to investigate and verify material facts, to support any appraisal or valuation with evidence, to represent businesses fairly by highlighting both strengths and weaknesses, not to advertise a business without the seller's consent, and to maintain current professional indemnity and public liability insurance. — Australian Institute of Business Brokers (AIBB)
Business Queensland advises sellers to ask a potential buyer to sign a non-disclosure agreement before sharing confidential documents, not to share all information until the buyer has been researched and qualified, to give a ballpark figure and assess the reaction, and to ask about the buyer's financial ability to acquire the business. — Business Queensland
business.gov.au guidance on selling a business, including getting professional advice from an accountant, solicitor or business adviser before and during a sale. — business.gov.au (Australian Government)
In NSW, exclusive agency entitles the agent to commission regardless of who finds the buyer, while sole agency exempts the seller if they find the buyer themselves — the agency agreement is where a broker's authority and entitlement are set. — NSW Government (Fair Trading)

Ready for your own number? The valuation calculator is free and ungated, and its methodology is public.