Essential Takeaways
- Different stages of a practice sale require different specialized skills.
- Buyer-side experience improves negotiation and positioning.
- Strong financial analysis reduces diligence risk and pricing erosion.
- Dedicated diligence support saves time and prevents costly errors.
- Team depth enables consistent execution across complex transactions.
Selling a veterinary practice is often a once-in-a-career event. Yet many owners evaluate brokers based on surface-level differences—personality fit, commission percentage, or valuation promises—without fully understanding which skills actually affect outcomes.
As advisory firms have become more common in veterinary medicine, the challenge for practice owners has shifted from whether to use a broker to how to distinguish between them.
The most important difference is not branding or claims—it is the depth, specialization, and relevance of the team supporting you throughout the process.
Transaction Experience: Understanding Buyers from the Inside
A strong broker doesn’t just know how to sell practices—they understand how buyers decide.
That distinction matters because veterinary transactions are driven by:
- Investor expectations
- Company-wide strategy
- Risk tolerance and investment return thresholds
- Internal approval processes
At Ackerman Group, the firm is led by professionals who previously served as CEO and Chief Development Officer of a veterinary platform for nearly a decade. That experience involved working directly with private equity sponsors, boards, and acquisition teams—not simply sourcing deals.
This perspective allows Ackerman’s team to:
- Anticipate buyer objections before they surface
- Frame opportunities in ways buyers actually evaluate
- Negotiate terms with a realistic understanding of internal buyer constraints
That experience is institutionalized through training across the firm, ensuring every client benefits—not just those working directly with leadership.
Financial Analysis: Seeing Your Practice the Way Buyers Do
Financial presentation is one of the most common places value is quietly lost.
Ackerman’s financial analysts have prior experience within buyer business development teams, where their job was to evaluate hospital financials, assess risk, and justify pricing internally. That background matters because it changes how information is prepared and defended.
For sellers, this means:
- Anticipating buyer questions before diligence begins
- Presenting financials in a way that withstands scrutiny
- Identifying issues early—before they become leverage against you
This is not about making numbers look better. It is about framing the numbers and the story in a positive and defensible manner, so buyers understand the context in the most beneficial manner.
Due Diligence Support: Reducing Burden and Preventing Mistakes
Diligence is one of the most time-consuming and stressful parts of a sale—and one where mistakes can have real consequences.
Ackerman maintains a dedicated, multi-person diligence support team whose role is to:
- Collect required data directly from practice systems
- Run standardized reports from practice management, accounting, and payroll platforms
- Reduce disruption to the owner and staff
Most brokerage firms rely on sellers to manage this process themselves. Dedicated diligence support is not a luxury—it reduces errors, speeds timelines, and lowers the risk of misunderstandings that can later affect value.
Why Team Depth Changes Outcomes
Most veterinary brokerage firms are built around one or two individuals. That model limits how much expertise can be applied at any given stage of the process.
Ackerman Group’s team consists of 19 veterinary industry professionals, each specializing in a specific phase of the transaction lifecycle. That depth allows the firm to:
- Apply the right expertise at the right moment
- Maintain continuity without burnout or bottlenecks
- Support multiple clients at a consistently high level
The result is not just scale—it is repeatable execution. In 2025 alone, Ackerman supported 50 hospital sales, reflecting both market trust and operational capability.
Why This Matters to You
Selling your practice is not a single decision—it is a sequence of decisions, analyses, negotiations, and follow-through moments. Each one carries risk.
The right broker brings more than relationships or enthusiasm. They bring specialized skills, coordinated execution, and the ability to protect value at every stage.
Reality Check: A Simple Credibility Test Most Sellers Never Think to Use
As part of your broker research, consider making one unexpected call—not to another seller, but to a buyer.
Ask a veterinary buyer you respect a simple question:
“If I were planning to sell my practice to one of your competitors, which broker would you want me to hire?”
Buyers see far more than sellers ever do. They know which brokers:
- Run professional, well-organized processes
- Present information clearly and credibly
- Have teams capable of handling complexity
- Reduce friction rather than create it
They also know which advisors lack depth, preparation, or consistency—because they experience it firsthand.
A broker’s reputation with buyers isn’t built on marketing claims. It’s built on the quality of the team that shows up, the rigor of the process, and the professionalism applied across dozens of transactions.
When buyers respect a broker’s team, it benefits sellers—even when negotiating against them.
Written by:
Win Lippincott works with veterinary practice owners on the decisions that shape their practices—both today and down the road. Much of his work involves helping owners strengthen performance, improve decision-making, and build healthier, more valuable businesses long before a sale is even considered.
When owners do begin thinking about a transition, Win helps them understand valuation, buyer behavior, and what actually matters in a sale process. His perspective comes from working side by side with owners and seeing how practices evolve over time, not just from observing transactions at the finish line.
He writes to make complex topics easier to understand, so owners can focus on running better practices now and making confident, informed decisions when the time comes. You can find him presenting on stage or walking the floor at VMX, WVC, AAHA Con, Insightful.vet, etc.
Win welcomes thoughtful questions and conversations—connect on LinkedIn or reach out through the Ackerman Group contact page.