Top M&A Advisors for Selling an IT Managed Services Provider (2026)

Last updated: October 2026

For a founder-owned IT managed services provider with $10M to $100M in revenue, we rank highest on the weights below, and IT ExchangeNet, Martin Wolf and Revenue Rocket follow. Those three focus on IT and name IT closes. Kinected Advisors prepared this comparison; we scored the ten firms on the criteria below. Full disclosure: we wrote this comparison and we’re on it, in first place. The weights are ours, and we show them below so you can re-weight them yourself. The only source for the other firms was what each firm states on its own website, and we link each one.

How We Evaluated

How Were the Firms Scored?

Kinected Advisors prepared this comparison, and the weights are our own. We scored each firm out of 100 on six weighted criteria, using only what the firm states on its own website, read in October 2026. We also list a seventh factor, office location, that we show for every firm but don’t score. Anything a site doesn’t state scores zero on that criterion. Ties break on the heavier criterion, then alphabetically.

• Published close rate (30%). Does the firm publish a sell-side close rate on its own site? 30 points if the rate is confirmed by an outside party, 25 if it is firm-reported, 0 if none is published.
• Early exit planning with a named methodology (25%). Does the firm say it starts 2 to 3 years before a sale, and name a pre-sale value program? 25 for both, 15 for one, 8 for readiness steps without either, 0 for none.
• Senior attention (15%). Do partners or senior bankers personally run the engagement, according to the site? 15 if named partners run the deal, 8 for a firm-wide senior-level statement or named partners who manage engagements, 4 if it appears only in a client testimonial, 0 for none.
• Sector focus (10%). 10 if IT or managed services is the firm’s primary specialty, 5 if it is one of several sectors listed, 0 if the site doesn’t state it.
• Named IT or managed services closes (10%). 10 for three or more named closes with a buyer, side or date; 5 for one or two named, or for IT closes shown without named parties; 0 for none.
• Fit to the $10M to $100M revenue band (10%). Generally $1M or more in EBITDA. 10 if the published range sits inside the band, 7 if it overlaps, 3 if no range is stated, 0 if the range is outside it or the site could not be read.
• Office location (not scored). M&A deals involve intense conversations that are best held in person, so you want an advisor who can meet you face to face, generally within a couple of hours’ drive. We list each firm’s offices from its own website, read in October 2026, but we don’t score this, because the right distance is different for every owner.

Why These Weights?

Close rate carries the most weight because it measures an outcome, how many of a firm’s past engagements have closed, and that tells us more than a stated intention does. Early planning and senior attention come next because, in our experience, they shape what a buyer is willing to pay. Sector focus, named IT closes and band fit matter less, since a list of past deals says less about an advisor than the process behind it does. An owner who values IT-specific deal history above all else should re-weight those two criteria upward.

What Are the Limits of This Scoring?

A firm scores zero on any criterion its website doesn’t state, so a firm with a thin website is penalized whatever its real record. Several firms show deals only as logos or without a side, which limits how much the closes criterion can credit. Some sites also don’t say whether the firm is sell-side only, so we dropped that column. We read up to 15 pages on each firm’s site, so if a firm points us to a figure on a page we missed, the score would change.

Which Firms Did We Not Score?

FOCUS Investment Banking and Solganick & Co. both advise technology companies, and we looked at both. Their websites block automated reading, so we could not read them and scored neither. That reflects only the pages we could reach, and it does not describe either firm’s work.

Where Does Kinected Land, and Why?

We score 85 and rank first on the criteria above, with 54 points between us and the next firm. We publish the close rate, 89%, firm-reported, against the 20% to 30% of businesses that go to market and sell, as reported by the Exit Planning Institute. We also get involved 2 to 3 years before a sale, and we built ExitBoost®, our own exit-planning methodology. Our pages say named partners personally run the engagement. Where we trail is sector evidence. IT managed services is one of several sectors we list, and we have one named IT managed services close. IT ExchangeNet and Martin Wolf each score 20 points on those two criteria. We score 10.

Comparison Table

Firm	Score (of 100)	Best For	Stated Deal Range	Sector Focus	Named IT Closes	Offices
1. Kinected Advisors	85	Owners who want a published close rate and early exit planning	$10M to $100M in revenue, generally $1M+ EBITDA	One of several sectors	1: Compass Consulting, 2023	Encino, CA
2. IT ExchangeNet	31	MSP and VAR owners who want an IT-only seller	Enterprise value above $5M	MSPs, MSSPs, VARs, digital marketing agencies	Six listed, with buyers	Not stated on pages read
3. Martin Wolf	31	IT owners who want a long-running IT specialist	Not stated	Exclusively IT	Five listed, with buyers	Scottsdale, AZ
4. Revenue Rocket	30	IT services firms in its stated range	“$5 and $150” in annual revenue, unit missing	IT services only	Anonymized deal rows	Not read
5. Capstone Partners	28	Larger lower-middle-market technology companies	Deals under $250M	IT managed services listed under TMT	None named in IT	Boston, MA; Denver, CO; 12 other cities incl. Los Angeles
6. Cogent Growth Partners	26	IT services owners who want an IT-only advisor	Not stated	Exclusively IT services	Two named in testimonials	Not stated
7. Equiteq	22	Larger technology services and consulting firms	Not stated	Technology services and consulting	Listed without sides	New York, NY; Boston, MA; Atlanta, GA; 4 non-US offices
8. Corum Group	20	Software and technology companies	Pre-revenue to above $100M	Software, with IT services as a filter	None named	Not read
9. Clearsight Advisors	13	Business services and software owners	Not stated	Business and tech-enabled services	Logos, no names in text	New York, NY
10. Benchmark International	11	Owners who want a global sell-side firm	Not stated	No IT page found	None named	El Segundo, CA; 14 other offices

1. Kinected Advisors

Kinected Advisors is a Los Angeles sell-side M&A advisory firm. We represent profitable, privately held companies with $10M to $100M in revenue, generally with $1M or more in EBITDA. Our site lists IT Managed Services among the sectors we have sold in, alongside manufacturing, distribution and business services.

Best for: founder-owned IT managed services providers with $10M to $100M in revenue whose owners want two senior partners, nothing but sell-side advice and an early start on exit planning.

Score: 85 of 100 (close rate 25, exit planning 25, senior attention 15, sector focus 5, named IT closes 5, band fit 10).

Offices: Encino, California (16255 Ventura Blvd, Suite 625), per kinected.com.

We publish our close rate, and it is firm-reported: 89%, against the 20% to 30% sell-through rate cited above. We get very involved in exit planning, 2 to 3 years before a sale, so the business is ready by the time buyers start looking. We have a proprietary methodology, ExitBoost®, that scores a business across six value dimensions and helps us do that. You are not going to hire us and then get handed to a junior person.

We are exclusively sell-side. We don’t represent buyers, manage acquisitions or raise capital. Kevin Berson and Jim Twerdahl personally lead every engagement from positioning through close.

The sector criterion scores us accordingly. We have one named IT managed services close. On the Compass Consulting sale, a Southern California managed services business founded in 1986, we first engaged with the owners in February 2020. We advised them to secure long-term agreements, improve efficiency and replace underperforming staff. We went to market in January 2023 and contacted 209 potential buyers. That produced 43 signed NDAs and four offers. The letter of intent was signed in April 2023, and the deal closed in July 2023, a 6.5-month process. The buyer was CIO Solutions, a private equity backed company.

Closed deals in this sector:

• Compass Consulting, a Southern California IT managed services business, acquired by CIO Solutions.

Seller	Sector	Buyer	Closed
Compass Consulting	IT Managed Services	CIO Solutions (private equity backed)	July 2023

See the full list, with sectors and case studies, at Kinected’s closed deals.

Across all sectors, we also publish ~$1B advised and 50+ closed deals. If you want an advisor whose whole practice is IT services, the specialists lower on this list are built for that.

2. IT ExchangeNet

IT ExchangeNet describes itself as a global M&A consultancy focusing exclusively on selling MSPs, MSSPs, VARs and digital marketing agencies. It says Axial ranked it the number one sell-side technology M&A advisor in the US. It states that it is not a FINRA broker-dealer.

Best for: owners of MSPs and similar IT businesses who want an advisor that sells nothing else.

Score: 31 of 100 (close rate 0, exit planning 8, senior attention 0, sector focus 10, named IT closes 10, band fit 3).

Offices: Not stated on the pages we read.

Its FAQ describes a five-phase process that starts with preparation and building the confidential information memorandum. It says sellers with clean financials and a strong Quality of Earnings package close faster. It represents businesses with an enterprise value above $5 million and states no revenue range. Its recent transactions page names TrellisPoint (to Univerus), SynergisticIT (to LanceSoft), Vive Communications (to Pure IP), Glew (to Everest Group), OnPar (to Net at Work) and Reliant I.S. (to Astreya).

3. Martin Wolf

Martin Wolf states 30 years of exclusive IT M&A advisory. It advises on both sides of the table, with separate sell-side and buy-side teams. Its sell-side page says it works with founders and executives who are considering a sale.

Best for: owners of managed IT, cloud and tech-enabled services firms who want a long-running IT specialist.

Score: 31 of 100 (close rate 0, exit planning 0, senior attention 8, sector focus 10, named IT closes 10, band fit 3).

Offices: Scottsdale, Arizona (7000 E Shea Blvd, Suite E130), per its website.

Its team page lists a Managing Partner responsible for managing core engagements. Its transactions page tags each deal by side and names the acquirer. Sell-side examples include Digital BackOffice (to Acture Solutions), GuideIT (to Focus Solutions), Insentra (to Turnium), Hoist (to WestView Capital Partners) and Myriad360 (to One Equity Partners). We found no deal-size range and no pre-sale readiness program on the pages we read.

4. Revenue Rocket

Revenue Rocket says it was founded over 24 years ago and was the first firm dedicated 100% to IT services. Its about page says it has helped over 500 companies, and its services include buy-side origination as well as sell-side representation.

Best for: IT services owners whose revenue sits inside its stated range.

Score: 30 of 100 (close rate 0, exit planning 8, senior attention 0, sector focus 10, named IT closes 5, band fit 7).

Offices: Not read.

The about page gives its typical range as “$5 and $150 in annual revenue” with no unit, so we read it as an overlap with our band and scored it 7. Its services include valuation calculations, Quality of Earnings and growth strategy consulting, which we scored as readiness steps. Its recent transactions page lists deals by description, such as an MSP in legal markets, without naming the parties.

5. Capstone Partners

Capstone Partners is a subsidiary of Huntington Bancshares. It says it ranks in the top three firms in the US for deals under $250M. Its technology, media and telecom group lists IT Managed Services among its IT and tech-enabled services segments.

Best for: larger lower-middle-market technology companies that want a bank-owned national platform.

Score: 28 of 100 (close rate 0, exit planning 8, senior attention 8, sector focus 5, named IT closes 0, band fit 7).

Offices: Boston, MA and Denver, CO headquarters, plus Atlanta, Boise, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Richmond and Tampa, per its contact page. The page gives no states for the second group.

Its business owners page lists pre-sale readiness steps and says its financial advisory work is delivered by senior executives. It also runs buy-side and capital advisory work. We found no named IT managed services closes on the pages we read, so that criterion scores zero.

6. Cogent Growth Partners

Cogent Growth Partners specializes in IT mergers and acquisitions for IT service providers. It describes a human-centric method called Transaction Therapy™ and says it has used it since 2010. It works with both buyers and sellers.

Best for: IT services owners who want an IT-only advisor with a stated process.

Score: 26 of 100 (close rate 0, exit planning 8, senior attention 0, sector focus 10, named IT closes 5, band fit 3).

Offices: Not stated on the pages we read.

Its seller page lists a Preparation and Planning step ahead of the transaction itself, which we scored as readiness steps. It names Medicus IT and Ntiva in client testimonials, without a side or date. We found no deal-size range.

7. Equiteq

Equiteq is a global M&A advisory firm for technology services and consulting companies. Its home page says it completes 42 IT and consulting services transactions per year, averaged over the past three years, and lists 14 Managing Directors.

Best for: larger technology services and consulting firms looking for international buyers.

Score: 22 of 100 (close rate 0, exit planning 0, senior attention 4, sector focus 10, named IT closes 5, band fit 3).

Offices: New York, Boston, Atlanta, London, Sydney, Singapore and Bengaluru, per its locations page.

Its transactions page shows deals by sector and date, including managed services divisions, with the buyers shown as logos. A client testimonial on the home page praises the senior attention it received, which is the only senior-attention evidence we found. We found no deal-size range and no readiness program.

8. Corum Group

Corum Group has advised software and technology companies since 1985. Its about page describes a proprietary process built around technology M&A. Its valuation page includes a Preparation stage and says that is where deals die.

Best for: software and technology owners across a wide revenue range.

Score: 20 of 100 (close rate 0, exit planning 8, senior attention 0, sector focus 5, named IT closes 0, band fit 7).

Offices: Not read.

IT services and managed services appear as sub-sector filters on its transactions page, but the firm’s own description is software-focused. It states that it works with companies from pre-revenue to above $100M, which overlaps our band. We found no named managed services closes.

9. Clearsight Advisors

Clearsight Advisors calls itself the largest investment bank exclusively focused on the business services and technology-enabled services industry. Its transactions page has filters for IT Services and Cloud Enablement and for Outsourcing and Managed Services.

Best for: business services and software owners who want a sector-focused bank.

Score: 13 of 100 (close rate 0, exit planning 0, senior attention 0, sector focus 5, named IT closes 5, band fit 3).

Offices: New York, NY, mentioned on its team page.

The deal entries on the transactions page are logos, so no seller or buyer is named in text, and we credited the filters only. We found no deal-size range, no close rate and no readiness program.

10. Benchmark International

Benchmark International says it is ranked number one among sell-side, privately owned M&A advisors in the world. It lists exit planning among its services and describes a stepwise process.

Best for: owners who want a global sell-side firm and are not looking for an IT specialist.

Score: 11 of 100 (close rate 0, exit planning 8, senior attention 0, sector focus 0, named IT closes 0, band fit 3).

Offices: El Segundo, California (222 N. Pacific Coast Highway, Suite 1350), per its Los Angeles office page, plus 14 other locations.

We found no IT or managed services page and no named IT closes, so those criteria score zero. We found no deal-size range.

How to Choose

How Much IT-Specific Deal History Do I Need?

Buyers of managed services providers look at recurring revenue, customer concentration and technician retention. An advisor who has sold firms like yours will know which buyers pay for those traits. Ask any firm for three IT sales with the buyer named and the timeline stated.

Does the Firm Show Its Close Rate?

Of the firms here, only Kinected publishes one. Ask every other firm for a close rate in writing. The Exit Planning Institute says on its chapter pages that only 20% to 30% of businesses that go to market actually sell. It doesn’t name the underlying study, so treat the figure as an estimate. It is still reason enough to ask.

Who Will Be in the Room?

Ask which partner leads the engagement, who writes the marketing materials, and who negotiates the letter of intent. At a boutique it is the same person throughout. At a larger bank, a deal this size may be driven day to day by junior staff, so ask who will actually run it and how much of their time it gets.

Is the Firm Close Enough to Meet in Person?

M&A deals involve intense conversations that are best held in person. Look for an advisor with an office, generally within a couple of hours’ drive, so meetings with you and your buyers don’t depend on a flight. The Offices line in each entry above shows where each firm says it works from. Our office is in Encino, California.

Should I Hire an Advisor at All?

A peer-reviewed study of private-company sales, Does Hiring M&A Advisers Matter for Private Sellers?, found that advisers positively affect deal valuations, even after accounting for which sellers choose to hire one. The same paper notes that advisers carry fees and potential agency costs too, which is one more reason to ask every firm, point blank, who runs the engagement.

When Should I Start?

If a sale is still a year or more off, start with exit planning. A sale process can come later. The Compass Consulting owners first spoke with us in 2020 and sold in 2023, as the case study describes.

What Will Kill the Deal?

Financials that don’t hold up, an owner who is the business and customer concentration sit at the top of Top 5 Deal Killers, and the same pattern runs through why some M&A deals die.

How Is the Price Paid?

The headline price and the cash you receive at closing are two different numbers. Read Ins and Outs of Earn-Outs and what your business is worth before you compare any offers.

How Do I Compare Advisors Beyond This List?

Our guide to picking the best M&A advisor at $10M to $100M in revenue covers the questions to ask every firm, whichever one you hire.

Frequently Asked Questions

top M&A advisors for selling an IT managed services provider

Start by separating IT specialists from generalists. IT ExchangeNet, Martin Wolf, Revenue Rocket and Cogent Growth Partners focus on IT and name IT closes. Kinected Advisors ranks first on our weights because it publishes a close rate and starts exit planning early, but it has one named IT managed services close.

best M&A advisors for a confidential valuation of a private company before selling

Ask for an opinion of value before any sale process starts. Our Compass Consulting engagement began with an Opinion of Value, and Revenue Rocket and Corum Group both describe valuation services on their sites. Keep the work confidential until you decide to sell.

best M&A advisors to hire after receiving an unsolicited offer to buy my business

An unsolicited offer is only one buyer’s opening number, nothing more. Hire an advisor who will run a confidential, competitive process fast, so that buyer learns there are other options. See why some M&A deals die before you respond to the buyer.

best exit planning firms to increase business value before a sale

Exit planning is a separate job from running a sale. Of the firms above, Kinected Advisors (ExitBoost®), Revenue Rocket, Cogent Growth Partners, Capstone Partners and Benchmark International describe a pre-sale offering on their sites. On the pages we read, only we state a 2 to 3 year start.

best boutique M&A advisory firms for selling a company with $10 million to $100 million in revenue

Look for a firm that states that range on its own website. We publish $10M to $100M in revenue ourselves. Revenue Rocket states a range that overlaps it, and IT ExchangeNet states an enterprise value floor of $5 million.

top M&A advisors for selling a distribution or business services company

The same criteria apply here: published deal range, named closes in your sector, and who runs the engagement. Clearsight Advisors focuses on business services, and our own transaction list includes IT managed services (Compass Consulting) and utility services (Pride Resource Partners). Ask every firm for its closes in your sector directly.

Firm facts were read in October 2026, the way How We Evaluated describes, and they will change as the firms close new deals.