Selling privately is a real and common choice, particularly where the buyer is already known, and the honest way to decide is to look at what you are taking on rather than at what you are saving. A broker does four jobs. Doing them yourself is entirely possible and costs time rather than commission. Where owners get into difficulty is not realising that all four still have to happen, and discovering the third one late, after something has already been shared.
Finding and screening buyers
Buyers come from a short list you can usually write yourself: competitors, suppliers, customers, managers, and people who have approached you before. Screening is the part that consumes time. Somebody who will not say who they are, or what they have bought before, or how it would be funded, is not yet a buyer, and a private seller has to be comfortable asking.
Protecting what you disclose, in stages
The practical discipline is staging: a general description first, specifics only after a confidentiality agreement, and the most sensitive material only when there are heads of terms. Owners selling privately are the most exposed to getting this wrong, because there is no intermediary imposing the order. What the agreement should say is your solicitor's; the staging is yours.
Running the process to a finish
Keeping momentum, chasing the buyer's advisers, holding the timetable, and tracking what has been asked and provided. This is the least glamorous job and the one whose absence most often kills a private sale, because with nobody whose job it is to chase, weeks pass in which nothing happens and both sides assume the other is busy. The compensating advantage is that a private seller controls the pace and hears everything first-hand, with no intermediary deciding what is worth passing on. Owners who enjoy the process usually cite that; owners who regret it usually cite the chasing.
Questions people ask about how to sell a business privately
Do I still need a solicitor if I sell privately?
For the documents, essentially always. Private here means without a broker finding the buyer, not without professional advice on what you are signing.
How do I know if the price is right without a broker?
That is a valuation question and it belongs to a valuer or your accountant. This site does not value businesses and says so throughout.
What is the most common private-sale mistake?
Sharing detailed information early with somebody who turns out not to be a buyer. Staging disclosure costs nothing and is the protection most easily skipped when somebody sounds keen.