A SaaS broker is being hired for two things a generalist cannot do: present recurring revenue in a form institutional buyers accept, and reach the buyers who purchase software rather than businesses. A firm that cannot explain net revenue retention to you should not be explaining it on your behalf.
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How the metrics should be presented
Recurring revenue with its growth rate, gross and net retention, cohort behavior, contract length and concentration, and acquisition cost against lifetime value. All reconciled to the billing system and to the bank. A broker who presents a spreadsheet no buyer can tie back to source data is creating a diligence problem rather than avoiding one.
Reaching software buyers
Strategic acquirers and software focused funds buy from lists they maintain; individual buyers use the online marketplaces. A firm that reaches only one of those groups is offering half the market. Ask how many software transactions they closed in the last two years and with which kinds of buyer.
What the market publishes
Unusually for this trade, the online marketplaces publish their fees. The published US figures on this site run from 5% to 15% depending on price band and how much of the process the platform runs, which makes them the only part of this market a seller can price before making contact.
Questions people ask about SaaS business broker
Do I need a specialist SaaS broker?
For anything reaching institutional buyers, yes. At the smaller end the marketplaces reach the individual buyers who dominate that segment and cost far less.
What will diligence focus on?
Revenue quality and technical risk: retention, concentration, code and dependencies, security history, and whether one developer is the only person who understands the system.
Should I fix churn before selling?
If you can, yes. Retention moves the multiple, so a year of work on it is usually worth more than the same year of revenue growth.