For principals who are ready to transact. One team. One agenda. Your outcome.
For principals who are ready to transact. Not preparing. Not exploring. Moving.
Cordis runs the full process — buyer identification and sequencing, approach strategy, negotiation, diligence coordination, and structure analysis. One team. One agenda. The founder's outcome.
The structural difference
Most transaction advisors are incentivized to close. Any close. Cordis is incentivized to produce the right outcome for the principal. Success fee basis. Principal-side only. No conflicts. No exceptions.
The lower-middle-market founder entering a sale process typically faces a structural disadvantage. The buyer arrives with a team, a model, a process playbook, and a set of levers specifically designed to close the gap between what the founder expects and what the buyer pays.
Cordis brings institutional-grade process management to the founder's side. The same rigor applied to a nine-figure transaction applied to the transaction most founders will only navigate once.
Not because the fee justifies it. Because the founder deserves it.
Cordis works on a success fee basis. The engagement is built around the principal's outcome — not the timeline, not the fee, not the close.
How Cordis runs a mandate
Phase 01
Full situational assessment. What exists, what the market will see, what needs to be addressed before any buyer engagement.
Phase 02
Identification and sequencing of the right buyer universe. Strategic, financial, hybrid. Ranked by fit, likelihood, and expected outcome.
Phase 03
Controlled approach strategy. Parallel buyer management. Information choreography designed to maximize competitive tension and founder leverage.
Phase 04
LOI negotiation, structure analysis, diligence coordination. Every element reviewed against the principal's actual economic interest — not the headline number.
Phase 05
Final documentation, closing coordination, and transition planning. The outcome the process was built around, protected through to the wire.
What the structure means in practice
Traditional transaction advisor
Incentivized to close. Any close. The fee arrives at signing regardless of how the earnout performs.
Buyer relationships maintained for future deal flow. The principal is one of many transactions.
Process optimized for speed and close rate. Post-LOI renegotiation is absorbed as a cost of doing business.
Structure analysis happens after the headline number is set. By then, the leverage is gone.
Cordis mandate
Incentivized around the principal's outcome. Success fee basis. If the outcome is wrong, the engagement is wrong.
No buyer relationships to protect. The only relationship that matters is the one with the principal.
Process built to prevent retrade. Every variable surfaced before the LOI. The buyer has nothing to surface in diligence that we have not already addressed.
Structure modeled before the process begins. The headline number and the net proceeds are two different conversations. We run both from the start.
If the process is already in motion or imminent, the conversation is different. That is a mandate conversation.