Selling a business involves two separate costs. A marketing fee, paid upfront, and a commission, paid on settlement. Understanding why both exist, what each one covers and the value each provides makes the whole process far less confusing.

This guide breaks down exactly what you’ll pay, what that payment covers, and why the structure works the way it does.

Two Fees, Two Different Jobs

A marketing fee and a commission aren’t the same cost split into two payments. They fund two entirely different things.

The marketing fee pays for the work required to bring your business to market properly, regardless of whether it sells this month, this year, or at all. The commission pays for the result: a completed sale, at the best achievable price, through a properly negotiated deal. One is a service fee. The other is a success fee. Both are standard practice across the industry.

Why the Marketing Fee Exists, and Why It’s Paid Upfront

A marketing appraisal, listing preparation, confidential advertising, and buyer screening all cost real money, whether a buyer appears in week one or month six.

This is precisely why brokers don’t fold marketing costs into commission or offer to cover them personally. An agent who fronts these costs out of their own pocket, then only recoups them if a sale happens, faces a genuine conflict: their financial pressure starts working against your interests, not for them. A rushed sale to whoever appears first covers their costs faster than a properly run campaign that finds the right buyer at the right price. Real estate law reflects exactly this concern.

Agents are legally prohibited from making a secret profit from advertising, and marketing offered as “free” but recovered elsewhere can breach Australian Consumer Law if it isn’t disclosed properly. A transparent, upfront marketing fee avoids all of that. You know exactly what you’re paying for, and your broker’s incentives stay aligned with getting the sale right, not just getting it done.

What the Marketing Fee Actually Covers

This fee typically includes a market appraisal, preparation of marketing material, confidential advertising across buyer networks, buyer screening and qualification, and coordinating inspections. In Queensland, it also generally includes preparing the Contract of Sale, since brokers here commonly complete this using approved industry forms. In NSW and Victoria, contract preparation is usually handled separately by the seller’s solicitor or conveyancer, so it’s worth confirming this detail with your broker directly.

Every one of these tasks happens whether or not a buyer eventually signs. That’s the point. It’s compensation for genuine, delivered work, not a bet on an outcome.

Why Commission Is Worth Paying

Commission only gets paid if your business actually sells. This changes everything about how your broker behaves.

A broker’s commission is calculated as a percentage of your final sale price. That means every dollar they negotiate onto your price is a dollar in their own interest too. There’s no scenario where a good broker benefits from underselling your business, walking away from a stronger offer, or rushing a deal that isn’t right. Their financial outcome and yours move together, all the way through negotiation.

Compare that to selling privately. Research consistently shows business owners who sell without professional representation often undervalue their business, negotiate against a far more experienced buyer, or unintentionally leak confidentiality mid-process. Any single one of those mistakes routinely costs more than the commission itself would have. Commission isn’t a cost layered on top of your sale. It’s the mechanism that gets you a stronger sale in the first place.

Typical Commission Ranges

Commission percentages generally scale down as sale price increases, reflecting deal size rather than effort alone.

These are indicative industry ranges. Every brokerage sets its own structure, and the right figure depends on your business, industry, and the scope of work involved.

Business Broker Fees vs M&A and Corporate Advisory Fees

Larger, more complex transactions often move into M&A or corporate advisory territory, where the fee structure looks different again.

M&A firms commonly charge a retainer, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars, paid regardless of outcome, plus a success fee typically ranging from 2% to 6% of deal value. For a $20 million-plus transaction, this can work out cheaper in percentage terms than a broker’s commission.

M&A firms are built for large, complex, multi-party deals. Brokers are built for the volume of small and medium business sales that make up most of the Australian market. Some brokers operate in the cross-over layer between the two, attracting buyers from both the SME market and private equity space, and are worth asking directly whether they can offer a sliding scale for larger transactions. Matching the right structure to your business size matters more than chasing the lowest headline percentage.

Questions Worth Asking Any Broker

• What is the exact commission percentage, and does it scale with sale price?
• What specific services does the marketing fee cover?
• Is contract preparation included, and by whom?
• How long does the listing agreement run, and how does it end?
• Does the commission structure change if you introduce your own buyer?

Where Gold Coast Business Brokers Fits

We’ve structured our fees around one principle: you shouldn’t pay more than the work justifies, and we shouldn’t get paid unless your business actually sells. With offices on the Gold Coast, in Brisbane, and in Melbourne, we’ve guided thousands of business owners through this exact process, connecting them with genuine buyers across Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria.

If you’re weighing up what a broker’s fee should look like for your specific business, we’ll sit down with you and shape a fee structure around what actually works for your sale.