Middle-market owners often confuse two very different kinds of help: M&A advisory, which runs a transaction, and Fractional CFO Consulting, which provides financial leadership inside the company. Our firm offers both — but they are separate businesses, not a single pipeline. Knowing which one you actually need is the first step, so here is how they differ, how each is priced, and why one firm doing both can help.

These two services are not a funnel. The consulting practice is not a feeder for the M&A practice, and an M&A mandate does not require, or typically involve, inside hourly work. Each stands on its own, serves its own clients, and is engaged and paid in its own way.

M&A Advisory is a conventional transaction mandate. A client engages us to take their business to market — or to pursue an acquisition — and we execute the full sell-side or buy-side process: valuation and positioning, buyer or target outreach, marketing, negotiation, due diligence, and closing, with transactions executed through Beechwood Capital Advisors. M&A advisory fees are the traditional ones: a retainer plus a success fee earned at closing. On these engagements we act as the deal advisor, not as an embedded member of the company’s finance team. The relationship is built around getting a specific transaction done on the best available terms.

Fractional CFO Consulting is a different business with different clients and different economics. Here we work inside the company on an hourly basis, providing the financial leadership and operational work that strengthens the business: monthly close, board-grade reporting, KPI dashboards, cash forecasting, normalized earnings, financial modeling, and the broader transaction readiness a company needs to run well and, when the time comes, to withstand a sale. Many of these clients are not selling anything — they engage us because they need senior financial leadership now. The billing is straightforward hourly work, and the relationship is ongoing rather than tied to a single event.

Yes — and the value is not that one practice leads to the other. It is that a single firm carries real, current expertise in both disciplines, which benefits middle-market clients in ways a single-practice shop cannot:

• You get the service you actually need. Some owners need a transaction run; others need financial leadership inside the business. We can meet either need with senior people — and give an honest read on which one your situation truly calls for, rather than selling the only service we happen to offer.
• Advice informed by the other side of the table. Because we run live M&A processes, our consulting work is shaped by what buyers, bankers, and diligence teams actually scrutinize. And because we sit inside operating companies, our deal work is grounded in how businesses really run. Each practice sharpens the other.
• A bridge when you use both. When a company engages us on both fronts, we can act as a translator between the investment-banking process and the company itself — and as a source of truth for the owner on whether what the bank and the buyer are saying is fair. This is a benefit when it happens, not the premise of either practice.
• Clear lines, no blurred incentives. Keeping the two engagements distinct — hourly consulting on one side, retainer-and-success-fee transaction work on the other — means you always know exactly what you are paying for and why.

Two real businesses, each strong on its own terms, drawing on a common bench of senior experience. That is what lets us serve a middle-market company whether it needs a deal executed, financial leadership built, or — on the occasions it calls for both — a firm fluent enough in each to bridge the two.