Most people assume selling a company is the CEO’s job. And strategically, it is.
But operationally, it lands on the COO.
While leadership is focused on the headline number, you are the one keeping the business running, customers happy, and the team intact while buyers pick apart everything you built. The advisor your company chooses will either make that manageable or make it significantly harder.
This is exactly the problem STS Capital Partners was built to solve.
STS is a global sell-side M&A firm that that guides private, founder, and entrepreneurial business owners to achieve an Extraordinary Exit™ by Selling to Strategics™. They represent companies with annual revenues between $50M and $2B, and their process is built around one core belief: protecting execution during a transaction is just as important as maximizing the outcome.
What STS Actually Does Differently
Most M&A advisors are focused on closing. STS is focused on what the business looks like after close.
They run every engagement through an Owner’s Outcomes Exercise that aligns strategic, financial, and operational priorities early, before final terms are anywhere near the table. That means post-close realities, cultural fit, leadership continuity, and operational clarity are part of the conversation from the start, not an afterthought.
And because STS is industry-agnostic by design, they bring cross-sector pattern recognition that helps position the business in front of a wider, more competitive buyer pool, often surfacing value that a narrower specialist would miss.
Network and resources: access to the right buyers
A strong network isn’t about how many buyers get a call. It’s about getting in front of the right strategic buyers.
For COOs, the quality of the buyer pool matters a lot. It shapes integration risk, operating autonomy, and what the business actually looks like post-close.
STS has a global network of Fortune 500 companies and strategic acquirers who genuinely value operational excellence. That reach comes from:
• A global team of Managing Directors and Advisors aligned through success-based incentives
• A proprietary database of 1,300+ acquisition and investment profiles
• Relationships inside senior executive and board-level organizations
That network lets STS position businesses in front of buyers who understand complexity, respect execution, and are ready to move decisively.
What This Means for the COO
During a sale process, your job does not change. The business still has to perform. Customers still have to be served. The team still has to stay engaged.
STS structures the process so that leadership can stay focused on operations while they manage the complexity in the background. They control information flow, pace due diligence intelligently, and keep the noise out of the building.
As Ross Toohey, Managing Director at STS, puts it: the right advisor brings structure, discipline, and clarity, which lets leadership move through the complexity without sacrificing execution.
For COOs, a successful transaction isn’t defined at close. It’s defined by what the business looks like six, twelve, and twenty-four months later. Cultural alignment, leadership continuity, and operational clarity. That’s what determines whether this thing actually works.
Bottom Line
By helping the CEO select the right M&A advisor, the COO can shape not just the outcome of the transaction, but the health of the business throughout the entire process.
The right partner protects execution while the business is being scrutinized and shapes the outcome long before the final number is on the table.
The right partner protects execution while the business is being scrutinized and shapes the outcome long before the final number is on the table.
If you are a COO or operator preparing for a transaction and want to understand what a disciplined, operator-respectful sale process looks like, connect with Ross Toohey and the STS Capital Partners team. Start the conversation here.
We are proud to have STS Capital Partners as a Silver Partner of the COO Alliance.
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