What happens when you sell your company? How do you decide on the right buyer? We sat down with Josh Bernstein, Orion Head of Sourcing, to answer common questions business owners have when making one of the biggest decisions of their careers.
My team and I build relationships with business owners across the commercial HVAC/R, landscaping, and facilities maintenance industries. We spend time understanding their goals, then partner with them to explore whether Orion can help them achieve those goals– whether that's growing their business, succession planning, or ensuring their legacy thrives into the future.
We prioritize meeting you in-person early on to build genuine trust and alignment before any decisions are made. We’ll ask for some light data – financial statements and an invoice register – to better understand your company’s health and growth trajectory.
Once we receive your information and mutually agree there’s a good fit, we’ll work closely with you to determine a valuation that truly reflects what you’ve built. Typically, you'll have an offer in hand within two weeks of our initial conversation. From there, we complete the sale within 45 to 60 days, using that time for careful due diligence with accounting, legal, and tax experts to ensure fairness for everyone involved.
We strive to live up to three promises in any partnership. First, we take care of you as the owner. Second, we take care of your people by investing in their growth. Third, we take care of your customers by maintaining or improving service quality.
For you as the owner, we prioritize the vision of growth you have for your company. We value the legacy you’ve built and don’t want that to take a hit.
Your people are joining an organization that prioritizes training and internal promotions. Our Leadership Development Program is designed to provide top industry talent with the management skills they need to become company leaders. Many of our presidents have gone through the program and were promoted from within their businesses.
Lastly, we are connecting the best field service providers in the industry through our partnerships. We host events designed to bring together professionals at every level of leadership, from presidents to the field, to share best practices so we can win together.
We’ve worked with over 50 business owners; I can put you on the phone with them so you can ask that question directly. Responses from sellers we’ve partnered with are one of the things that give me the most conviction in what we’re building.
They would probably tell you there have been rough patches, but if there’s one thing we’ve done right, it’s taking care of their people. We invest so heavily in learning and development because we’ve seen how it enables us to place excellent people in careers and leadership roles they would have never imagined for themselves.
We ask you. We’re here to learn from you, to hear what the pain points in growing your business have been, and to understand how we can launch your plan for growth. Because you know your business best, we’re primarily here to share what we’ve learned from our partnerships with dozens of the nation’s best service providers.
A partnership with Orion brings exciting growth opportunities – both for the company in terms of resources for growth and for individual team members looking to grow in their careers. We’ll work with you to communicate this clearly and effectively. We’re very intentional about having leaders from our team who will be working closely with your business physically with you and your company during the announcement.
We know how important this transition is. We focus on change management so that you can comfortably exit your business knowing your team will be taken care of. When finding your replacement, we prefer to promote from within your business since your people know your customers and operations best. If that succession plan doesn’t exist, we work with you to hire a driven leader with a proven track record of growing businesses.
We’ve backed existing presidents who are excited to continue growing, and we’ve also shifted sellers into advisory or commercial roles. It all depends on the role and level of involvement that would excite you.
You save a lot of time, a lot of headaches, and a lot of money. That bank is going to want a fee for helping you. When working with us, you’ll save at least six months of your time.
We’ve streamlined our diligence process to one primary data request (as opposed to the multiple rounds of data collection in a banked process). We’ve run this process over 50 times, and we’ve learned how to make the process as efficient and fair as possible. If this wasn’t the case, family-owned businesses wouldn’t choose us as often as they do.
We partner with companies that want to grow with us for decades, so we look for ambitious, hungry teams. But winning the right way matters just as much, if not more, than growth. In every business, we look for people who value integrity in everything they do. We also want companies with excellent reputations. Air Comfort means something in Chicago – that effect is the culmination of decades of quality that we want to strengthen.
Astra Service Partners is our network of commercial mechanical service providers. Within this industry vertical, we look for HVAC/R, plumbing, and controls contractors that serve a local or national customer base with a focus on repair and maintenance.
Leo FM is our facilities maintenance vertical. We look for two types of operations serving multi-site customers: the first is a vendor-managed model providing anything from general handyman and electrical services to specific solutions like window replacements and asbestos removal. The second is primarily commercial restoration, meaning reconstruction and emergency restoration services.
We work with you to establish a clear roadmap for the partnership’s first 90 days, focusing on both quick wins and long-term growth initiatives. From then on, decisions are made locally. We trust the business leader with the final say on all needle-moving initiatives.
There are a few things we ask of you. First, we ask your company to make a One Page Plan with short-and long-term goals. This aligns the full team on the business’ top priorities.
Second, we ask each company to complete a quarterly continuous improvement project because we want our teams to strive for constant growth. We’ll connect you with coaches with a ton of operational experience to help you run these projects.
Our third ask is that you implement financial data into your strategic decision-making. To do this, your team will report monthly financials, implement a budgeting process, and track key performance metrics. Our goal here is to equip your leadership team with full visibility into financial performance so they can make informed decisions. We’ll help you bring on any resources you need to optimize the financial rigor of your organization.
I would encourage you to spend time in person with potential buyers. I would also recommend speaking with people who have already gone through a sale.
As far as we’re concerned at Orion, it’s simple with us: we give folks real opportunities so we can win together. If you’re curious about any of this, I’m happy to get on the phone and talk to you about it. Even without the expectation of a partnership, I’m always excited to meet people in our industries, so feel free to reach out if you’re looking to sell. I’d be happy to hear about the business you’ve built.
Ready to talk? Email Josh at josh@orionservicesgroup.com or call (858) 442-0281 for a confidential chat.
People
Orion Group
June 23, 2025
