From having legit inbound interest, you still need to find an executive champion on the acquirer's side who'll spend months pushing through the lawyers, politics, etc, and ideally, has done it before. Not easy. They may not be the person who reached out to you, but they are the one(s) you need to identify, make the bet on, convince, and iterate with as issues arise. If they're senior enough, they can make it Just Happen.
Maybe the perspective here is selling a business is the ultimate big & messy & relationship-heavy enterprise sales process. The process described in the post sounds like the numbers approach of SaaS (outbound reachouts to BD people -> a few conversations -> sell), but not with the messy human parts of enterprise. -- For example, it's unusual to bring in someone like KPMG due to deal size and risks around disintermediating the owner from the buyer during relationship building. (Individual advisors here are more normal for slightly bigger deals, and they'd have more skin in the game & involvement than a big firm.) -- As another, was DefCon time hanging out with the CEO or #2 of the company and the champions?
Not easy! The advice I got here is 90-99% of these convs fail, so it's useful to be wary & understand.
