Intelligent Business Partners Reviews 

Six years ago I was flattered into listing my business for sale with Intelligent by a high Valuation Fee. I paid an equally high Listing Fee, taking what I thought would be the opportunity to sit back and watch the enquiries and appointments come flooding in. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I have experienced complete and utter ineptitude at every possible turn over the last 6 years and, to rub salt into the already open and gaping wound, I have recently been served 28 days notice that my business will be ‘withdrawn from contractual obligations and removed from sale’. Presumably for my added benefit, I will ‘receive a further email confirming once the 28 days are up’. The fact that my business has been for sale for 6 years perhaps tells you all you need to know about Intelligent.

I’m not sure how much merit there is in using this forum to list line by line everything that went wrong for me, although I could. Others have given blow by blow details and I’d urge you to familiarise yourself with these posts both on Trust Pilot and Google (via Maps). I’d also encourage you to visit the Intelligent website, register your interest in buying a business and see how you’re treated. This is after all what someone buying your business will experience.

I engaged Intelligent in good faith and whilst that can mean different things to different people, to me it meant consistency, specifically in terms of personnel, but more generally about campaigns, promotions and overall account management.

When my 28 days is up, I’ll have had close to 20 different ‘account managers’. Yes, you really did read that correctly. 20. Each time you get a new one you’re starting again. And in the blink of an eye, they’ve gone and the process repeats.

If you’re looking for a reason as to why my business remains unsold, it’s difficult to see past this endlessly revolving door of account managers. And you don’t have to be Poirot to link this to a questionable corporate culture. At one end of the spectrum I consider their actions to be disingenuous and dishonourable and at the other, downright reckless. Wherever I land on the spectrum though, consistency is absolutely what I did not get.

For what it’s worth, I found my account managers to be largely illiterate when it came to talking about business, they were poor at qualifying enquiries, poorer still at managing expectations and, perhaps most unforgivably, useless at getting back to people when they said they would.

There must be good agents out there, sadly Intelligent isn’t one of them. If I could give a review with a value of less than 1, I would.

Intelligent completed initial paperwork quickly and got my business advertised within a few days of initial contact.
Katie found a very suitable buyer and despite a long journey we made it through to completion.
Katie communicated to me throughout and broke down barriers to keep the process going despite being difficult at times.
During the difficult times when I never got any answers or replies from others in the chain, Katie still replied quickly and efficiently.
I would recommend Intelligent and if you get assigned Katie then you’ll be in good hands.
Thank you

I contacted Intelligent for some general business growth advice and Mark answered the phone. Generous with his time, very honest and referred me to someone who specialised in the help I needed. Brilliant service

Rang Intelligent as I’m in the early stages of thinking about selling my business. Mark was very helpful and gave really useful advice. He took the time to understand me and my company.

Would work with Katie again, very helpful always there to try and help , goes above and beyond .would recomend to anyone , every one there is very ready to help

We were delighted with the service we received from intelligent. Katie was very good throughout and kept us updated throughout. We would have no issue with recommending to anyone thinking of selling a business

Intelligent is a 5* company and it is aptly named. Everyone I dealt with was up to speed on my account and they have good all-round business knowledge. I would particularly like to mention Samantha Saville who dealt with the recent sale of my company - she is completely professional, helpful and always does what she says she will do. Highly recommend Sam and Intelligent. Thank you Sam and team.

Samantha was always on hand to help with the process and very accommodating with any request we had. Communication was prompt and she would follow up to check everything was going smoothly. We were new to the market and she held our hand through each step.

Great experience working with Katie when looking at buying a couple of businesses. Katie supported the negotiations and we got a great outcome - one new business signed, sealed, and delivered. Will definitely be back to Katie for any future purchases.

Excellent service from Katie. Prompt and comprehensive communication. Pleasure doing business!

I've been working with Intelligent for a while now. Great team. Extremely helpful and friendly. Would recommend.

Katie handled our business sale from the start and was proactive, approachable and clearly communicated any updates without delay. We felt confident and looked after all throughout the process. We really appreciate all of the work that Katie put in with the handling of our business sale. Thank you so much. Highly recommend!!

Overall, a negative experience.
Despite going into an agreement with initial good impressions and good faith I unfortunately have to say that ultimately my experience was really terrible with this company.
Individual interactions with staff members was positive, however the companies actions and handling of things in general don't make up for a polite contact point on a phone.

Like other reviewers, I have to say I'm left with the overwhelming impression that once they have you on the contract with a deposit they aren't really too bothered.

Businesses are absolutely over valued at initial estimations despite their claims otherwise- though I was aware of this when an absurd figure was given. We attempted listing our business at their figure given following their advice, and just to see what would happen- and it became clear very quickly that we needed to lower the price to the actual asking price we had wanted in the first place. A waste of time is not a great initial start.

'Marketing' done wasn't impressive and honestly we were left with the feeling it was all something we could have quite easily done ourselves.

Interested parties put forth were by and large inappropriate, despite being told they had a brief vetting process. No finances or financial plans in place, wrong industries, even a party who thought they were looking at the real estate purchase of the building rather than a business.

There were instances where we followed the advice of their managers / representatives to later be told that they would never advise such a thing and they took no responsibility for the results of following the advice. That's on us, we should have made them put it in writing.

Final nail in the coffin for us was a very disrespectful, dismissive, and downright rude phone call from a manager - who despite us being told they would be in touch in the next 48 hours took over two weeks to get in touch. (another common thread, amongst reviews it seems) Then again, by the time we spoke on the phone their obligation was up so it's not a real surprise the way we were spoken to, they didn't seem to want to put up the preface of caring anymore.

In general, I would never ever suggest anyone to use this company as our experience led to it feeling like a financial drain and a waste of time. I would also suggest, like another reviewer, that anyone considering using them look up their google reviews - which they've clearly worked hard to bury as it is difficult to get to them, and must be accessed through the maps feature of google directly.

I'm very sure there will be some sort of clever response to this from them as they seem to like to respond in ways that accuse review-leavers as being contradictory, or lying, or list to out a lot of personal information and outline a whole history of events in their replies.

Edit, in response to Intelligent / Mark's response:
No, this is definitely a review for yourselves. This is not a case of mistaken identity and that is a poor deflection on your part.
Others can clearly read through the responses you have to other reviews, and the other reviewers experiences that are similar to mine.

Yes - by the time I spoke to your manager your obligation was up as we were no longer under contract. Im not sure why that is something you've decided to challenge? It is possible to ring and speak to your company at any point! But it was clear that because we were no longer under contract by that point no one really cared to converse with us.

Finally, I'm not the only person who has had their business overvalued by yourselves - your other reviews state this multiple times, and you yourselves gave a figure over 3x the asking price we had intended to list for. It was a price that truly made no sense.

Again, this review is correctly for this buisness, Intelligent Business Partners.

Edit 2: To acknowledge your second edit, none of this contradicts anything I've said to yourselves. You simply didn't want to hear it. You were informed of my feelings. I have no interest in contacting you further via email as my previous conversations with yourselves have been pointless. I probably wouldn't have bothered to leave a review at all if the final conversation had with one of your managers hadn't been so disrespectful.

You do your very best as a company to ensure your negative google reviews are not accessible from your webpage and ensure to promote trust pilot where you have more control over what is posted and can flag things unnecessarily, as you have flagged my review by claiming 'its for another business'.

I did not post a review here to engage with yourselves or to become argumentative with you. This was a review of my experience with the company, and while I appreciate it isn't what you like to hear, I feel like arguing in via edits is somewhat childish. I wont be engaging further.

Excellent service from Katie who handled our purchase of a tearoom. Katie made the process very easy from start to finish and was always on hand to quickly resolve any issues and get things moving, highly recommend.

My sister and I have recently sold our Cafe business with Intelligent.The completion process has taken a long time although no fault of Samantha, our account manager,we cannot fault the service we experienced, Sam was always on the other end of the phone to keep us updated, as well as listen to me when I was at my wits end(sorry Sam), if it wasn't for her I think we would have given up, we would highly recommend Intelligent to anyone selling a business, amazing approachable and understanding staff,Thank you so much.

Dan was fantastic. He took the time to listen and to learn about my business and offered clear and useful advice. A very approachable person and I would have no hesitate inn recommending

I Have sold my business through Intelligent - It has been a very long (12 months) difficult journey from offer to completion but Sam has stuck to the task and helped guide the sale through to a successful conclusion

I must admit I was quite sceptical in the beginning. The Sales rep I spoke to was very confident they would be able to find a buyer for our small business. After a bit of toing and froing, I took the plunge.

Katie and Sam helped us find some buyers who began coming in thick and fast. After a few weeks of conversations we received several offers and accepted one.

It then took around 5 months to get the sale over the line from a legal point of view.

All in all very thankful to Sam and Katie for their help in helping selling our business.

If you're thinking of it, do your research and then if comfortable take the plunge. Be aware of the timescales involved as it can take longer than you expect.

Katie has been fantastic throughout the whole process of selling my business, has answered any questions I have had, and kept me updated. Could not recommend her enough. Thank you

Great service from Katie during the purchase of my new business. She was really friendly and helpful and always at the end of the phone, very responsive on email and assisted in making this a fast process.
I would also highly recommend Ray at Mudd-up to handle your contracts, very competent and a great guy to work with.