Segment buyers by how long they intend to hold
Most discussion of veterinary buyers sorts them by size. That is the least useful axis. What determines your experience after closing is whether the group holding your practice intends to keep it or to package it for resale.
A permanent holder and a fund operating on a defined timeline will behave differently toward your staff, your protocols and your appointment schedule, because they are optimizing for different things over different horizons.
Where a group sits in its cycle changes what it will pay
Consolidator groups raise capital, acquire, and then recapitalize — sell to another investor or restructure their ownership. Where a group sits in that cycle affects both what it will pay and how it will behave.
Groups approaching a recapitalization tend to pay more, because they are adding scale ahead of a transaction of their own. Understanding which groups are in that position at the moment you go to market is a substantial part of the work, and it is not knowable from the outside.
The question owners should ask and usually do not
Not "who is buying me?" but "who is likely to own this in five years, and does anything I negotiate today still bind them?"
Commitments about staffing, protocols or your own role are only as durable as the documents they live in. A promise made warmly in a meeting does not survive a change of ownership. A term written into the purchase agreement or your employment agreement can. Knowing which of your assurances are which is worth doing before you sign, not after.