Should a buyer meet your people before closing?
It depends on sequence, not preference. Why the meeting comes after every other item has cleared, why it is days rather than weeks before close, and why a contract is the wrong thing to bring.
This is not a yes or no question, and owners who treat it as one usually get it wrong in one direction or the other. It depends on where the deal actually is, and on what the meeting is for.
Everything else clears first
The meeting belongs at the end, after the deal is finished in every respect except the signature. Financing committed, not pre-qualified. The lease assigned or the landlord's consent in writing. Every diligence item answered and closed out. Licensing, bonding and insurance resolved.
Until those are done the deal can still fall apart, and a deal that falls apart after your crew has met the buyer is a different kind of damage. You cannot take the conversation back. Your people now know you were selling, they know it did not happen, and they will draw their own conclusions about why.
Days, not weeks
Once everything is cleared, the meeting happens a day or two before closing. A week at the outside.
The gap between your people hearing and the deal being done is the whole risk, so keep it short. A long gap gives everyone time to speculate, take a recruiter's call, or mention it to a customer. A short one means the news and the certainty arrive together, which is the only version of this that is fair to them.
Know what the meeting is for
It is an introduction and a direction. Here is who is taking over, here is where this is going, here is your place in it. The people in that room should leave knowing they are wanted, needed, and part of what happens next. Done properly it is the best day of the transition.
What it is not is a paperwork session. Putting an employment agreement or a retention contract in front of someone in that meeting is a mistake, and buyers suggest it more often than they should. A contract handed to a person who met you twenty minutes ago reads as a demand, not an offer, and it turns a conversation about the future into a negotiation.
It also does not do what the buyer thinks. Someone who wants to leave leaves. Enforcing an agreement against a technician is rarely practical and never good for the business that still needs him on Monday. The thing that holds people is not the document. It is believing the place is stable and that they are part of it.
A Straight Answer
Your people are asking one question, and it is not about the buyer. It is whether they still have a job on Monday and whether this place is going to be alright. Answer that first, answer it plainly, and most of the rest takes care of itself.
BuiltEquity is a sell-side brokerage for trades and field-service companies. Nothing here is legal, tax or accounting advice. Your CPA and your attorney are the authority on your situation.