How to See Your Business Through a Buyer’s Eyes

It’s a 20-page PDF on the eight areas a buyer inspects, in the order he works them: the financials, diligence readiness, risk factors, how much of the business is you, the quality of your revenue, operations and systems, people and retention, and planning for the offer. For each area it covers how the buyer tests it, what it does to your price, what “ready” looks like, and what to do now.

Yes. No payment and no card. Enter your email (your name is optional) and we email you a personal download link. The link works for 72 hours, and you can download it as many times as you like in that window. If it runs out, fill in the form again and you get a new one.

No sales call. The form doesn’t ask for a phone number, and signing up doesn’t book a call or set up a sales follow-up. You get the download link, then the SweetSpot advisory emails you agreed to when you checked the box. You can unsubscribe at any time.

It depends on your size, your likely buyer and how ready the business is. Some owners need someone to run the sale. Others first need cleanup and buyer-readiness work. SweetSpot does the second. We don’t take listings and we don’t bring you a buyer. Many owner-led businesses sell without a broker, often to a competitor who already knows the owner. Those deals tend to favor whoever has more information, and that is rarely the seller.

Earlier than most owners expect. A buyer wants at least two clean years of financials, and those two years have to be behind you on the day he looks. With three or more years, you have time to work toward the top of your range. With less, plan on about twelve months for preparation and the sale together. Doing both in under twelve months usually means a real discount or taking the buyer’s terms.

The buyer’s team checks what you told him, one document at a time. Earnings come first, usually through a quality of earnings review by an accounting firm that ties your reported revenue back to your bank activity. Every add-back needs a record behind it. He pulls revenue by customer to measure concentration. He looks at who quotes, who holds the big accounts and who makes the calls when you’re gone. He reads your contracts and leases for term, out clauses and whether they survive a change of ownership. And he separates recurring, contracted revenue from work you have to win again job by job.

Not always. They need to hold up when someone other than you checks them. A buyer asks for normalized earnings, add-backs he can believe and a plain explanation of why margin moved. Books built to keep the tax bill low usually don’t explain the business to a buyer. Messy books end deals. A buyer who can’t tie your earnings to your bank activity stops returning calls.

No one can give you your number from a web form. Here is the spread we see. An owner-dependent business that goes to market unprepared can trade at roughly half a year’s profit, if it sells at all. The same business, prepared and able to run without the owner, can reach the top of the range for its trade. In the deals SweetSpot has worked, owner dependency alone commonly caps a business at one to two times earnings and costs at least a full turn. A turn is one year of earnings, so on $500,000 a year, one turn is $500,000 of price. Problems a buyer finds late can also change the terms or end the deal.

That’s common in owner-led companies, and it’s the biggest single lever on price. A business that runs through one person is a job in a buyer’s eyes, and he pays what a job is worth. Start with two lists: the decisions that reached your phone last week, and, for each of your largest customers, who besides you holds the relationship. What’s on those lists is the work.

Take the free 12-Month Sale Readiness Self-Assessment. It takes a few minutes, rates your business against what a buyer checks, and shows your results without asking for an email. The point is to find your first area to strengthen.