Exit Readiness Review
Find out what a buyer will find, before they find it.
Due diligence is where value gets lost. This tells you what an investor will uncover, what it will cost you in price, and what you can fix in the twelve months beforehand.
Book a confidential call- Fee
- £4,750 fixed fee
- Duration
- 6–8 weeks
Due diligence is where value gets lost, and it happens after the negotiation rather than during it. A buyer's advisers spend six weeks working through your numbers and start taking things off the table.
This review tells you what they will find, and what it is likely to cost you in price. It also tells you what you can fix in the twelve months beforehand, while you still have the time.
What gets assessed
Six areas a buyer will go straight to.
Readiness Scorecard
- Rated amber
Quality of earnings
Which add-backs and one-offs a buyer will accept, and what that leaves you with as sustainable earnings.
- Rated red
Owner dependency
Whether the relationships, the knowledge and the sign-off all still run through you. This destroys more value in family businesses than anything else.
- Rated amber
Revenue quality
How much of your income is contracted and repeatable, and how much of it rests on goodwill and one large client.
- Rated amber
Due diligence survivability
Whether your management information holds up once someone goes looking through it properly.
- Rated green
Structural hygiene
Whether the share structure, the shareholder agreement and the ownership of your intellectual property are all where you think they are.
- Rated red
Owner readiness
What you actually want out of this, what you would need to walk away with, and whether the other owners would say the same.
Owner dependency is the single biggest destroyer of value in family businesses. If the relationships, the knowledge and the sign-off all run through one person, then what a buyer is really acquiring is the job you are trying to leave.
Most of what shows up red here is fixable inside a year, and almost none of it is fixable once a transaction is under way.
What you receive
The picture a buyer would build.
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Readiness Scorecard
Six areas rated red, amber or green.
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Indicative adjusted EBITDA range
Showing which add-backs will survive scrutiny, and which will not.
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Red flag register
What due diligence will find, and what each typically costs in price reduction.
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The value gap
An indicative range set against what you say you need.
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12-month value-build plan
Ranked by value impact.
Illustrative example
The findings a buyer would hand you, while you still have time to act on them.
This example is a £6.8m services business with two shareholders, thinking about a sale in two to three years.
Readiness Scorecard
- Turnover
- £6.8m
- Shareholders
- 2
- Horizon
- 2–3 years
- Reviewed
- 7 weeks
- Rated amber
Quality of earnings
£165k of £260k in add-backs will survive scrutiny. The rest are running costs wearing a different name.
- Rated red
Owner dependency
Both shareholders sit personally in all ten of the largest client relationships. Nothing is held by the business.
- Rated red
Revenue quality
Largest client is 31% of revenue on 30-day rolling terms. 62% of income is project work with nothing contracted beyond it.
- Rated amber
Due diligence survivability
Monthly reporting stops at gross margin. Job costing lives in a spreadsheet that reconciles to nothing.
- Rated green
Structural hygiene
Shareholder agreement current and signed. Intellectual property and property titles sit where they should.
- Rated red
Owner readiness
Interviewed separately, the two shareholders described different timelines, two years and five, and different numbers.
Deliverable two
Indicative adjusted EBITDA
Which add-backs survive scrutiny, and which do not.
- Reported EBITDA
- £840k
- Add-backs a buyer will accept
- +£165k
- Add-backs a buyer will challenge
- £95k
- Indicative adjusted range
- £880k – £1.01m
Deliverable three
The value gap
What you said you need, against where you stand today.
- What you need to net
- £4.5m
- Indicative range today
- £3.4m – £4.0m
- Gap to close
- £500k – £1.1m
The adjusted EBITDA range provided is indicative and prepared for readiness planning purposes only. It does not constitute a formal valuation, investment advice or a recommendation to transact.
Where it leads
Twelve months is enough time to fix this.
The review ends with a value-build plan ranked by value impact. Acting on it is the next conversation, either through ongoing support or as a scoped programme of work.
Better to hear it from us.
For owners planning to sell, raise investment or bring in a partner within the next one to three years.
Book a confidential callThirty minutes, and you will know whether it is worth taking further.