The problem with most exit processes
By the time most owners appoint an advisor, the window to improve valuation has closed.
Due diligence finds everything a business hoped would go unnoticed: customer concentration, margin that does not hold at unit level, a management team that depends on the founder, financial reporting that cannot answer a buyer's questions. Each one becomes a discount. Several compounding at once can be the difference between the price you expected and the price you accept.
The businesses that sell well go through their own version of due diligence before the buyer does. They know what will be found. They fix what can be fixed. They have a clean story on the things that cannot.
A buyer will assess your business with more rigour than you have probably applied to it yourself. The question is whether you find the gaps first, or they do.
Start now: the Exit Readiness Scorecard gives you a first read across the seven areas a buyer examines, in a couple of minutes.
What buyers actually look at
The scrutiny is consistent regardless of the buyer type.
Whether the buyer is a strategic acquirer, a financial buyer, or a competitor, the assessment covers the same ground. Understanding it in advance is the preparation.
Financial performance
Is the EBITDA real, recurring, and defensible under questioning? What does the margin structure look like at unit level?
Revenue quality
How concentrated is the customer base? How durable is the revenue? What is the business worth if the top two customers reduce or leave?
Commercial position
What is the competitive advantage, and is it structural or personal? What happens to the commercial position when the founder leaves?
Management depth
Does the business run without the founder, or does everything significant route back to one person? That dependency gets priced in.
Operational risk
Where are the single points of failure: people, systems, supplier relationships that represent concentrated risk?
Financial reporting quality
Can the business answer detailed financial questions quickly and accurately? Buyers who cannot get clean information move slower and bid lower.
What it costs
What the preparation is actually worth.
A business is worth roughly what it earns, multiplied by what a buyer will pay for those earnings. Preparation moves both, which is why it is worth doing even if you decide not to sell.
The earnings effect
Most of the work that makes a business sell well is the same work that makes it earn more. Pricing corrected. Margin understood at unit level. A management team that can run it. You get the benefit of that whether or not a transaction happens.
The value effect
Buyers discount what they find in diligence, and several findings at once compound rather than add. The businesses that sell well have already found those issues and either fixed them or can explain them. That is usually the difference between the price you expected and the price you accept.
How much, in your business, is a question we answer after looking at it. Not before.
How APG prepares you
We run the assessment before the buyer does.
Assess. An independent review across every area a buyer will examine: financially, commercially, operationally, and in the context of the market. It tells you what a buyer will find. The value gaps, the risk factors, and the questions that will come up in due diligence. Two to four weeks, fixed fee.
Plan. Where gaps can be closed, we build the plan to close them. Pricing that has drifted, customer concentration that can be reduced, management depth that can be developed, financial reporting that can be made buyer-ready. Sequenced by what will move valuation most in the time available.
Execute. Where it helps, we stay involved through the preparation period, tracking performance against the baseline set in the assessment so improvement compounds rather than stalls.
The result is a business that enters a sale process having already done its own due diligence. Fewer surprises. A valuation that holds. A process that moves.
What you get
An exit readiness report, and a number to argue with.
Most owners have a figure in mind and no way to test it until a buyer tests it for them. The point of doing this early is to find out where you stand while there is still time to change it.
A graded readiness score
How ready the business actually is across the areas a buyer will examine, with the weak points named rather than averaged into a single reassuring number.
An indicative valuation range
Built from your maintainable earnings and comparable transaction multiples, with the basis and assumptions written down so you can interrogate them.
The gap against your target
You tell us what the business needs to be worth and by when. We show you the distance, and whether the timeline you have in mind is realistic.
What would move the grade
Which specific issues are costing you the most, roughly what closing each is worth, and how long each one realistically takes.
An indication is not a valuation opinion. We are not registered valuers, and this does not replace a formal valuation where you need one for tax, a dispute or a transaction. See what a buyer actually prices.
What this looks like in practice
The preparation is where the outcome is determined.
From weekly losses to $6M exit in three years. Assessment identified margin compression, customer concentration risk, and a management team that could not operate without the founder. The work that followed addressed all three. The business entered the sale process clean and sold at the expected valuation.
Financial services business, planned exit in 18 months. Assessment identified four value gaps a buyer would discount. Three were addressed before going to market. The fourth was documented with a clear explanation. Due diligence moved faster because there were no surprises.
The preparation window
When you start determines what is possible.
Two to three years before a planned exit is ideal: enough time to make structural improvements that show up in the historical financials a buyer will scrutinise. Twelve months is workable but constrains what is achievable. Six months or less shifts the focus from genuine improvement to presentation. We are direct about which situation you are in and what it means.
If the timeline is too short for the gaps we find, we say so. The assessment is honest about what is achievable and what is not.
Clearer priorities. Stronger execution. Better performance.
Start with a Commercial Assessment. Two to four weeks for a fixed fee, and you will know what a buyer will find before they find it.
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