Confidential, no obligation
Start a Confidential Conversation
Tell us the basics about your business, then we will book a short call and give you a range with the reasoning behind it. No listing agreement, no obligation to sell, and nothing goes further than us.
What happens after you send this
We read it, then we get in touch to book a short call, usually fifteen to twenty minutes. We do that because a valuation produced from a form alone is a guess dressed up as a number. What a buyer will pay turns on things a form cannot see: which costs are genuinely yours to add back, how much of the business runs through you personally, how concentrated the customer base is, and how secure the lease and the main contracts are.
On that call you get the range, the earnings figure we recast to, the multiple we applied, and the specific factors pushing you toward the top or the bottom of it. Not a single number with no working shown.
- Nothing is shared with any buyer at this stage
- We never contact your staff, customers, or suppliers
- No listing agreement and no retainer
- If the timing or the number is wrong, we tell you that instead of pitching you
Plenty of owners send this form years before they intend to sell. That is the right time to ask, because almost everything that moves the multiple takes twelve to thirty six months to change.
Prefer to talk it through? Call (215) 278-8178
Why we ask for revenue and earnings
Because a range built without them is worthless to you. Businesses are priced off earnings, not off turnover, and the gap between the two is where most of the argument in a sale happens. Two businesses can both bill four million dollars and be worth very different money once the add-backs are settled and the owner's own involvement is priced in.
Give us the rough figures and the range you get back is a real one. Give us neither and we would be repeating whatever you already read online.
Rough is fine. Nobody expects the exact number from memory, and we would rather see approximate figures now than wait for you to pull three years of accounts together. The guide to selling a business in Pittsburgh works through how earnings are recast and what a sector multiple is actually applied to, if you want to see the method before you send anything.
What happens to what you send
It reaches this firm and stops there. No buyer sees it, no list receives it, and nobody contacts your staff, customers, or suppliers at any stage. If you later decide to go to market, nothing identifying is released until a buyer has signed a non-disclosure agreement, and financial detail waits until they have shown proof of funds. Our confidentiality policy sets out exactly what is shared, when, and with whom.
If you are not selling yet
Send it anyway. The owners who get the most out of this are usually two or three years out, because that is how long the things that move a multiple take to change: reducing how much of the business depends on you personally, spreading a concentrated customer base, getting the lease term and the main contracts on a footing a buyer will underwrite. Ask at the point of sale and it is too late to do any of it.
If you are simply judging an approach that has already landed, say so on the form. That is a different and much shorter conversation, and it is one worth having before you reply to the buyer. See what we do, where we work, or the questions owners ask most.
Not ready to sell yet? That is fine. Most owners we talk to are not.
A first conversation costs nothing and commits you to nothing. You will come away knowing what your business is worth and what, if anything, you would want to fix before going to market.
