Survive Diligence
Your buyer will cut the price after the handshake. Find the cuts first.
You have an offer, a letter of intent, or a listing going up inside 90 days.
I read your records the way the buyer’s team will read them. You get a written verdict on what they will cut, and why.
€3,500 fixed, plus VAT where it applies · 10 working days from full records · paid by invoice
The price moves after you say yes
A buyer agrees a price on the numbers you showed him. Then his team reads your records. That reading is diligence, and it takes weeks.
Each thing they find becomes a reason to pay less. A cost you added back with no paper behind it. A client who pays a year ahead. Revenue you booked before you did the work.
The cut can come as a lower price. It can also come as an earn-out, a bigger escrow, or a seller note. Sometimes the buyer walks away.
By then you have stopped talking to other buyers. You negotiate alone, against a deadline, on his findings.
Know what survives before the buyer looks
Your profit has two versions. One is the figure you claim. The other is the figure that survives a buyer’s diligence. The gap between the two is the price cut.
I measure that gap before the buyer does. Then you choose what to do with each line. You fix it, you explain it in writing, or you price it in.
A seller who shows the gap first keeps control of the price. A seller who waits hears about the gap from the buyer.
One sale that failed, from the seller’s side
Names and figures changed.
An owner put his marketing agency in the United Kingdom up for sale. He believed it made €1.8M of revenue. He asked 2.8 times profit.
One client paid about €1M of that revenue each year. The agency invoiced it every quarter, in advance. The owner booked each payment as revenue on the day it arrived.
The rest of the business made about €0.8M of revenue. It lost about €200,000 a year.
The owner worked 50 hours a week and more. The accounts paid him nothing for those hours.
His proof was a bank statement and an export from his CRM. Both were true. Neither showed the work the agency still owed the big client.
The buyer’s team found it. The buyer walked away.
A prepared file would have shown three lines on day one. The revenue for work not yet done. The loss in the rest of the business. A market salary for the owner’s hours.
With those three lines on paper, he could set a price that survives. He could also fix the business before he listed it.
He asked me to fix it after the sale failed. That took a year. Two years later the same business sold again, far above 2.8 times.
What you get for €3,500
- An earnings bridge. Your claimed profit beside the profit that survives, line by line.
- An add-back defence. Each cost you added back, with the paper that proves it, or a note that it will fail.
- The buyer’s question list. His questions, with your answers written and ready.
- A data-room pack. The documents a buyer asks for, and the order in which to show them.
- A written verdict. What a buyer will cut, and why.
The fee is €3,500 fixed, plus VAT where it applies. I send you an invoice. There is no checkout.
The work takes 10 working days from the day your records are complete.
What you send me
- Your profit and loss and your balance sheet for the last three years and the year to date.
- Your bank statements for the same period.
- Your revenue by client or by channel, from your billing system, your store or your CRM.
- The offer, the letter of intent, or the draft listing.
You send records and you change nothing. The work happens at my desk.
If you sign a mandate later
If you sign a sell-side mandate with me within 12 months, the full €3,500 counts against its fee.
If you buy Survive Diligence and Offer review, only one of the two fees counts.
Who this is for
For
An owner with an offer, a letter of intent, or a listing going up inside 90 days. Any size of business, in any country.
Not for
If your sale is two years away, start with the Exit-Readiness Audit instead.
Tell me about the sale in one email
Write what you have: an offer, a letter of intent, or a listing date. I reply in writing.
