Your client will sell their business once. Be the firm that told them what it was worth first.

Every partner in every practice has had the same conversation. A client of fifteen years puts down their coffee near the end of a meeting and says, almost as an afterthought, that someone has approached them about buying the business. They want to know whether the number is any good. And the honest answer, in that moment, is that nobody in the room knows, because nobody has ever valued it.

By then the conversation is already over. The buyer set the price, the buyer set the timetable, and the owner is negotiating from behind. The firm that has held the relationship for a decade and a half gets to review the sale and purchase agreement, and watches the largest financial event in that client’s life happen at a number somebody else chose.

This article is about closing that gap. It explains a partnership that gives your clients a proper, written valuation and a plan to improve it, at no cost to them or to you, and pays your firm 15 to 20 percent of our success fee if one of those conversations eventually becomes a sale.

Most owners find out what their business is worth from the person trying to buy it. That is the wrong way round, and it is expensive.

What your client actually receives

The word “valuation” has been devalued by calculators that multiply profit by an arbitrary number and email a PDF. That is not what this is. A completed submission produces three documents, prepared by our M&A team and reviewed by a named deal lead.

A defensible value range. Built from the client’s own figures, their filed accounts at Companies House and comparable transactions completed in their sector. The report shows the arithmetic, not just the answer, including which earnings basis was used and why the multiple sits where it sits.

A 24 month improvement plan. Which levers move the valuation, by how much, and in what order. Customer concentration, contract documentation, recurring revenue quality, management depth. Practical actions with an owner named against each one, phased across the next two years, with a modelled trajectory against a do nothing baseline.

A 30 factor scorecard. Every factor an acquirer tests in diligence, scored with written commentary from a buy side perspective: what a buyer concludes, what it does to price, how they will test it, the quick win and the structural move.

Commissioned separately, that work means a corporate finance house for the valuation, a consultancy for the improvement plan and an accountant for the diligence review. Typically 3,000 to 10,000 pounds. Here it is one report, free, strictly confidential, and never shown to a buyer without the owner’s written permission. You can read the full method on the valuation tool or run one yourself on a client’s website before you recommend it to anybody.

Why a valuation is the best conversation opener you have

Owners do not want to be sold to. They do want to know the number. It is the one piece of information they are curious about at every stage of ownership, whether they intend to sell next year or never.

That makes it an unusually good instrument for a professional firm. It is free, so there is nothing to justify. It is useful whether or not a sale follows, so there is no implied agenda. It is written, so it sits in a file and gets referred back to. And it reliably surfaces work that belongs to you: a shareholder agreement that was never updated, a group structure that will cost money on exit, personal tax planning that has to be done years before completion to be worth anything, proceeds that will need investing.

An owner who knows their number two years early behaves completely differently from an owner who finds out on the day.

The one line of code, and what it does

The widget is a single field: a website address. No forms, no email gate, no phone number. An owner types their site, we research the business from public sources in the background, and the valuation flow opens on our domain in a new tab. Your page stays open behind it.

Below is the real script running under a demonstration partner code, branded to a fictional practice. It is live, not a screenshot. Type a company website into it and watch what happens.

<script src="https://www.dealflowagent.com/embed/valuation.js" data-ref="example-partners"></script>

If you would rather not touch the website at all, you do not have to. A tracked link in a client email, a quarterly review pack, a newsletter or a LinkedIn post attributes exactly the same way.

Two ways a referral arrives

Ambient. The widget or your tracked link sits somewhere your clients already are. An owner uses it without you being in the room. You are credited automatically and paid 15 percent of our success fee if it completes.

Direct. You send a two line email introduction because you know a specific client is thinking about it. That pays 20 percent. The email does not need to be clever:

What it pays

Our success fee is charged on a tiered scale. Your share is a percentage of that fee, invoiced by you once ours clears, with no clawback and no staged payments. There is no expiry window: a client who takes eighteen months to move is still your referral.

Figures are illustrative and based on our published tiered scale. Payment is made on completion under a written referral agreement, by bank transfer, within 14 days of our fee clearing.

Three ways it plays out in practice

A four partner accountancy practice in the North West. The widget sits in the footer of their client resources page and inside their quarterly client email. A fire and security contractor with £3.1M of revenue enters their website address after reading a piece on capital gains changes. The report gives a range of £2.4M to £3.2M and a route to close the gap on contract documentation. Nine months later the business sells at £2.9M. The practice earns roughly £17,400 and keeps the compliance work throughout.

A commercial legal team advising owner managed businesses. The tool is embedded on the corporate department page. An owner reaches it while researching shareholder agreements and completes the questionnaire over two sittings. The firm keeps the corporate mandate on the eventual transaction, so it earns twice: the referral fee from us and the legal fees on the sale itself.

A wealth planner with a book of owner clients approaching retirement. Rather than an embed, the planner sends the tracked link inside a retirement planning review pack. Three clients complete a valuation in the first quarter. Two are not ready and receive a two year plan. One is, and the proceeds from the eventual sale come back to the planner to invest.

Illustrative scenarios drawn from how partner firms use the programme. Figures are examples, not recorded results.

Where the line sits between us

The partnership is deliberately narrow, because the fastest way to lose a professional firm is to walk into its client relationship. Accounts, audit, tax compliance, corporate and commercial legal work, financial planning and the proceeds all stay with you. We take the valuation, the improvement plan and, only if the owner instructs us, the sale process.

It runs in both directions. The questionnaire surfaces needs long before a sale is on the table. Where the owner consents and you offer the service, we introduce them back to you at no charge, and you receive the name and the nature of the need, never the valuation figures. Non circumvention is written into the referral agreement, both ways.

Reports are confidential to the owner. Contact details and figures are never shown to a buyer without written permission, and they are not visible to referring partners in the portal either.

How it works, start to finish

1. 1You take a code. Complete the form below with your firm name and email. Your partner code, snippet and portal link are issued on screen immediately. Nothing to sign before you install.
2. 2You place the tool. Embed it on a client resources page, a sector page or the footer, or use the tracked link in email. Both routes attribute identically.
3. 3An owner uses it. They enter a website address. We research the business, take them through the questionnaire and prepare the valuation and the 30 factor report. Free, no obligation.
4. 4We log the referral. The first partner code seen is frozen against that owner server side. You are emailed the moment a real referral lands and it appears in your portal with its stage.
5. 5We advise, you stay in place. We handle valuation and, if instructed, the sale. Any need we surface that belongs to you comes back to you with the owner’s consent.
6. 6You are paid on completion. When a referred business completes, you invoice your share of our success fee under the referral agreement.

Every partner gets a portal at /partners/dashboard. Enter your firm website or email and a sign in link arrives, valid for 14 days. Inside you see every referred company, the stage it has reached, an indicative commission band once a sale completes, and a logo upload for co-branding the widget.

Questions partners ask before they install

Take your partner code

The code is issued on screen. Install it in five minutes, or keep it for a single introduction you already have in mind. There is no minimum, no exclusivity and nothing to cancel.

Prefer to talk it through first? Read the full adviser referral programme, see the valuation tool as your client would, or contact the team.