dealflowagent.com · joe@dealflowagent.comSpecialist sell-side M&A
Thank you for using this scorecard. It is a preliminary exercise and it is deliberately free of anything sensitive: no revenue, no profit, and nothing you type into it is transmitted anywhere. Twenty minutes with a pen gives you an honest read on how ready your business is to be bought, and on which of thirty measurable things are holding its value down today.
Treat it as a snapshot, not a verdict. Every factor on this sheet moves over time and several of them move quickly: a contract renewal, a certification lapse, an operations manager leaving, a change to the statutory calendar. A score taken today is the starting point for a conversation, not a fixed measure of what your business is worth, and it is not advice on your specific circumstances.
What it is not is a valuation. The full picture is our valuation and business optimisation review: a detailed document built against your actual financials, contracts and operating data, with a personalised plan behind it. It is not a report we hand over and walk away from. Our in-house engineers and specialist partners work alongside your team to implement it, from reducing key-person dependency and finding the right operations leader through to the systems, hiring and technology that make the improvements hold. The objective is to move the metrics that decide your price, meaningfully, in the time you have before you sell. What that stage involves, and what it does not commit you to, is set out overleaf.
If you are an accountant, wealth manager, corporate financier or adviser acting for an owner, this sheet is built to be shared, and we are glad to run the detailed review alongside you.
Joe Lewin · Founder, DealFlowAgent
Owners tell us the thing that puts them off getting advice is not knowing what they are being drawn into. So here is the whole path, including the point at which it costs money and the point at which it does not commit you to anything.
Free, anonymous and yours alone. Twenty minutes with a pen gives you a directional read on readiness and the five factors capping your value. No contact with us is required at any point.
No cost · no contactTwenty minutes. We challenge your three most generous scores, tell you which two factors are worth the most in your specific earnings band, and give you an indicative range and the acquirers most likely to want your business.
No cost · no obligationA detailed review built against your real financials, contracts and operating data, under a signed NDA before anything is shared. Several hours of your time across a few weeks. It is not a sell-side mandate and it does not commit you to selling, or to selling with us.
Paid engagement · no mandateOur engineers and specialist partners work alongside your team on the plan: the operations leader who removes your key-person dependency, the systems that make your data queryable, and the contract and margin work that moves the multiple.
Optional · your paceWe work only in building services, facilities management and healthcare. That is why our acquirer relationships in your niche are current rather than historic, and why we can tell you what a buyer paid for a business like yours last quarter rather than what the market did last year.
Our registered network runs to 12,900 acquirers and is the fastest-growing set of pre-qualified buyers in these niches. We are venture-backed, which is what funds the research and the relationship-building behind it.
What that changes. One buyer sets the pace, anchors low and waits. Several comparable offers change the price, the structure, and how much of the money is cash at completion rather than a performance earn-out you have to work for after you have sold.
Martin Watson
Senior Building Services & Facilities Management Advisor
Martin chairs both the Fire Industry Association and the British Security Industry Association, the only person in the UK to hold both roles at the same time. He spent over a decade in senior leadership at Mitie, latterly as Industry Liaison Director for its fire and security division, helping scale the business past £500m of revenue and playing a role in the £366m acquisition of Marlowe plc. He acts in a personal, non-partisan capacity.
Alongside a senior M&A bench, every engagement adds a sector specialist recruited from your own industry.
Two businesses with the same profit routinely sell for very different money. The gap is not luck and it is not negotiation. It is thirty measurable things, most of which can be moved inside a preparation window, and several of which need a decision an owner would rather postpone. This sheet shows you which of the thirty are costing you, roughly what they are worth, and what to do first.
Nothing you enter on this sheet is transmitted anywhere. Fill it in on your own machine or on paper and it stays with you. There is one optional request at the very end, for readers who want their five value-capping factors ranked, and it sends only what you choose to type into it.
Score each factor 1 to 10 against the anchors, not against how you feel about the business. The anchors are the ones a buyer's diligence team applies. Where you have no evidence for a factor, score it low: buyers price an unmeasured number as though the answer were bad.
Short on time? Score only the six factors marked START HERE, one per dimension, and you will still get a usable profile. The other twenty-four are the depth behind it.
Add the five factor scores in each dimension. That is your dimension total out of 50, and there is a box for it at the foot of every dimension.
Divide by five. That is your dimension score out of 10. Six dimensions, six numbers, and that is the whole of the manual arithmetic.
Apply the weights. Multiply each dimension score by the weight opposite, add the six results together and divide by one hundred.
Read the result out of 10. Below 4, prepare before going to market. 4 to 6, saleable with value uplift available. 6 to 7.5, a strong add-on with clean diligence likely. Above 7.5, platform grade.
| Dimension | Weight |
|---|
Your earnings band sets the range you transact in. Your weighted score decides where inside that range you land: a score of 2 sits at the bottom of the band, 8 or above sits at the top, and everything between is proportionate. The band table is on the valuation page. We will run the exact figure with you on a call, because the earnings number matters as much as the score and it is not one to guess at.
Each dimension on the scorecard totals out of 50. Divide by five for a score out of ten, write it in, multiply by the weight, and add the six results. The weights total 100, so the points column totals out of 1,000 and dividing by 100 returns a score out of ten.
| Dimension | Your score | Weight | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Add the six results together | / 1,000 | ||
| Divide by 100. That is your weighted exit readiness score. | / 10 | ||
Enter these six dimension scores at dealflowagent.com/scorecard, photograph this page and send it to us on WhatsApp at +44 20 7293 0327, or bring the completed sheet to a call. You get the weighted total checked, where it places you inside your band, the five factors capping your value and what closing them is worth.
calendly.com/joe-dealflowagent · joe@dealflowagent.com · +44 20 7293 0327
Scan to book aOn paper we cannot rank these for you. Enter your six dimension scores at dealflowagent.com/scorecard, photograph this page and send it to us on WhatsApp, or bring the sheet to a call. You will get the five factors capping your value, ranked by what each one is worth, and the specific target for each.
Ranked by weighted impact, meaning the gap to a buyer-credible 7.5 multiplied by that dimension's weight, spread so that no single dimension dominates the list. Fix these five in order and the rest of the sheet moves with them.
Score at least one dimension above to rank what is holding your multiple down.
Where your score places you in the range. The bottom of a band describes an unprepared business shown to one buyer. The top describes a prepared one in a competed process. A score of 2 sits at the bottom, 8 or above sits at the top, and everything between is proportionate. Worked through on £1M of defended earnings in the 4.5x to 6.5x band: a score of 3.7 lands near 5.1x, roughly £5.1M. A score of 7.5 lands near 6.3x, roughly £6.3M. Same earnings, £1.2M apart.
Three first moves per dimension, in the order that pays. None of them require a transaction, an adviser or a budget round, and all of them are visible to a buyer inside one financial year.
These are deliberately generic, because this sheet knows nothing about your business beyond what you have just scored. The valuation and optimisation review does the opposite. We build the financial model with you, find and clean the data behind it, and hand over working tools rather than a document: an operating model your finance function can run, dashboards that put contract, margin and utilisation data in one place, and custom AI workspaces so your team can question your own numbers directly. The point is not a longer report. It is a shorter distance between knowing what to fix and having fixed it.
Both are constructed examples using our published ranges, included to show how far the same earnings can travel depending on preparation and process. Your own figure comes from your own earnings and your own score, and we work it out with you on a call.
Bring the completed sheet. Twenty minutes, confidential, no obligation, and nothing leaves the call.
The sheet gives you a score. It cannot tell you which two or three of the thirty factors are costing you the most money, because that depends on your earnings, your sector and your intended timing.
Send us your score and we will come back with a written read on it. No document is emailed anywhere and nothing you typed into the sheet above is transmitted.