What your company is worth is decided long before the sale. Twelve questions along the same five levers every buyer prices, written from the buyer’s side of the table.
Buyers do not value IT services providers on revenue but on how dependable the revenue is and how replaceable the founder is. The Exit Readiness Score examines five levers across twelve questions. The weighting follows the effect on the valuation, not the number of questions.
The strongest single valuation lever. Managed services, retainers and maintenance produce predictable revenue a buyer can carry forward. Pure project work has to be earned again every year and is priced accordingly lower.
A single customer accounting for more than 30% of revenue counts as an exclusion criterion for most buyers, or forces a discount. What matters is not only the largest customer but how narrow the top end is overall.
The question that comes up in every due diligence and costs many valuations. Buyers pay for an organisation, not for one person with staff. This lever needs the longest lead time and moves the most.
Standardisation is what stops growth from ending in quality problems. What cannot be measured, a buyer cannot verify, and will deduct from the price. The cheapest lever there is.
Growth carries the largest part of the value creation, ahead of margin expansion and multiple expansion. The top quartile in the IT services Mittelstand sits above a 15% EBITDA margin.
Every answer receives a score between 0 and 100. The scores for each lever are averaged and then combined into an overall score using the weighting above. The three recommended actions do not follow from the lowest score but from the largest weighted improvement potential, that is, from the actual effect on the valuation.
The multiple range shown is a rough placement based on self-reported information. It replaces neither a company valuation nor due diligence. Anyone who needs a defensible number cannot avoid a review of the actual figures.
The levers that set a valuation need 18 to 24 months of lead time. Start when you have decided to sell and you leave money on the table. So the assessment is most worthwhile precisely when a sale is not imminent but is conceivable in principle.
More on how a transaction with us works or read the underlying whitepaper.