You have an offer
Someone wants to buy your business.
The headline price is not what lands in your account. See what the offer pays you after tax, debt, fees, and structure, and what the buyer will look for before closing.
You plan to sell within 18 months
You are going to market. What will the buyers see?
Not your story. Your customer list, your add-backs, your contracts, your org chart, and how much of the business lives in your head. A buyer's team will grade all of it, and every grade becomes a term. Exit OSx runs the same checks now, prices each finding, and tells you whether to go, fix first, or wait.
Free · Six questions, about 90 seconds · No account needed.
Where deals die
47%
of dead deals died on what diligence found
106 days
a private equity buyer sits in exclusivity before walking away
1 in 3
sale processes end without a deal
80%
of recent sellers wish they had started preparing earlier
Sources: Axial Dead Deal Report 2025 (75 failed LOIs) · Pepperdine Private Capital Markets Report 2025 · UBS Investor Watch 2023 (123 recent sellers)
What buyers find
Six places the price moves, and which way.
Exit OSx grades more than 150 checks. These are the six areas where most of the money is won or lost, and the terms a buyer typically reaches for when they find a problem.
Owner dependence
Who holds the customer relationships, signs the bids, and knows where the bodies are. If the answer is you, the buyer prices in a longer transition and a smaller check.
Extended transition · In the price
Earnings that survive a quality of earnings review
Every add-back you take will be tested against an invoice, a contract, or a payroll record. An add-back without paper gets struck, and the strike is multiplied by your multiple.
In the price · Deferred
Revenue a buyer will count
Recurring, contracted, and diversified counts fully. One customer at 30% of revenue, or revenue that depends on your personal relationship, gets a haircut or an earnout.
Deferred or at risk · Reduced buyer pool
Contracts that transfer
Leases, customer agreements, licenses, and permits with change-of-control clauses. Each one that needs a third party's consent is a condition to close you do not control.
Fix before closing · Escrow
Records that tie out
Monthly statements that reconcile to bank and tax returns build trust fast. Books that do not tie trigger forensic scrutiny of everything else.
In the price · Extended diligence
You
What you want from the exit, what you need from it after tax, and whether you can actually leave. Buyers read a seller who has not decided, and they price the indecision.
Deferred · Reduced buyer pool
The verdict
Go, fix, or wait. With a date.
You did not ask for a score. You asked whether to sell. Exit OSx answers that question and shows the work behind it.
- Go
- Run a real process. What is left gets priced, not walked away from. You go in knowing which terms to expect and which to push back on.
- Fix
- Buyers will engage, then discount what they find. Here is what to close first, what each fix is worth, how long it takes, and the date the business is ready if you do it.
- Wait
- A failed process is not free. It burns your buyer list, marks the business as shopped, and makes the next attempt harder. Here is what has to be true before you try.
How the next 18 months go
Front-load the work to when you can still act on it.
- TodaySix questions give you a value range and the two findings a buyer would push on first.
- Week oneConnect QuickBooks, answer the register, attach records. Your range narrows as evidence arrives. Criticals surface.
- Week twoVerdict, buyer-by-buyer read, deal terms per finding, and the request list a buyer will send, with what is missing.
- Months one to sixWork the fixes in value order. The ready date moves as criticals clear. The document room fills in the buyer's order.
- Going to marketHand your advisor a graded business and a complete first-round package. Diligence becomes a handoff instead of a discovery.
Questions owners ask before going to market.
- My books are with my CPA. Do I have to enter everything myself?
- No. Connect QuickBooks and the three-statement engine does the financial work. For the rest, invite your CPA, CFO, or controller into the workspace to answer and attach what they hold. You answer the questions only you can answer.
- Is this a valuation I can show a buyer?
- It is a valuation you can defend: three methods, weights you can see, and a multiple itemized driver by driver. It is not a certified appraisal. Its job is to show you what a buyer's number will look like and why, before a buyer tells you.
- I already have a banker. Why would I do this first?
- Because a banker's first job on a new mandate is to find exactly these problems, at a retainer, over several weeks. Walk in with them found, graded, and half fixed, and the engagement starts at the positioning instead of the cleanup. Exit OSx also runs under an advisor's own brand, so your banker can work inside the same workspace.
- What if the verdict is wait?
- Then you learned it for the price of a trial instead of a failed process. You get the list of what has to change, in value order, with the date the business is ready if you do it.
A different situation?
A partner is coming or going
Someone has to be bought out.
A buyout needs a number both sides can live with and terms both sides understand. Get a three-method valuation with every input shown, then model the deal.
You advise owners
Your clients are going to market. Run the buyer's diligence first.
Grade every client the way a buyer will, under your brand, before an unprepared seller costs you a dead deal or a re-trade.
Buyers will look. Look first.
Six questions for a value range. Fourteen days for the verdict.