Most owners prepare for a sale by tidying the yard and printing the profit and loss. Buyers do not start there. They start with a set of measures that tell them how much of your business survives your departure, and they run the same ruler over a turf farm, a transport fleet and an online store.
The eight
Normalised earnings. Not the accounting profit. The true earnings once your wage, personal costs and genuine one off expenses are added back. Every add back needs documenting, because undocumented ones get struck out in due diligence and take price with them.
Owner dependence. How much of the business walks out the door with you. If you price every job, hold every relationship and answer every call, the buyer is applying for a job rather than acquiring an asset.
Customer concentration. Revenue share by customer across three years. One client at sixty per cent of turnover is the first risk a buyer prices and the first question their financier asks.
Recurring or contracted revenue. Revenue on the calendar is worth a multiple of revenue on the phone. This single split moves the price more than almost anything else on the list.
Margin by line, not blended. Buyers want to see which work actually makes money after every cost. They will find the customer you have been servicing at a loss out of loyalty.
Transferable systems. Whether the process lives in a system or in someone's head. Documented beats remembered every time.
Asset condition and finance position. For anyone carrying plant, gear or stock, the honest market value and the payout figures. Book values are routinely wrong in both directions.
Clean records. Three tidy financial years, business and personal spending separated, and numbers that reconcile to the bank and to whatever system runs the operation.
Why it matters more than the list suggests
A seller who hands this over on day one changes the tone of the whole process. The buyer's uncertainty drops, due diligence gets shorter, and shorter due diligence protects deals. Deals rarely die on price. They die in the gap between agreement and settlement, while somebody goes looking for something and finds a surprise.
The other reason to know these numbers early is that most of them are moveable. Concentration comes down over eighteen months. Contracted revenue can be built. Owner dependence can be engineered out with enough lead time. That is the whole argument for having the conversation a year or two before you intend to sell, rather than the week you decide you have had enough.