Diagnose · Value Builder Score
Increase your business value. Take home more cash. Have more time in your day.
Answer the questionnaire and we'll return our findings to you: where your company scores on the drivers buyers actually price, and what each one is costing you.
Roughly fifteen minutes. No financial statements required, and no obligation.
Start the assessmentWhat you get back
Your score, benchmarked against thousands of other private companies
A driver-by-driver breakdown of where value is leaking
A detailed action plan for increasing valuation and cash flow
A conversation with us to walk through the results
Take the assessment.
The questionnaire is hosted by The Value Builder System. When you finish, your results come to us and we review them with you.
Value Builder questionnaire
A short questionnaire, and a real benchmark.
The questionnaire is hosted by The Value Builder System, so it opens in a new tab. Your answers go directly to Eric Wingerter, and we come back to you with your score and what it means for your valuation.
Start the questionnaire →No financial statements required. No obligation.
Already completed the questionnaire elsewhere? Send us your results and we'll review them with you, along with a detailed action plan for increasing your valuation and creating more cash flow in your business.
Maximize value in advance of a sale.
Most M&A advisors and business brokers focus on maximizing only transaction value, which comes from combining an optimal financing and tax structure with a buyer.
We go beyond that to maximize a company's intrinsic value in the months and years leading up to a sale. Both should be maximized to deliver the most value to the seller.
Buyers set their offer not only on the cash flows of a company, but on the riskiness of those cash flows — what valuation practitioners call the company specific risk premium.
The traditional paths
Grow sales
Cut costs
Acquire a competitor
Each of these can work. Followed blindly, without a proper fit within a detailed strategic plan, each has also led companies to their demise.
Why now
The baby boomer retirement phenomenon.
350,000+
US companies with sales between $5M and $100M
70%
will attempt to transfer ownership by 2030
35–40%
of those transactions have historically failed, or happened only through undesirable seller price concessions
As the baby boomer generation seeks to retire, many expect an increase in the supply of small and lower middle-market businesses on the market. More companies competing for the same acquisition capital may push valuations down.
Owners who have been methodically increasing value and preparing for sale have the highest likelihood of exiting at a time and a valuation that suits their retirement plan.
Preparing to sell your company.
Companies with identical cash flows can have drastically different values because of the riskiness of those cash flows, even companies in the same industry. Customer concentration, vendor concentration, excessive reliance on an owner, disorganized financials, lack of replicable processes, and many others all lead buyers to perceive a company as riskier, and to pay less for it.
Most private companies have an opportunity to double their value over a one to five year period by adopting a disciplined, methodical approach to both reducing company specific risk and increasing cash flow.
We identify as many risk areas as possible, assess them objectively, and link those assessments directly to the calculation of business value. Then we begin mitigating risk, which increases value independent of any increase in cash flow.
A convenient effect: when companies put systems in place that reduce their risk, profit usually increases as well.
How we quantify the riskCompleted the questionnaire? Get your score.
We'll review your results with you and deliver a detailed action plan for increasing your valuation and creating more cash flow in your business.