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Founder FAQ
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The question isn't simply what your business is worth. It's what the right buyer will pay for it. Your industry, service area, customers, EBITDA, revenue mix, growth, margins, and countless other factors all influence what a buyer will pay.
Most owners ask, “What is my business worth?” We ask a better question: “What is it worth to the right buyer?” The right strategic or private equity buyer may see value in your company that isn't obvious on the surface: geographic expansion, customer synergies, operational efficiencies, or a strong market position.
Our job is to find those value drivers, find the buyers who value them most, and make sure you're paid for them.
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There is no universal multiple, and the difference can be worth billions. EBITDA is the starting point, but buyers look far beyond the bottom line. Your location, customers, revenue mix, growth, margins, management depth, and strategic fit can all create—or destroy—a premium.
Our analysis identifies those value drivers, while our relationships with private equity and strategic buyers help us find the parties most likely to pay for them.
The goal isn't to accept the market multiple. It's to understand what makes your business worth more and find the buyer willing to pay for it.
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Most M&A transactions take 6–12 months from preparation to closing. The timeline depends on the business, its financial readiness, deal complexity, financing, and—perhaps most importantly—the process used to identify and engage the right buyer. Preparation, financial modeling, and CIM creation can be highly structured and predictable; finding the right buyer is often the biggest variable.
At ProActive, we believe the process should take months, not years. Our established relationships across private equity and strategic acquirers mean the right buyer for your business may already be within our network. Rather than relying solely on broad-market outreach, we can leverage existing relationships and industry knowledge to identify qualified buyers, create competitive tension, and keep the process moving. Our recent sale of three Florida plumbing companies closed in just 38 days—even after the businesses had previously failed to transact twice.
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Before you have to sell. The best time to prepare for an exit is long before a buyer ever comes to the table. Ideally, owners should begin preparing 2–5 years before a potential sale, giving them time to clean up financials, strengthen operations, improve EBITDA, address weaknesses, and build a business that can withstand buyer scrutiny.
At ProActive, we help owners prepare before they're under pressure to transact. Our CPA-led approach allows us to identify financial and operational opportunities early, so you can make improvements while you still have time to benefit from them. You shouldn't start preparing when you're ready to sell—you should start preparing so that you're ready when the right opportunity arrives.
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Preparation starts with making your business easy for a buyer to understand, verify, and value. Clean financials, consistent reporting, strong EBITDA, documented operations, a diversified customer base, clear revenue mix, and well-organized records can all make a meaningful difference when a buyer begins diligence. Owners should also address outstanding liabilities, owner dependence, operational gaps, and other issues that could create friction or reduce value.
At ProActive, we go beyond simply telling you to “get your books in order.” Our CPA-led financial analysis allows us to dig into the business, identify what is actually driving value, uncover issues that could hurt a transaction, and determine what can be improved before going to market. We prepare the business to be bought—not just the owner to sell.
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The right buyer depends on what makes your business valuable. Private equity firms typically look for companies with strong EBITDA, sustainable growth, defensible market positions, and opportunities to scale or make acquisitions. Strategic buyers—often competitors or companies in adjacent industries—may value your business differently because of geographic expansion, customer overlap, capabilities, or other synergies.
Your competition matters, too. A buyer doesn't evaluate your company in a vacuum; they are comparing it against other acquisition opportunities competing for the same capital. That's why identifying the right buyer pool is critical. At ProActive, our relationships across private equity, strategic acquirers, and other financial buyers allow us to understand who is actively looking, what they're looking for, and where your company fits. The goal isn't simply to find someone who wants to buy your business. It's to find the buyers who have the strongest reason to want it.
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This is where the deal gets tested—and where deals can fall apart. Once a buyer moves beyond the initial valuation and begins diligence, virtually every aspect of the business can come under review: financials, taxes, contracts, customers, employees, operations, and more. Buyers are looking to confirm that the business they agreed to buy is the business they are actually getting, and what they uncover can affect the price, structure, terms, or whether the deal closes at all.
This is where ProActive's experience matters. We don't wait for a buyer to uncover an issue and then figure out how to explain it. Our financial understanding and transaction experience allow us to anticipate the questions, prepare the answers, and address problems before they become leverage for the buyer. We work alongside the broader deal team to keep diligence organized, responsive, and moving forward. The riskiest part of a transaction is not discovering that a problem exists—it's discovering it too late.
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We don't wait for buyers to find you. We know where to look—and who to call. With experience spanning more than 100 industries, decades of C-suite leadership, and hundreds of millions of dollars in completed transactions, ProActive has developed relationships with private equity firms, strategic acquirers, investors, and other industry leaders. We use that experience to identify buyers based on fit, financial capacity, strategic rationale, geography, and their appetite for companies like yours. A strong buyer list isn't simply a list of companies in your industry; it's a carefully evaluated group of buyers with a specific reason to want your business.
Our relationships give us a head start. The right buyer for your company may already be someone we know, someone we've worked with, or someone within our broader transaction network. That allows us to go beyond simply putting your business on the market—we can leverage existing relationships and C-suite-level access to put your company in front of the people most capable of recognizing its value.
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An unsolicited offer is an opportunity—not necessarily an offer you should accept. Before agreeing to anything, you need to understand what your business is worth in the broader market, who the buyer is, how serious they are, and whether the proposed price and deal structure actually reflect your company’s value. Going directly into an exclusive negotiation with the first buyer who approaches you can eliminate the competitive tension that often strengthens both price and terms.
At ProActive, we can turn one buyer's interest into a broader market opportunity. Our relationships with private equity firms and strategic acquirers allow us to evaluate the buyer who approached you against other potential buyers who may have a stronger strategic reason to acquire your company. We can analyze the offer, identify what the buyer sees in your business, determine what others might be willing to pay, and help you decide whether the offer is actually worth accepting. You may have received one offer. That doesn't mean it's the only offer your business can command.
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We don't just sell the business you have—we help uncover the value you've already built. Before a company ever reaches the market, we analyze its financials, EBITDA, revenue mix, customer base, operations, and other factors that buyers use to determine both price and risk. That analysis can reveal opportunities to strengthen earnings, eliminate issues, and build a defensible case for a higher valuation. Buyers ultimately pay for the earnings they believe are sustainable and the future value they believe they can create, which is why identifying and substantiating those value drivers before going to market matters.
This is where ProActive's CPA-led approach makes a difference. We don't wait for a buyer to discover an opportunity—or a problem. We identify the value drivers ourselves, quantify them, and position them for the market. Our goal is to create a clear value bridge between where your business is today and what the right buyer could ultimately be willing to pay. In our recent transaction involving three Florida plumbing companies, that process helped uncover the companies' true financial value and supported an 8.68x EBITDA multiple, above the typical 6–8x range we were seeing for the industry.
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Because buyers don't pay a premium for numbers they can't trust. Clean financial statements give a buyer confidence that the earnings they're paying for are real, repeatable, and supported by the underlying business. They also reduce uncertainty during diligence, make valuation easier to defend, and prevent legitimate issues from becoming negotiating leverage for the buyer.
At ProActive, we don't just clean up the books—we use the financials to uncover value. Our approach allows us to dig beneath the reported numbers, identify the true economics of the business, normalize earnings, and uncover revenue and operational drivers that may not be apparent from the existing records. In our experience, the difference between a standard valuation and a premium valuation is often found in the details of the financials.
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Buyers don't just look at how much you make—they look at how much they can trust what you make. Messy books, inconsistent financial reporting, unexplained expenses, weak margins, declining EBITDA, customer concentration, poor revenue visibility, untracked inventory, and owner-dependent expenses can all create uncertainty and give a buyer reasons to discount the valuation. Even when the business itself is strong, financial problems can make that strength difficult to prove.
At ProActive, our CPA-led approach is designed to find these issues before a buyer does. We clean and analyze the financials, reconcile inconsistencies, normalize earnings, identify the true revenue mix, and determine which issues are actually affecting value. Our goal isn't to hide the problems—it's to understand them, fix what can be fixed, and make sure the value that's really there can be demonstrated to the buyer. In the right circumstances, the difference between a business that looks average on paper and one that commands a premium can be found in the financial analysis.
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Not all revenue is valued the same. Two companies can generate the same revenue and EBITDA yet command very different valuations based on where that revenue comes from. Recurring revenue, diversified customers, higher-margin services, long-term contracts, and predictable demand can make a business significantly more attractive to buyers. Conversely, customer concentration, volatile revenue, low-margin work, or dependence on a small number of services can increase perceived risk and put downward pressure on the multiple.
At ProActive, we analyze the revenue—not just the total. We look at who is paying you, what they're paying for, where the revenue comes from, how profitable each segment is, and how predictable it is. That analysis can reveal strengths that aren't obvious from the top-line number and help us position the business toward buyers who place the highest value on those characteristics. In our three-company plumbing transaction, understanding the true revenue mix was a key part of uncovering the value that the existing financials weren't showing.
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A Quality of Earnings (QoE) analysis determines whether a company's reported earnings truly reflect the performance a buyer can expect to receive after the transaction. It goes beyond simply looking at EBITDA. The analysis examines the underlying financials, identifying non-recurring expenses, unusual revenue, owner-related expenses, accounting inconsistencies, customer concentration, and other factors that can cause reported earnings to overstate or understate the company's sustainable profitability.
At ProActive, we approach earnings from the perspective of both the owner and the buyer. Our financial expertise allows us to identify adjustments, normalize EBITDA, and uncover the underlying economics of the business before a buyer does. A QoE isn't about making the numbers look better—it’s about making sure the numbers tell the complete story. The better we understand that story, the better we can defend the value of the business when it reaches the market.
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You don't improve EBITDA by making the numbers look better—you improve the business that produces them. The biggest opportunities are often found in pricing, gross margins, labor efficiency, eliminating unnecessary expenses, improving revenue mix, reducing customer concentration, and addressing operational inefficiencies. Even small, sustainable improvements in EBITDA can have an outsized impact on valuation because every additional dollar of EBITDA is multiplied by the buyer's valuation multiple.
we identify the specific levers that can move your valuation before you go to market. Our financial analysis helps us separate temporary improvements from sustainable earnings, uncover expenses that can be eliminated or normalized, analyze revenue and margins, and determine where the business has room to become more profitable. The goal isn't to sell you as you are today—it's to identify what you can realistically improve before a buyer ever sees the business.
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When you're selling a business, your M&A advisor needs to be qualified to understand what that business is actually worth. Being personable isn't a valuation methodology. A transaction can hinge on financial analysis, EBITDA normalization, valuation, and the ability to distinguish between what a business looks like on paper and what it is actually worth.
Certified Public Accountant (CPA)
The highest professional credential in accounting, requiring rigorous education, examination, and experience. This financial foundation is critical when analyzing the numbers behind a business valuation.Master of Accountancy (MAcc)
Advanced education in accounting, financial reporting, taxation, and financial analysis—providing the technical foundation to understand the financial statements behind a transaction.Master of Business Administration (MBA)
Advanced business education spanning finance, strategy, operations, management, and the broader business principles that influence how buyers evaluate companies.Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA)
Specialized training focused specifically on helping business owners prepare for and navigate an eventual exit.At ProActive, these credentials aren't just letters after a name—they directly inform how we analyze and advise on your business. We believe the person helping determine the value of your life's work should have the qualifications to understand the numbers behind that value. Your M&A advisor shouldn't just be someone you like. They should be someone qualified to tell you what your business is worth, why it's worth it, and how to defend that value to a buyer.
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You trust a CPA with your audit. Why not your exit? Selling your business is likely one of the largest financial decisions you will ever make, yet the person leading that transaction may have less financial expertise than the professionals you trust to prepare and audit your books. The most important person in your sale should be the most qualified.
Look beyond personality and a polished pitch. Your M&A advisor should understand business valuation, financial analysis, EBITDA, deal structure, due diligence, and what drives a buyer's willingness to pay. They should also have the relationships to create meaningful competition and the experience to navigate the transaction when things get difficult.
At ProActive, our CPA-led approach puts financial expertise at the center of the transaction. With CPA, MAcc, MBA, and CEPA credentials, decades of executive and M&A experience, and hundreds of millions of dollars in completed transactions, we bring the qualifications and experience required to understand not only how to sell your business, but how to maximize what it's worth.
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Confidentiality isn't a box you check—it is something you actively protect throughout the transaction. Your employees, customers, competitors, and even other industry participants do not need to know your business is for sale. Information should be disclosed selectively and strategically, typically only after a prospective buyer has been vetted and agreed to confidentiality terms. The goal is to give qualified buyers enough information to evaluate the opportunity without unnecessarily exposing your business to the market.
At ProActive, confidentiality is built into how we approach the sale from the beginning. We control who receives information, when they receive it, and how much they see at each stage of the process. Our relationships also allow us to approach qualified buyers directly rather than broadly advertising that your company is for sale. The goal is simple: create competition among buyers without creating disruption for the people running your business.
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Your employees are often part of what makes the business valuable in the first place. What happens to them after a sale depends on the buyer, the structure of the transaction, and the buyer's plans for the company. Some buyers may retain the existing team and invest in growth, while others may restructure certain roles or bring in additional management. There is no one-size-fits-all answer—but the people who helped build your company should be an important consideration when evaluating a buyer.
At ProActive, we help you understand the buyer's plans before you agree to a deal. We evaluate not only what a buyer is willing to pay, but also why they want your business, how they intend to operate it, and what that could mean for your employees and legacy. Our role is to help you find the right buyer—not simply the highest bidder.
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A CIM—Confidential Information Memorandum—is the pinnacle of business marketing. It is the document that tells the story of your company to qualified buyers, combining financial performance, operations, market position, growth opportunities, management, and other critical information into a compelling investment narrative. A strong CIM doesn't simply present your business—it positions its value.
At ProActive, we treat the CIM as far more than a document. It is the foundation of how your company is presented to the market. Our CPA-led financial understanding allows us to connect the numbers to the story, highlight the company's strongest value drivers, address potential concerns, and present the opportunity in a way that gives buyers a clear reason to engage. The goal is to make a buyer understand not only what your business is today, but what it could become in their hands.
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