The Exit Value Gap Assessment is a fixed-fee diagnostic that tells you what your business would realistically fetch today, what it could support in two to three years, and precisely which gaps stand between the two. Delivered in ten business days.
For owners of private companies above $5M in revenue. Sanjay Kulkarni, CPA, CBV, CFA, C.Dir.
The output, in one picture. The band is where the work is.
Illustrative. Your own two numbers, and the reasons for the distance between them, are what the assessment produces.
You have built something worth millions on paper. The trouble is that the figure in your head usually comes from a peer’s rumoured sale price, an industry rule of thumb, or what you need the business to be worth in order to retire.
None of those is a valuation. The number a buyer will actually put in writing depends on how much of the business walks out the door with you, how concentrated the revenue is, whether the financial records survive diligence, and half a dozen other things that are fixable given two or three years, and not fixable at all once the letter of intent is signed.
By the time most owners learn this, they are already in a process, already emotionally committed to a timeline, and negotiating from the weaker side of the table.
Each is scored against what buyers, lenders, and their advisors actually test. The score is not the point; the gaps it exposes are.
Whether the statements, margins, and reporting can withstand a buyer’s accountant without renegotiation.
How much of the relationships, knowledge, and decision-making leaves the business when you do.
Concentration, contract terms, recurrence, and how much of next year is already committed.
Whether there is a credible, evidenced reason for a buyer to pay for the future rather than the past.
Documented processes, ERP and data integrity, and whether the business runs on systems or on people.
Corporate records, share structure, agreements, and the tax position of a sale as currently structured.
Redundant assets, working capital norms, related-party balances, and debt that complicates a transaction.
Your own timing, financial requirement, and what you intend to do on the Monday after closing.
Fixed fee. Ten business days. Credited in full against a subsequent engagement if we go on to work together.
No, and that is deliberate. This is an advisory diagnostic producing a planning range, not a conclusion of value under CBV Institute Standards of Practice. If your situation requires a formal report for a lender, the CRA, or a court, that is a separate engagement and I will tell you so. The distinction is stated in the engagement letter.
Three to five years of financial statements, the current year to date, your corporate structure, and roughly three hours of your time across two sessions. Nothing is required from your staff, and nobody in the business needs to know the work is happening.
Then this is early in the right way. Nearly everything that closes the gap takes two to three years of deliberate work. An owner who starts eighteen months out is choosing between cosmetic fixes; an owner who starts five years out is choosing between real ones.
Three paths, discussed at the debrief. You take the findings and act on them yourself. You bring me in on specific items. Or we work together over the runway to close the gap before the business goes to market. There is no obligation to take any of them.
Thirty minutes, no charge. We will cover where the business is, what you need it to be worth, and whether the assessment would tell you anything you do not already know.
Sanjay Kulkarni, CPA, CBV, CFA, C.Dir. Twenty-five years as CFO of mid-market companies with global operations, and more than one hundred completed valuations.
