The Numbers a Buyer Sees Are Already Being Written — 24 Months Out
The trailing twelve months that determine your price begins long before you decide to sell. Preparation that starts at the decision point arrives too late to change anything that matters.
Vincent Vallois, MRICSAI Transition SpecialistThe timeline
Month minus twenty-four: entity, contract and cap-table cleanup, monthly close discipline, and the start of transferring key relationships away from the founder. Month minus eighteen: fix compensation and CRM so the data being diligenced is clean at source. Month minus twelve: the profit and loss a buyer will price is now live — every month counts. Month minus six: a Quality of Earnings dry run, at €30–60k against a potential seven-figure retrade. Month minus three: acquirer mapping and positioning. Then run the process.
What two years is worth
Three million of EBITDA at 6.5 times is €19.5M today. Two years of margin work takes EBITDA to €4.2M. De-risking — a higher recurring mix, key-person dependency removed, clean data, rep dispersion fixed — supports eight times. That is €33.6M.
Fourteen million euros for twenty-four months of unglamorous work, taxed as a capital gain.
The multiple is built, not received
It is not a market fact handed to you. It is a set of risk attributes: revenue quality, customer concentration, management depth, data integrity, growth durability.
Run the process in a strong year rather than a recovering one — buyers price the trend, and "we're rebounding" is the weakest sentence in M&A. Two credible bidders are worth more than any deck, and that is a preparation problem rather than a banker problem.
Write down the trailing-twelve-month EBITDA a buyer would compute today after haircutting your add-backs by 60%. Multiply by six. That is today's real price. Put a date twenty-four months out beside it.
Deal maker across 30 countries, and an operator running AI-automated commercial operations day to day.
Meet the team →Questions we get asked
When should I start preparing to sell my business?
Twenty-four months before the process. The trailing twelve months a buyer prices goes live at month minus twelve, so anything started at the decision point arrives too late to change the numbers.
What is exit preparation actually worth?
In our worked example, €3M EBITDA at 6.5 times is €19.5M. Two years of margin work and de-risking took it to €4.2M at eight times — €33.6M.
Is the multiple something I can influence?
Yes. It is not a market fact you receive but a set of risk attributes you build: revenue quality, customer concentration, management depth, data integrity and growth durability.
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