SME Exit Readiness

The SME Exit Readiness Assessment is a browser-based diagnostic for owners of UK small and medium-sized businesses contemplating a sale within the next few years. It's also useful for portfolio buyers to use with potential targets to get a structured (self-assessed) view of the company's state.

It scores a company across six exit-critical domains (Financial, Legal & Corporate, Commercial, Operational, People & Organisation, and Governance & Risk) through 36 structured questions answered on a five-level maturity scale running from Incomplete to Optimised in around 30 minutes.

In addition the tool can optionally return an indicative valuation tier between £1m and £20m+, flag the deal-blockers an acquirer's advisers will surface during due diligence, and benchmark the business against sector and lifecycle-phase peers. The underlying valuation methodology is shown in full, covering EBITDA multiples, adjustment factors and confidence ratings, so the user can see exactly how each figure was derived rather than taking the headline number on trust.

For a seller, seeing this reality before a buyer does is of huge value. Owners typically discover the gaps that drag down their multiple, whether patchy management accounts, undocumented customer concentration or absent succession planning, only when an acquirer's detailed diligence list appears; this assessment surfaces those weaknesses early, prioritises them by severity, and translates each into a remediation timeline measured in months or years rather than wishful weeks.

The output is a working roadmap rather than a flattering report, showing where the business sits today, what stands between it and the next valuation tier, and which fixes are worth attempting before going to market versus accepting as priced-in. For founders weighing sale timing, or advisers triaging a client portfolio, it converts a vague sense of being "nearly ready" into a realistic plan that can be shared with a buyer.