An exit readiness review answers one question before a buyer asks it: what would make someone pay less for this boiler company, or walk away? We look at your marketing, customer base, assets and records from the outside in, then give you a ranked, written list of issues with an honest estimate of how long each one takes to fix.
It is not a valuation and it is not legal or tax advice. It is the operating and marketing groundwork that makes those later conversations shorter and calmer.
What the review checks
The review is built around five questions a buyer's team tends to work through, in roughly this order.
1. Who controls the company's assets?
We list every domain, website login, Google Business Profile, ad account, call-tracking number, social profile, review platform and customer database. For each one we record who the registered owner is, who pays for it, and who has admin access. In owner-run boiler companies, it is common to find at least one asset held by a former employee, a relative or a past agency.
2. How much depends on the owner personally?
We look at how customers reach you and who they ask for. Is the owner's cell number on the trucks? Do reviews name a person rather than the company? Does the owner personally quote every replacement? Each yes is a hand-over risk.
3. How steady is the customer base?
We examine your maintenance customers: how many there are, when they signed up, how many renewed last year, and how many went on to buy a replacement boiler or a repair. If the records don't exist, we say so plainly.
4. Where does new work come from?
We trace your installs and repairs back to the channel that produced them, as far as the data allows: search, map listings, referrals, repeat customers, builders, property managers. A buyer wants to know whether demand is spread across several sources or hangs on one.
5. Can the records prove any of this?
Finally, we test whether the claims in steps 1 to 4 can be backed by exports, reports and logs, rather than memory. A strong story with no paper behind it rarely survives due diligence.
Who it is for
The review suits boiler company owners who:
- expect to sell, merge or bring in a partner within two to five years
- want a successor (a family member, a manager or a key employee) to take over
- are about to approach a lender or investor and want their house in order
- simply want to know how dependent the business is on them
It is less useful if a sale is already under way and diligence has started. At that point, talk to Sedighi.ca and your lawyer first; we can still help with urgent asset recovery.
What's included and the timeline
| Week | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1 | A 90-minute interview with the owner, plus read-only access to the accounts you can find |
| 2 | Asset inventory, ownership checks and a review of reviews, listings and website |
| 3 | Customer-base and lead-source analysis from the records you provide |
| 4 | Written report and a walk-through call |
The report ranks each issue by how much it would worry a buyer and how long it takes to fix. A typical list mixes quick items (recovering a domain, removing a personal number from a listing) with slow ones (building two years of renewal history).
How results are measured
A review is measured by whether the list is accurate and usable, not by leads. Six to twelve months later, we suggest re-running the asset inventory and the customer-base figures. The measure of progress is simple: fewer open items, and more claims backed by records.
If you then want ongoing help, the work usually continues through transferable marketing assets or buyer-ready marketing data.
Mistakes to avoid
- Waiting for a buyer to find the problems. Issues discovered in diligence are negotiated against you. Issues you found and fixed two years earlier simply aren't there.
- Treating the review as a sales pitch. If the main problems are outside marketing, such as a key technician with no agreement or a lease question, we will say so and point you to the right adviser.
- Fixing everything at once in October. Schedule the work around heating season. Our exit readiness timeline shows how to spread it across the year.
- Hiding weak spots from your own advisers. Your lawyer and accountant can only plan around what they know.
For what the review costs, see pricing, or read what buyers look at in a boiler business first.
Frequently asked questions
Is the readiness review a valuation?
No. We don't estimate what your company is worth or quote multiples. The review identifies the operating and marketing issues that tend to come up when a buyer examines a boiler business, so you can address them before anyone puts a number on it.
How long does it take?
Usually three to four weeks from the first call to the written report, depending on how quickly you can give us access to accounts and records. Most of your time goes into one long interview and a few follow-up questions.
Will you need our financial statements?
Only at a summary level, such as revenue split between installs, repairs and maintenance. Detailed financials, tax returns and corporate records belong with your accountant and lawyer, and we don't need them to do this work.
What happens after the review?
You decide. Some owners fix the list themselves, some ask us to handle the marketing items, and some take the report to Sedighi.ca to start a broader exit conversation. There is no obligation either way.