Deals rarely die on price. They die on surprises.
A surprise that arrives after the LOI is leverage for the other side. Run the analysis before the business goes to market, and every finding becomes something you have already explained, priced, or fixed.
Sell-side diligence is offense, not paperwork
The add-backs you intend to defend are worth testing before a buyer's analyst tests them. So is the gap between booked revenue and collected cash, the treatment of owner compensation, and anything non-recurring sitting inside the trailing twelve months.
Where the evidence supports the number, you hold price with something better than insistence. Where it does not, you find out on your own timetable rather than in a retrade conversation.
Win the next mandate. Then close it faster.
Zenith is not only for the deals you already have. Put a credible valuation in front of a prospective client the same day you meet them, then keep buyers moving once the listing is live.
Win the work
One-click valuation reports
The oldest lead magnet in this business is a free valuation. The problem was always the analyst hours behind each one. Pull a prospect's financials and Zenith drafts the market-anchored report in a click, so you can put a real number in front of every owner who might sell, not just the ones already in your pipeline.
Indicative valuation
Prepared for: prospective seller
- Cleanly formatted PDF or branded one-pager, ready to send
- Comparable multiples drawn from the relevant peer set
- Turns a cold list into a warm conversation in hours, not weeks
Data room
Self-serve buyer Q&A
Less-experienced buyers stall when their questions go unanswered. Give them an AI that's (optionally) informed by the deal so they can get accurate answers immediately. Keep more buyers moving toward an offer.
- Per-recipient access controls. Each buyer sees only what you allow.
- Answers grounded in the deal's actual financials, not guesses
- Fewer dropped processes, less management bandwidth burned
Your buyer's financing just got harder, which makes it your problem
From October 1, 2026, SBA change of ownership deals have to clear higher coverage on historical figures, and larger transactions require an independent quality of earnings report ordered by the lender. Add-backs that cannot be evidenced will not carry.
For anyone taking a business to market, that means the earnings story has to be defensible on paper before a buyer's lender tests it, not after. See what the new rules require.
Frequently asked questions
Why would a seller run diligence on their own business?
Because the alternative is finding out what a buyer will find at the worst possible moment, after an LOI, when every surprise becomes a retrade. Running the analysis first lets you fix what is fixable, prepare an explanation for what is not, and hold price on the things that are genuinely defensible.
Does a sell-side report replace the buyer’s own diligence?
No, and it should not try to. The buyer will run their own process. What a sell-side pass does is remove the avoidable surprises, so the buyer’s work confirms your story rather than unravelling it.
What does the valuation report actually contain?
A short, market-anchored indication of value drawn from the same engine as the full workbook: normalized earnings, comparable multiples for the relevant peer set, and an implied range. It is built for the top of the funnel, as something to attach to outreach rather than a formal appraisal.
Can buyers see everything in the data room Q&A?
Only what you allow. Access is controlled per recipient, so each buyer sees the subset you have opened to them.
What if the buyer’s lender wants reviewed work product?
Any report can add an expert review on request: a senior analyst from the bench behind our quality of earnings engagements goes through the workbook line by line, holds a findings call, and issues a lender-ready summary letter. For a seller heading into an SBA-financed process, that is often the difference between an earnings story the lender accepts and one it re-derives.
Taking a business to market?
We will show you what a buyer's analyst is going to find, while there is still time to do something about it.