Owners tend to think about value in terms of what they have built: the equipment, the reputation, the years of work. Buyers think about something narrower. How much will this business earn after I own it? How sure can I be of that? And will a bank finance it?
Almost every question in a buyer’s first call comes back to five things. Each one moves the price, and each one is something you can work on before you sell.
1. Recurring revenue
Service agreements, maintenance contracts, memberships and customers who come back on a schedule. Buyers pay more for revenue they can count on next year without having to win it again.
What you can do: if your customers come back but nothing is written down, start putting it on paper. A simple annual service agreement can turn a loyal customer into recurring revenue a buyer will pay for.
2. How much runs through you
If the key customer relationships, the pricing and the big decisions all depend on you, a buyer has to discount for the risk that they leave when you do. This is the most common issue we see in owner-operated businesses, and one of the most fixable.
What you can do: train a lead person, write down how things are done, and bring your team into your most important customer relationships. More in could your business run for a month without you?
3. Customer concentration
When one customer is more than 15 to 20% of sales, buyers and lenders worry. If that customer leaves after the sale, a big piece of the earnings the buyer paid for goes with it.
What you can do: grow your other accounts, put the big customer under a written agreement, and make sure that relationship runs through more than one person on your side.
4. Financing
Most buyers of a Main Street business borrow to buy it, often with an SBA-backed loan. A lender looks at whether the business’s past cash flow covers the loan payments with room to spare. If a lender won’t finance the price, the price usually comes down.
This is where many deals run into trouble. In our State of Main Street 2026 review of 381 businesses for sale, half of the reviews raised a financing or debt-coverage concern. And since October 1, 2026, SBA-financed acquisitions must show 1.25x debt coverage on historical results.
What you can do: set your price from what the business can support, not from what you hope to get. A price a lender will finance gets more buyers to the table, and more of them to closing.
5. Add-backs
Add-backs are expenses on your books that a new owner would not have: a personal vehicle, a family member on payroll who does not work in the business, a one-time legal bill, a repair that will not happen again. Documented add-backs raise your earnings, and with them, your value.
The key word is documented. In the same 381 reviews, 39% questioned whether the add-backs behind the advertised earnings would hold up with a lender. Every add-back a buyer or lender rejects comes straight off the earnings, and then off the price, multiplied.
What you can do: keep receipts, run personal spending through a separate account, and make your own list of add-backs with the proof behind each one before a buyer asks.
The good news
None of these five are about how hard you have worked or how good your business is at what it does. They are about how easy it is for a buyer to see and trust what you have built. That makes every one of them something you can improve, usually within a year or two.
If you want to see where your business stands, start with the free estimate below. If you would like a candid read on how a buyer would score your business on these five, talk to us.
General information only. It is not legal, tax or financial advice, and every business is different.