When preparing a business for sale, most leadership teams focus heavily on the financials revenue, EBITDA, margin, cost base. And rightly so. But there’s another lever that directly influences not just your attractiveness to buyers, but your multiple, and it’s one that most businesses undervalue or ignore.
The True Indicator of Growth Potential
To achieve a premium multiple, a business must prove it can operate, grow, and scale without reliance on any one person, especially the founders or current leadership. One of the clearest signs of this is a repeatable, proven system for attracting and converting new customers.
This is distinct from account management or upselling to existing clients. It’s about net new business:
- Is the business generating new business?
- Can the business generate its own leads without relying on a founder’s network?
- Is there a defined, working sales process that consistently converts?
- Does the brand and marketing engine generate enough inbound demand or support outbound efforts?
- Can a buyer look at your go-to-market function and see how growth happens?
- Can you put a value on your pipeline and demonstrate how it got there?
Why This Drives the Multiple
This is where you move from a standard 5-6x EBITDA valuation to an extraordinary 8-12x. The difference is risk.
Buyers want evidence of:
- A self-sustaining commercial engine
- A scalable pipeline generation machine
- Market visibility and positioning that supports customer acquisition
When a business is seen as a well-oiled sales and marketing machine with the capability to grow its share of a market regardless of who’s in charge it becomes an attractive platform investment or bolt-on opportunity.
The Common Failure Point
Ironically, this is also where most businesses fall short. They:
- Undervalue the role of marketing beyond “website and brochures”
- Struggle to align sales and marketing into a single revenue-driving engine
- Rely too heavily on word-of-mouth or founder-led sales
- Fail to build measurable, scalable campaigns or sales playbooks
As a result, they leave significant value on the table.
What Buyers Want to See
To build confidence in post-exit growth, CEOs must be able to demonstrate that the business has a marketing and sales engine that’s scalable, repeatable, and working today.
Here’s what serious buyers are looking for:
- Documented sales and marketing strategies
Clear frameworks for lead generation and growth that don’t rely on individuals.
- Defined ICPs and sharp messaging
A detailed understanding of who the business serves, and why those customers buy.
- Written, in-depth persona research
Not just insights, but actionable knowledge that educates the whole company and aligns sales, marketing, and leadership around the customer.
- A cohesive sales story
Brought to life through a central content ‘bible’ — sales decks, landing pages, email flows, blog content, and social campaigns that all tell the same story in the right way.
- A marketing process that hits the metrics
Visibility, engagement, SEO performance, campaign efficiency — but also and most importantly, it delivers real, qualified, closeable leads.
- Early-stage lead intelligence
A process that surfaces high-value leads earlier, providing valuable insight and shortening the sales cycle.
- A CRM that proves it all
Real data, cleanly linking marketing activities to sales outcomes, showing how revenue is predictably generated.
The Growth Process That Drives Value
The difference between a standard exit and a strategic, high-multiple acquisition isn’t just found in financials; it’s found in the process that drives future revenue. Buyers aren’t just investing in what your business is; they’re investing in what it’s capable of becoming.
When your marketing and sales functions work together independently, predictably, and without reliance on you, your business becomes more valuable, more attractive, and more exit-ready.