Business Tools

How Attractive Is the Business Behind the Numbers?

A financial valuation tells you what the earnings suggest. This scorecard measures the quality, transferability and risk behind those earnings across 35 weighted factors.

Attractiveness Walkthrough

See How the Business Attractiveness Scorecard Works.

Financial performance tells only part of the story. Watch a real business example to see how the scorecard evaluates the characteristics that can make a company more—or less—attractive to a potential buyer.

A valuation tells you what the numbers support. Attractiveness tells you about the business behind them.

Two businesses can produce similar earnings and receive similar financial valuations while presenting very different levels of risk to a buyer. This scorecard helps evaluate the factors behind the financials — customer concentration, owner dependence, management strength, recurring revenue, systems, market position and more — that can influence how attractive and transferable the business may be.

Business Valuation

Financial / quantitative view

Business Attractiveness

Structural / qualitative view

More Complete Picture

Owners see what to improve before a sale; buyers get another due-diligence lens.

01 of 06

Marketing & Sales

0 of 35 factors

How reliably the business creates demand, and how it is regarded by the market it serves.

01

Years of business operation

The longer the company has been established, the more attractive it typically is to buyers.

1 · Significant weakness7 · Significant strength

02

External brand recognition

Is the business well regarded in the market? Reviews? Awards?

1 · Significant weakness7 · Significant strength

03

Search marketing in place (site, SEO, GBP, social)

Customers are trackable to searching for the products / services of the business.

1 · Significant weakness7 · Significant strength

04

Direct response marketing in place

Paid direct response ads that convert $1 of ad spend into $2+ of revenue.

1 · Significant weakness7 · Significant strength

05

Referral system in place

How much revenue comes from referrals from existing customers?

1 · Significant weakness7 · Significant strength

06

Deliver on commitments

Delivers exceptional products / service that leads to high customer satisfaction.

1 · Significant weakness7 · Significant strength

Each factor is rated 1–7 and multiplied by its weighting; your score is the total weighted rating divided by the total possible weighted rating. This is an educational diagnostic, not a formal business appraisal or valuation opinion.