May 22, 2026 Diligence
What your buyer's analyst is actually looking for.
There is a tab in your CIM the buyer's analyst opens first. It is not the revenue tab. It is the marketing tab. Six lines on that tab move valuation by half a turn. Most founders write none of them.
I have sat next to enough analysts during diligence to know what they look for. They are not looking for creative campaigns. They are not looking for awareness metrics. They are looking for proof that the growth on the projection sheet is going to keep happening after the founder leaves.
That proof lives in six places. None of them are complicated. All six are usually missing.
1. Where every customer actually came from
Channel-level attribution. Not "we run some Facebook ads and we have a referral program." A documented breakdown of CAC by channel, by cohort, over the last 24 months at minimum.
If you cannot produce this table, the buyer assumes it does not exist. They are right.
2. The unit economics, by cohort
LTV, CAC, payback period. Per cohort. Per channel. Per segment. The metric that matters most is the trend line.
If the analyst can chart your cohorts and the line is improving, your multiple goes up. If they cannot chart it, your multiple goes down. Same business. Different documentation.
3. Conversion mechanics that survive the founder
The actual conversion process, written down. Who does what. Which assets do the selling. Which steps the team owns versus which steps the founder still personally touches.
The number of steps that still depend on the founder is the number the buyer cares about most. Lower is better. Zero is the goal.
4. The marketing-sales handoff, in writing
How a lead becomes an opportunity becomes a customer. The trigger conditions. The SLAs between teams. The data structures.
If this is undocumented, the buyer's analyst writes "founder-dependent revenue process" in their notes. That phrase is worth half a turn on the multiple by itself.
5. The retention and expansion machine
How customers stay. How customers grow. The documented system for both.
For most businesses I see, retention is a feeling. Expansion is luck. Both need to be documented as systems with metrics behind them before they read as assets.
6. A defensible forward projection
The growth number on the projection sheet, backed by the documented mechanism in lines 1 through 5.
The buyer is going to ask "how will you do this." If the answer is the same as items 1 through 5, you have built a moat. If the answer is "we will run more ads," you have not.
The buyer is not buying your growth. They are buying your machine. The two are not the same.
Each of these six items takes weeks to document properly. None of them are complicated work. All of them require somebody to actually sit down and write them.
The reason most $10M+ businesses do not have them written is that the founder has been busy growing. There is no time. Until 12 months before the deal opens. Then there is no time, and also no margin for error.
Start now.
If you want to see what "documented" actually looks like, here's the playbook that lays out all eight parts.
If you want a buyer's-eye look at where your six lines currently sit, the Marketing Value Assessment is 45 minutes. Complimentary for $10M+ founders inside the 12 to 36 month exit window.