What Business Buyers Actually Care About
Patterns from real buyer-seller conversations across 59 industries on Rejigg.
We run a marketplace where business owners sell directly to buyers. Every deal starts with a conversation, and we've facilitated thousands of them across 59 industries. The same themes keep surfacing regardless of what the business does. Here's what actually matters to the person sitting across the table from you.
Five Things Every Buyer Evaluates
1. Can this business run without you?
Owner dependence is the single most common topic in buyer-seller conversations. Some version of it appears in 42 of the 59 industries we've analyzed, and it's usually one of the first things a buyer probes.
The question sounds different depending on the business. In landscaping, buyers ask: "Who owns the route, you, the foreman, or the scheduler?" In software development, it's: "What would break if you stopped doing sales, solutioning, or architecture tomorrow?" In an MSP, they want to know which clients would call you first if something goes wrong. In an auditing firm: "What portion of revenue is contingent on you personally being in the room?"
The underlying evaluation is the same. Buyers are trying to predict how bumpy the first 90 days will be after you step back.
Here's what a strong answer sounds like from a landscaping owner: "Scheduling is owned by our office scheduler, and each route has a working foreman who runs morning load-out. Customer escalations go to our account manager first, and I only step in for top-tier HOA board issues."
And here's what raises concerns: "I do routing, I handle every complaint, and nobody else can price changes correctly."
The good news is that owner dependence is fixable. You can start delegating specific functions, documenting how decisions get made, and building a transition plan. Buyers expect some involvement during the handoff. What worries them is when everything funnels to one phone.
See how owner dependence plays out in specific industries →
2. How reliable is the revenue?
Buyers care less about your total revenue number and more about the shape of it. How much is recurring? How concentrated is it? What does a bad month look like?
In HVAC, buyers dig into membership quality. They want to know if your service agreement base is real, active, and actually getting serviced on schedule. A big membership count doesn't help if customers are lapsed or signed up on a promo that never renews. One HVAC owner we worked with could show that 86% of members received both annual visits and that member households averaged $612 per service visit versus $410 for non-members. That kind of specificity builds confidence fast.
In managed services, the question becomes: do your billed seats match reality? Buyers will sample a few large clients by comparing invoices to actual user counts. If billing has drifted from what's deployed, that gap comes straight out of the valuation.
In ecommerce, contribution margin by channel and SKU is the real number. Gross margin looks great until you subtract ad spend, marketplace fees, fulfillment costs, and returns. Buyers want to see what you actually keep after order-level costs, and whether profit depends on a few hero SKUs while the rest of the catalog quietly loses money.
For seasonal businesses like landscaping and residential construction, buyers expect revenue dips. What they want to see is that you understand the pattern and have a plan for the slow months. A landscaping company with consistent winter revenue from snow removal or maintenance contracts is worth more than one that shuts down from November to March.
Rejigg's QuickBooks integration pulls financial data automatically into a secure data room, which makes it easier to share monthly revenue trends without emailing spreadsheets back and forth.
3. Are the books clean enough for a deal?
Messy financials kill more deals than bad financials. A business can have strong profits and still lose a buyer's confidence when the numbers take weeks to produce or don't tie out to the tax returns.
Here's what usually happens. A buyer gets interested, asks for financials, and the owner says "give me a week to pull that together." That week tells the buyer everything they need to know about how organized the operation is. And if an SBA lender is involved, messy books become a timeline problem. The bank will keep asking for backups until it reconciles, and deals lose momentum.
"Clean" means something specific. Separate your personal expenses from business expenses. Document your add-backs, the personal stuff running through the business that a new owner won't spend, with receipts and a short explanation for each one. Have monthly P&Ls for the last two to three years, not just annual tax returns. Break out revenue the way you actually manage the business.
In landscaping, that means splitting maintenance revenue from enhancement and install revenue. In HVAC, it means showing service, replacement, and commercial as separate lines. In software development, it means splitting fixed-bid projects from time-and-materials retainers. The buyer wants to see margin by the categories that matter in your industry.
A great answer sounds like: "Here are monthly P&Ls for the last three years, plus a clean split between our service lines. I have a one-page add-backs list with receipts." A concerning answer sounds like: "Everything is basically in one bucket. A lot runs through personal cards, but the profit is there."
Rejigg's valuation calculator can help you understand what your numbers mean in the context of real transaction multiples, adjusted for owner add-backs.
4. Where is the business headed?
Buyers pay a multiple of your earnings. The trajectory of those earnings is what sets the multiple.
A business growing 15% a year commands a different price than the same business running flat. But this is more nuanced than "growth good, flat bad." A stable, profitable company with a long customer base can be very attractive. What buyers are really evaluating is whether the current owner has hit a ceiling, and whether a new owner with fresh capital or different skills could push past it.
If growth stalled because you stopped investing in marketing or turned away work you didn't have capacity for, that's actually appealing to a buyer who plans to invest. If it stalled because the market is saturated or a key customer left, that's a different conversation.
In ecommerce, buyers look at customer acquisition cost trends. Are you spending more to get each new customer? In managed services, they look at net revenue retention. Are existing clients expanding, staying flat, or quietly shrinking? In software development, they look at whether backlog is signed SOWs (statements of work) or just "we're pretty sure" verbal commitments.
Be honest about the trajectory. Buyers have seen enough deals to know that every business has growth constraints. What matters is whether you understand yours.
5. How much will a buyer need to rebuild?
Buyers evaluate how much operational infrastructure they inherit versus how much they'll need to build from scratch. The stronger your systems, the less risk for the buyer, and the higher the multiple.
In home services, this shows up in specific ways. Do your HVAC techs follow documented procedures, or does your best tech just know how the shop runs? In plumbing, buyers ask about dispatch: is there a system for routing calls and assigning jobs, or does one person manage it by memory? In electrical contracting, it's about permit workflows. Who pulls permits, who meets inspectors, and is any of it written down?
In managed services, operational systems mean something different. Buyers look at your tool stack, whether it's standardized across clients, and what vendor commitments you're locked into. They check your service desk economics. Are your agreements priced to your actual ticket volume, or is the support team quietly underwater on a few accounts?
In metal manufacturing, it's about whether quality control lives in people's heads or in the process. Can inspection methods, fixture setups, and machine programs be transferred, or does tribal knowledge walk out the door with key employees?
This is the most actionable of the five themes. You can document processes, cross-train team members, and standardize your operations in 60 to 90 days. That's a concrete thing you can start before you're ready to list.
Questions That Come Up in Every Deal
Some questions show up in virtually every buyer-seller conversation, regardless of industry. Here are the ones we see most often, along with what buyers are actually evaluating when they ask.
"Can you show clean financials that match how the business actually runs?"
This is usually the first real test. Buyers want to see that your profit is real and can support a loan payment. The specific version changes by industry. In landscaping, they want maintenance revenue separated from install revenue. In HVAC, they want service margins split from replacement margins, with callback labor coded back to job numbers. In ecommerce, they want contribution margin by channel and SKU, not just gross margin.
The thing to watch for is your own response time. Having the numbers ready signals that you run a tight operation. Having to scramble signals the opposite.
See industry-specific financial questions →
"What would happen to the business if you left tomorrow?"
They're evaluating whether they're buying a business or buying a job. A strong answer names specific people who handle specific functions. "Our service manager runs dispatch, our lead tech handles field escalations, and our office admin manages scheduling." A vague answer, "my team is great, they'll figure it out," tells the buyer that nobody has actually figured it out yet.
See how this question plays out across industries →
"Where does your new business come from?"
Buyers want to understand the growth engine, and whether it transfers to a new owner. Referrals are valuable but hard to scale. Paid advertising is scalable but expensive and sometimes dependent on one person who knows the accounts by feel. In ecommerce, buyers specifically ask about ad dependency and whether performance can survive a handoff. In managed services, they want to know if growth comes from the owner's personal network or from a repeatable sales process.
"Why are you selling?"
This sounds personal, but it's a business question. Buyers want to make sure you're not running from something, a declining market, a lost client, a regulatory problem. "I'm ready for the next chapter" is fine. "Things have gotten tough" is a due diligence trigger. Be straightforward. Buyers respond well to clear, honest reasons.
"What does your team look like, and who are the key people?"
In landscaping, this is about foreman tenure. Do your crew leads stick around through winter, or do you rehire every spring? In software development, buyers map every major system to a primary and backup engineer and look for concentration risk. In auditing firms, the question is about signer capacity. Do you have enough credentialed people to handle the work after the selling partner exits?
Across all industries, the real question is: which people are critical, are they likely to stay, and what does it cost to replace them if they don't?
"Is the business legally ready for a new owner?"
In HVAC, plumbing, and electrical, licensing and permit authority are the first conversation. If the contractor license sits with the owner, the buyer needs a plan for who qualifies on day one. In managed services, it's about contract assignability, whether client agreements survive a change of ownership without requiring every client to re-sign. In auditing, it's signer coverage and peer review compliance.
The specifics vary by industry, but the principle is the same. Buyers want to know that nothing breaks legally when ownership changes hands.
What Separates Deals That Close from Deals That Stall
We've watched deals move through every stage of diligence. The ones that close share a few patterns.
Specifics beat generalities. Owners who answer financial questions with numbers keep buyer confidence high. "We did $1.2M last year, up from $980K, with replacement running at 42% gross margin before callbacks" lands differently than "revenue has been growing." The buyer is trying to build a financial model. Give them the inputs.
Honesty builds credibility faster than polish. A seller who says "our first quarter is always slow, here's how we manage cash flow through it" is more credible than one who says "we're growing consistently." Buyers have seen enough deals to know that every business has weak spots. What they're evaluating is whether you understand yours.
Organized sellers close faster. Deals that drag in due diligence often die. Not because of what the buyer finds, but because the process loses momentum. Owners who have an organized data room, who respond to document requests within a day or two, who can produce a contract or P&L without scrambling for a week. Those deals close in weeks. The ones where every request takes follow-up calls and email chains take months, and some never close at all.
Rejigg's built-in data room keeps financials, contracts, and diligence documents organized with controlled access. No email attachments, no third-party file sharing.
Talking to multiple buyers changes the dynamic. When a buyer knows other qualified buyers are looking at the same business, conversations move faster, offers get stronger, and terms improve. This is practical advice. Rejigg's buyer vetting means every buyer who contacts you has been pre-qualified, and you control how many conversations you have at once.
What Changes by Industry
The five themes above show up everywhere. But what buyers focus on first depends on the industry.
Home services (HVAC, landscaping, plumbing, electrical). Licensing and seasonal revenue dominate. In HVAC, the first question is often whether the contractor license and permit-pulling authority can transfer to a new owner. In landscaping, buyers want to see route density and renewal rates on maintenance contracts. Across all home services, the off-season is the conversation. Buyers want to see how you handle the months when call volume drops. See home services breakdowns →
Software and dev shops. Delivery margins and backlog quality are the focus. Buyers want to know if profit comes from solid estimating and scope control, or from senior engineers working late nights that disappear after a handoff. They'll ask for sold hours versus delivered hours on recent projects, and they'll want to see what "backlog" actually means: signed SOWs or verbal expectations. IP ownership and clean code also surface early. See software insights →
Managed services. Contract assignability, seat reconciliation, and security posture. Buyers want to confirm that your recurring revenue is contract-backed and transferable. They'll sample a few clients to see if billed seats match deployed users. And they'll ask about incident history and admin access controls, because they inherit your risk on day one. See MSP insights →
Ecommerce. Contribution margin, inventory cash needs, and ad dependency. The headline revenue number is less useful than what you keep after platform fees, fulfillment, returns, and ad spend. Buyers also want to understand the inventory calendar, how much cash it takes to stay in stock, and whether Amazon or Shopify assets transfer cleanly. See ecommerce insights →
Professional services (auditing, consulting). Client retention through partner transitions. Buyers price the business based on what percentage of revenue survives the selling partner's exit. Firms that can show clean handoff track records and team-based client coverage command higher multiples. See auditing insights →
Construction and trades. Backlog quality, WIP accuracy, and change-order discipline. Buyers want to see contracted work in the pipeline, profit by job (not by vibe), and whether scope creep gets billed or absorbed. Warranty exposure and punch-list backlogs also surface early. See construction insights →
What to do with this
You don't have to do everything at once. Three starting points.
Know your number. If you don't have a realistic sense of what your business is worth, start there. Rejigg's valuation calculator uses real transaction multiples adjusted for owner add-backs. It takes five minutes, and it's free.
See what buyers ask in your industry. Every industry has specific patterns. We've published detailed breakdowns for 59 industries, each built from real buyer-seller conversations. Find yours.
Talk to someone who's been in the room. If you're earlier in the process and want to talk through what selling looks like, schedule a free consultation. No commitment, no pitch.
Rejigg is a marketplace where business owners sell directly to buyers. No broker fees, real buyer vetting, and the insights in this article come from conversations happening on the platform every week.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What do buyers look for when buying a business?
Based on real buyer-seller conversations across 59 industries, buyers consistently evaluate five things: whether the business can operate without the current owner, how reliable and recurring the revenue is, whether the financials are clean and lender-ready, the growth trajectory, and the strength of operational systems. These patterns come from real buyer-seller conversations facilitated on Rejigg.
What questions do buyers ask when buying a business?
The most common questions across industries are: "What would happen if you left tomorrow?" and "Can you show clean financials that match how the business runs?" Buyers also ask about customer acquisition, team stability, licensing or contract transferability, and reason for selling. Each question maps to a specific evaluation the buyer is running.
How do I prepare my business for sale?
Start with your financials. Separate personal expenses from business expenses, document your add-backs with receipts, and have monthly P&Ls for the last two to three years. Then document your operational processes and build a transition plan that shows how key functions continue without you. Rejigg's Owner's Guide walks through each step.
What makes a business attractive to buyers?
Reliable revenue, clean financials, operational systems that work without the owner, and a clear growth path. Businesses where the owner can point to specific people handling specific functions, where the books tie out cleanly, and where there's a documented way of doing things consistently command higher prices. Real buyer conversations confirm that preparation is what moves the multiple.
Do I need a broker to sell my business?
No. You need clean financials, a way to find qualified buyers, and the process knowledge to manage the deal. Brokers charge 5 to 10% of the sale price for work that an informed owner can handle with the right tools. Rejigg provides buyer vetting, a secure data room, deal tracking, and direct communication with buyers. It's free for sellers.
