Quality of earnings
Before a buyer values your profit, they have to believe it. Clean, consistent accounts that can be verified in days rather than argued over for months are worth a higher multiple for that reason alone.
— Operator-led exit advisory · UK
Sellyourbusinessforwhatit'sactuallyworth.
We make a business worth more.selling.buying.more.selling.buying.
Most owners leave a quarter of their sale value behind. Not because the business is weak, but because it was never made ready for a buyer.
Prepare✦Value✦Sell✦Exit✦Diligence✦Completion✦Confidential✦Seller-side✦2026✦
ClyOps is an operator-led exit advisory. We make a business worth more, then find the right buyer for it. Seller-side only, one side per deal, paid on the result.
Most advisers meet you at the point of sale and negotiate from a standing start. We arrive earlier. We work inside the business for six to twelve months and fix the things a buyer would otherwise discount, so the company is provably well run before anyone is allowed to look at it.
It is run by an owner who has built, scaled and sold real businesses, not a career consultant with a template. Our fee is tied to the value we create against an independent baseline. When the number is bigger, we have earned it. When it is not, we carry it.
— Where the value comes from
A prepared business sells for a different number.
The difference is not luck, and it is not timing. It is built in the months before anyone is allowed to look, across the six things every serious buyer prices first. This is the bridge between the two numbers. Scroll through it.
01 / 06
Quality of earnings
Every serious process begins with the numbers, because every buyer's first question is whether they can be trusted. We bring the reporting to a standard a buyer's accountants can verify in days rather than argue over for months: clean monthly management accounts, revenue they can trace, margins that reconcile, adjustments that are documented rather than asserted. When the numbers hold, the price holds through diligence. When they do not, every figure becomes a negotiation.
02 / 06
Owner-independence
A business that needs its owner in the room is, to a buyer, a job with goodwill attached. We move what currently lives with you, the key relationships, the decisions, the unwritten knowledge, into the team and into systems, so the company demonstrably runs without you. A buyer is purchasing the future of the business, and your absence from it has to be survivable. It is the single change that most reliably lifts both the multiple and the number of buyers willing to bid.
03 / 06
Depth of management
Buyers do not just buy revenue, they buy the team that will deliver it after you have gone. We build the management layer that can run the day to day on its own: clear roles, real authority, and incentives that keep the people who matter through a sale and beyond it. A capable second tier is one of the quietest drivers of value, and one of the loudest signals that a business is safe to buy.
04 / 06
Systems & documentation
What is not written down cannot be handed over, and what cannot be handed over is hard to sell. We document how the company actually runs, the processes, the controls, the contracts, and assemble the data room before anyone asks for it. Diligence then becomes a confirmation exercise rather than an excavation, which protects the price and the timetable in equal measure.
05 / 06
Durability of revenue
Revenue a buyer can count on is worth a different multiple to revenue that must be won again every year. We lengthen contracts, grow the share of income that renews on its own, and evidence the retention that already exists, so a buyer can underwrite the future rather than discount it. A floor under next year's number is one of the strongest positions a seller can negotiate from.
06 / 06
Customer concentration
When one customer can move the whole valuation, a buyer prices for the day they leave. We spread the revenue base so no single relationship can decide the outcome, and where concentration cannot be unwound in time, we contract it and evidence it, so it is priced as a managed risk rather than a discovered one. It is one of the most common reasons offers are cut in diligence, and one of the most avoidable.
The gap is the work.
On businesses of this kind, preparation is typically worth between a fifth and a third of the final figure. The further from market-ready you start, the wider that gap, and the more the work is worth. Our fee is tied to closing it, not to the hours spent on it, which is why we have no reason to pad the engagement and every reason to move the number.
See how it's built →A prepared business sells for a different number.
The bridge between the two, driver by driver.
As-is
01
02
03
04
05
06
Prepared
The gap
- 01
Quality of earnings
Every serious process begins with the numbers, because every buyer's first question is whether they can be trusted. We bring the reporting to a standard a buyer's accountants can verify in days rather than argue over for months: clean monthly management accounts, revenue they can trace, margins that reconcile, adjustments that are documented rather than asserted. When the numbers hold, the price holds through diligence. When they do not, every figure becomes a negotiation.
- 02
Owner-independence
A business that needs its owner in the room is, to a buyer, a job with goodwill attached. We move what currently lives with you, the key relationships, the decisions, the unwritten knowledge, into the team and into systems, so the company demonstrably runs without you. A buyer is purchasing the future of the business, and your absence from it has to be survivable. It is the single change that most reliably lifts both the multiple and the number of buyers willing to bid.
- 03
Depth of management
Buyers do not just buy revenue, they buy the team that will deliver it after you have gone. We build the management layer that can run the day to day on its own: clear roles, real authority, and incentives that keep the people who matter through a sale and beyond it. A capable second tier is one of the quietest drivers of value, and one of the loudest signals that a business is safe to buy.
- 04
Systems & documentation
What is not written down cannot be handed over, and what cannot be handed over is hard to sell. We document how the company actually runs, the processes, the controls, the contracts, and assemble the data room before anyone asks for it. Diligence then becomes a confirmation exercise rather than an excavation, which protects the price and the timetable in equal measure.
- 05
Durability of revenue
Revenue a buyer can count on is worth a different multiple to revenue that must be won again every year. We lengthen contracts, grow the share of income that renews on its own, and evidence the retention that already exists, so a buyer can underwrite the future rather than discount it. A floor under next year's number is one of the strongest positions a seller can negotiate from.
- 06
Customer concentration
When one customer can move the whole valuation, a buyer prices for the day they leave. We spread the revenue base so no single relationship can decide the outcome, and where concentration cannot be unwound in time, we contract it and evidence it, so it is priced as a managed risk rather than a discovered one. It is one of the most common reasons offers are cut in diligence, and one of the most avoidable.
- =
The gap is the work.
Preparation is typically worth between a fifth and a third of the final figure. Our fee is tied to closing that gap.
See how it's built →
— What buyers pay for
Value is confidence in your numbers.
Drag · scroll →Durability of revenue
Income that renews is worth more than the same income won again from scratch every year. A contracted, repeat revenue base gives a buyer a floor to stand on, and a reason to pay up.
Owner-independence
If the company leans on you for its relationships, decisions and knowledge, a buyer is acquiring a job, not a business. A layer that runs the day to day turns that risk into something they can underwrite.
Customer concentration
A marquee client looks like strength until a buyer realises losing it would halve the business. The more evenly revenue is spread, and the more durable each relationship, the less they discount.
Depth of management
Is there a team that can run the company without you in every decision, and stay once you have gone? Succession a buyer can rely on is one of the quietest, biggest drivers of price.
Systems & documentation
Knowledge held in a few people's heads cannot be safely handed over, and what cannot be handed over is hard to buy. Documented systems and a ready data room make the business legible.
And the evidence to prove every word of it.
See the process →— What we believe We don't advise
We don't advise
from the
sidelines.
We do the work.
We do the work.
Most advisers hand you a deck and a list of things to fix, then leave you to fix them. We do the opposite. We go inside the business and do the operational work ourselves: documenting how it actually runs, bringing the reporting to a standard a buyer's accountants will trust, and moving the knowledge out of your head and into systems. We carry accountability for the result, not just the recommendation, which is a very different thing to stand behind.
We are paid to make you worth more.
Our fee is tied to the value we create against an independent baseline set on day one, not to the hours we bill. That single fact changes how we work: we have no reason to pad the engagement and every reason to move the number. When the business sells for more, we have earned it. When it does not, we carry the cost of the work rather than hand you an invoice for it.
One side only.
On any single transaction we represent one side, and one side only. We never quietly take a fee from the buyer and the seller at once, the way much of the market does. Think about what that means: if the other side is paying your adviser too, you are negotiating against your own corner without knowing it. We will not be that adviser. Trust is the product, and we will not trade it for a second fee.
Operators, not consultants.
ClyOps is run by someone who has built, scaled and sold real businesses, across food production, global export, property and care home development. Not a career consultant with a template, and no Big Four badge on the wall. It means we meet you as a peer who has signed the front of a payslip, weighed up a life-changing offer and lived with the result, rather than a supplier reading from a playbook written by people who never have.
Exit Preparation
Sale Brokerage
Buy-side Mandates
Exit-Readiness Diagnostic
— The diagnostic
Knowwhereyoustandbeforeabuyertellsyou.
Eleven questions, scored the way a buyer scores. You get a readiness band, a driver-by-driver scorecard and your priorities in order, free and in confidence.
— Exit-readiness scorecardSpecimen
Getting there.
52 / 100 readiness- Owner-independence
- Quality of earnings
- Durability of revenue
- Customer concentration
- Depth of management
- Systems & documentation
- Growth trajectory
— Plain truths01 / 04
"Value is not your profit. It is the buyer's confidence in it."
"A business that cannot run without you is not an asset. It is a job a buyer has to price."
"Price gets agreed in a handshake. Deals are lost in the months that follow."
"We are paid to make the number bigger. The incentive points in one direction only: yours."
On preparationWhat buyers actually pay for
A buyer is not buying last year's profit. They are buying a claim on the next several years of it, and they pay less for every reason that future looks less certain. Preparation removes those reasons, one by one, before anyone is at the table.
60%+
of UK SME owners have considered selling in the last 12 months
42%
have an exit plan before they go to market (fewer than)
20–40%
of sale value is routinely left on the table, or the sale fails
1.4×
indicative valuation uplift from as-is to prepared