Fictional demonstration — this sample illustrates the structure and depth of an actual Buyer Friction Report. The company below does not exist.
Sample Buyer Friction Report
Established HVAC Company
42 employees · $8.4 million annual revenue · founder-led · 19 years in business
Executive summary
This is a healthy, reputable company with strong recurring maintenance revenue and an experienced field team. It is also a company that a prospective buyer, successor or lender would find difficult to evaluate quickly—because a disproportionate amount of how it operates exists only in the founder’s head, inbox and personal relationships.
The issues identified below are not signs of a weak business. They are the normal result of two decades of growth outpacing infrastructure. Each one, however, would generate questions, additional diligence or perceived risk in a future transition—and each is fixable within a structured 90-day engagement.
Overall readiness
54/100
Stage 2 · Partially structured
Category scores
Lead management, technology ownership and reporting quality are measured as sub-scores within these five categories.
- Owner Independence38
- Operational Documentation47
- Revenue Visibility58
- Digital Infrastructure71
- Transfer Readiness56
Top five dependencies
All pricing and bid approval runs through the founder
Every commercial bid over $10,000 requires the owner’s personal review. Estimators can assemble bids but have no documented pricing rules to work from, so approvals queue in the owner’s inbox—often for days.
The three largest accounts are owner-managed relationships
Roughly 34% of annual revenue sits with three property-management groups whose contacts deal exclusively with the founder. No second relationship exists inside the company for any of them.
Dispatch logic lives in one coordinator’s head
Technician routing, job prioritization and customer-commitment rules are undocumented. When the coordinator is out, the owner personally runs the board.
Financial reporting requires the owner to interpret it
QuickBooks data is accurate, but job costing, warranty exposure and maintenance-contract profitability only exist as explanations the owner gives verbally.
Vendor and equipment supplier terms are informal
Preferred pricing with two key suppliers is based on the founder’s personal relationships and is documented nowhere.
Technology inventory
Excerpt — the full report inventories every system, account and digital asset with ownership and access records.
| System | Purpose | Controlled by | Condition |
|---|---|---|---|
| QuickBooks Desktop | Accounting | Company (bookkeeper admin) | Sound; version outdated |
| Field service app | Scheduling & dispatch | Company | Underused—no job costing data entered |
| Website + domain | Digital presence | Former marketing vendor | Ownership unclear; registrar login unknown |
| Spreadsheets (11 identified) | Maintenance contracts, warranty, bids | Individual employees | Duplicated, conflicting versions |
| Personal cell numbers | Primary customer contact channel | Owner + 2 senior techs | No records retained by the company |
Current lead flow
How inquiries move through the company today. None of the four channels produces a record the business can measure.
Phone calls
Answered by whoever is nearest the office line; overflow rings the owner’s cell
No record of call volume, source or outcome
Website form
Emails a shared office inbox checked once daily
Average first response: 1–2 business days
Referrals
Come directly to the owner or senior techs by text
Untracked; follow-up depends on memory
Maintenance renewals
A spreadsheet reviewed “when someone remembers”
Renewal timing inconsistent; some contracts lapse silently
Reporting gaps
- —No lead-source attribution—marketing spend cannot be connected to revenue
- —No pipeline view—open bids and their value exist only in the estimator’s notes
- —Job profitability is calculated annually by the accountant, not per job
- —Maintenance-contract renewal rates are not measured
- —Technician utilization is estimated verbally, not reported
- —No management report exists that a non-owner could read unassisted
90-day priority roadmap
Weeks 1–4
Ownership & visibility
- Recover and centralize domain, website and software account ownership
- Consolidate the 11 operational spreadsheets into a single CRM and contract database
- Stand up call tracking and route the office line through a monitored system
Weeks 5–9
Lead flow & reporting
- Implement lead capture with source attribution across calls, forms and referrals
- Automate first-response and follow-up on inbound inquiries
- Build a management dashboard: pipeline, job costing, contract renewals, utilization
Weeks 10–13
Dependence & documentation
- Document pricing rules so estimators can approve standard bids
- Record dispatch logic and cross-train a second coordinator
- Introduce a second relationship owner for each of the top three accounts
- Assemble the operational data room and re-score readiness
Example recommendations
Give estimators documented pricing authority
The bid-approval bottleneck is the company’s single largest owner dependency. Codifying pricing rules and margin floors—then delegating approval for standard bids—removes the founder from roughly 80% of approvals while keeping exceptions escalated.
Make lead flow measurable before making it bigger
The company is considering more advertising, but currently cannot say which sources produce revenue. Tracking calls, forms and referrals first means every future marketing dollar becomes attributable—and demonstrates a repeatable lead engine to any future reviewer.
Convert relationship equity into company assets
Supplier terms and key-account relationships are real value, but today they are personal to the founder. Documenting terms, introducing second contacts and recording account history moves that value from the owner to the business.
This sample is a fictional demonstration created to show the structure of a Buyer Friction Report. It does not describe a real company, and no findings or figures above reflect actual client work. Actual reports are based on stakeholder interviews, system audits and documentation review conducted during the Exit Upgrade Assessment. The Buyer Friction Report is an operational planning document—not a business valuation, legal opinion or accounting assessment.
Every engagement starts with this level of clarity.
The Exit Upgrade Assessment produces your company's version of this report, with a prioritized roadmap your team and advisors can act on.