MicroExits
Blog
Selling

The Twenty Questions Every Buyer Will Ask You

MicroExits2 min read

Serious buyers ask the same twenty questions, in roughly the same order. Answering them fluently takes a fortnight of preparation and saves a month of back-and-forth — and buyers read hesitation as concealment even when it's just memory.

About the money

  1. What's the trailing twelve-month revenue, month by month?

  2. What's the actual profit, and what have you added back?

  3. How much of that revenue is recurring versus one-off?

  4. What's your monthly churn, split voluntary and involuntary?

  5. What's your refund and chargeback rate?

  6. What's the largest customer as a share of revenue? The top five?

  7. Have you ever raised prices? What happened to churn?

About the customers

  1. Where do new customers actually come from?

  2. What share of traffic is one keyword, one referrer or one platform?

  3. How many support tickets a month, and how long do they take?

  4. What do customers complain about most?

  5. Are any customers on non-standard terms or discounts?

About the operation

  1. How many hours a week does this genuinely take?

  2. What's on the stack, and who else could maintain it?

  3. What breaks most often?

  4. Is anything running on your personal accounts?

  5. Does the payment account transfer, or do customers re-subscribe?

About you

  1. Why are you selling?

  2. What would you do next if you kept it?

  3. What handover support will you give, specifically?

Question 18 — whether the payment account transfers — reshapes the deal more than any other. Know the answer in writing before anyone asks.

The meta-answer

How you answer matters as much as what you answer. Sellers who reply with a specific number and a caveat build trust; sellers who reply with a range and an explanation of why the range is conservative do not.

"Churn is 4.2%, but about a third of that is failed payments I've never set up proper dunning for" is worth more to your price than any amount of polish, because it tells the buyer your other numbers are probably honest too.

Keep reading