Leadership
The offer is 6× EBITDA. The buyer is multiplying a different number.
Most of the value in a sale is won or lost in the earnings figure the multiple attaches to, long before anyone argues about the multiple itself.
Rialto Bridge
The bridge to the knowledge you need
Research, frameworks and market analysis from our consulting practice: written up for small and medium business owners and enterprise teams alike.
Free to read: all you need is an account.
Create a free account Sign in
Operations
The defect rate is 2%. Capacity behaves like 90%.
A firm getting it right 98 times out of 100 can still be chronically short of capacity, and the arithmetic…
Operations
The job spec asks for ten years’ experience. Four hours a week need it.
Most senior hires in smaller firms are priced as though the whole week requires judgement. Very little of it does,…
Marketing
Four firms pitched. All four said ‘partnership’.
A claim that appears in every rival’s proposal isn’t a differentiator: it’s an entry requirement. Two tests separate the two,…
Growth strategy
Profit was up 40%. The overdraft was fuller in December than in January.
Rising profit alongside tightening cash is not a contradiction: it is the normal signature of growth, and it has a…
Growth strategy
The satisfaction score is 8.7. The person who signs the renewal never answered the survey.
High satisfaction scores and sudden cancellations are not a contradiction: they are usually a sign the wrong population is being…
Operations
You have two suppliers. Both buy from the same factory.
Dual sourcing looks like resilience on a vendor list. Whether it actually is depends on a question most procurement processes…
Operations
Nine of eleven KPIs hit target. Revenue missed by 14%.
A scorecard can be almost entirely green while the number that matters is red, and the reason is usually a…
Growth strategy
The win rate is 26%. Every proposal costs two days of senior time.
Quoting everything looks like commercial ambition. The arithmetic of a low win rate says something else, and the work you…
Leadership
The dashboard refreshes every hour. The decision it feeds is made once a year.
Most reporting problems aren't about choosing the wrong metrics: they're about numbers moving at a different speed from the decisions…
Take it further
This is the general pattern. Your business is the specific case.
Everything here is free to read with an account, and always will be. What it cannot do is tell you which of these applies to your numbers, your market and your constraints. That is the work we do with clients.