The Preliminary Assessment: What We Send Before the First Call

The short version

• A preliminary assessment is a one-page read we send 24 hours before your first Sprint call, built from your own Keystone diagnostic scores.
• It names your value gap and the two or three operational gaps most suppressing your multiple, before anyone is on a call.
• The gap is real money. On a $300,000-SDE business the spread between an owner-dependent and an owner-light sale is $555,000.
• This is the score-driven pre-read, not an installed system. The way to make it specific to your business is to run the free diagnostic first.
• Below: what the assessment covers, how the value gap is read, the gaps it names, and where it comes from.

The Sprint does not start with you explaining your business

Most consulting starts the same way. You get on a call and spend the first half hour explaining your business to a stranger who is hearing it for the first time.

The Sprint starts the opposite way. Before the first call, you get a one-page preliminary assessment that is already written about your business, built from your own diagnostic scores.

It arrives about 24 hours ahead of the call. By the time you are on the phone, the document already names where your scores sit, your estimated value gap, and the two or three operational gaps most suppressing your multiple.

So the call does not begin at zero. It begins with a read you can already react to, which means the conversation is about what to do, not what your business is.

Here is the point that makes operators pay attention. The work started before you paid anything, and it started because the assessment reads a diagnostic you can run for free.

This is the Briefcase artifact. It is the proof, before any money changes hands, that the engagement is built on your actual numbers and not on a generic playbook.

The reason it works is simple. An owner who reads a one-page document that already names their value gap and their top operational gaps does not need to be sold on whether the reader understands their business, because the document already demonstrates it.

Most consulting asks you to take the understanding on faith until you have paid for the first call. The preliminary assessment puts the understanding on paper first, which is a different kind of conversation to walk into.

What the preliminary assessment covers

A preliminary assessment is a one-page document, sent before the first Sprint call, that reads your Keystone diagnostic scores into three things: where your scores sit today, your estimated valuation position against industry transaction benchmarks, and the two or three operational gaps most suppressing your multiple. It is the pre-call read that proves the work began before the conversation, built from your own data rather than a discovery call.

The one page covers exactly three things:

• Where your scores sit today, the Business Independence Score, Systems Maturity Score, and Acquisition Attractiveness Score copied directly from your diagnostic.
• Your estimated valuation position, the current range against the industry transaction benchmarks, and where the same business lands at the high end of that market.
• The two or three gaps suppressing your multiple, the specific operational issues pulling the number down, drawn from documented transaction patterns.

The scores are copied from your diagnostic exactly as the engine produced them. They are read into a gap and a focus, never recomputed, so the assessment and the diagnostic always agree.

That is the whole document. One page, three sections, built before the call so the call can be about the work instead of the introduction.

The one number worth noting: the value gap

The number to read first is the value gap. On a $300,000-SDE business, the gap between a 1.65x sale and a 3.5x sale is $555,000, and that spread is set almost entirely by how much the business depends on the owner.

The value gap on your assessment is your version of that number. It is the distance between where your business is estimated to sell today and where the same earnings would land if the operational profile sat at the high end of the industry transaction market.

Same revenue, same industry, same year. The gap is the part of your sale price that operational design controls, and the assessment puts a figure on it from your own scores.

Most owners have never seen this number. 86% of small business owners have no professional valuation or only a rough estimate, so the gap between their current value and their reachable value is invisible to them.

That is why the pre-read matters. You cannot decide whether the work is worth doing until you can see what the gap is worth, and the assessment makes it a figure instead of a feeling.

The benchmarks behind it come from real transactions. The valuation is calibrated against 10 years of BizBuySell Insight Reports and 1.6M+ SBA 7(a) loan records, so the gap reflects the pattern in closed deals, not an opinion about your business.

There is a discipline behind the figure that keeps it honest. The scores are copied from your diagnostic display, never recomputed in the assessment, so the number on the one-page read is the same number the engine produced, not a salesperson's higher estimate.

That matters because the gap is only useful if you trust it. A value gap inflated to make the Sprint look better is worthless, so the assessment reads the real scores into the real benchmark and lets the figure be whatever it is.

If you want the mechanics behind the number, the assessment is built on how a small business is actually valued and reads your current valuation position into the gap.

The two or three gaps most suppressing your multiple

The value gap tells you how much is on the table. The two or three operational gaps tell you why, and they are the part of the assessment that makes it concrete.

These are not invented opportunities. They are drawn from documented transaction patterns, the specific operational issues that show up again and again as the things buyers discount and the things suppressing the multiple.

For most owner-dependent businesses they cluster in a few places: decisions that all route through the owner, knowledge that lives in the owner's head, and customers who belong to the owner by name rather than to the company.

The assessment names which of these apply to your business, read from where your scores landed. A low Business Independence Score points to one set of gaps, a low Systems Maturity Score to another.

Two or three is deliberate, not a limit on effort. A list of ten gaps is a way to feel thorough and change nothing, while two or three named gaps are the ones actually suppressing the multiple most, which is where the Sprint would start.

That specificity is the whole reason the pre-read works. A generic gap list is forgettable, but two or three named gaps drawn from your own scores are something you can argue with, agree with, and act on before the call even starts.

Where the assessment comes from: your free diagnostic

The assessment is only as specific as the scores it reads. With your diagnostic scores, it names your gap and your gaps. Without them, it is a template.

So the honest next step is plain, and this article is not describing an installed system you switch on inside the app. The preliminary assessment is the score-driven pre-read, and the way to get one specific to your business is to run the free Keystone diagnostic.

The diagnostic produces the three scores and the estimated sale price, and the assessment reads those scores into a value gap and a short list of operational gaps. One produces the numbers, the other interprets them, and the first one is free.

That is the routing, stated without a catch. Run the diagnostic, get your scores, and the pre-read has something real to work from. Skip it, and any assessment is generic.

It is also why the preliminary assessment sits apart from the four installed Sprint deliverables. Those four are systems the Sprint builds into your business.

This one is the pre-call read that decides whether the Sprint is even the right move. It is one of the things the Sprint engagement includes before any work begins.

FAQ

What is a preliminary assessment?

A preliminary assessment is a one-page read sent before the first Sprint call, built from your own Keystone diagnostic scores. It names where your scores sit, your estimated value gap against industry benchmarks, and the two or three operational gaps most suppressing your multiple, before anyone is on a call.

What happens before a Systems Sprint?

Before a Systems Sprint, you receive a one-page preliminary assessment about 24 hours ahead of the first call. It reads your diagnostic scores into a value gap and a short list of operational gaps, so the call begins with a concrete read of your business rather than a blank discovery conversation.

How is the value gap calculated?

The value gap is the distance between where your business is estimated to sell today and where the same earnings would land if the operational profile sat at the high end of the industry transaction market. On a $300,000-SDE business that spread is $555,000, set by owner-dependence, not revenue.

Do I need to run the diagnostic first?

Yes, because the preliminary assessment reads your Keystone diagnostic scores, so without them it is a generic template. Running the free diagnostic produces the three scores and estimated sale price the assessment interprets, which is what makes the pre-read specific to your business.

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The preliminary assessment is only as specific as your scores, and the scores come from the free diagnostic.

The free Keystone diagnostic gives you three scores and an estimated sale price, calibrated against 10 years of BizBuySell Insight Reports and 1.6M+ SBA 7(a) loan records. It is the same read the preliminary assessment interprets into your value gap and your top operational gaps.

Get your three scores and an estimated sale price, free, at app.trykeystone.io.

If the gap is worth closing, the Systems Sprint is the 30-day engagement that installs the operating layer to close it. It asks under five hours of your time, is delivered once with no retainer, and is priced at $1,500 Beta for the first engagements, $1,900 Standard, and $4,500+ for the Portfolio Edition.

Apply for a Systems Sprint at /sprint#apply.