For service businesses · HVAC · Plumbing · Electrical · Pest · Fire & Life-Safety · Roofing

Your maintenance book is worth millions more to one buyer than another. The buyer who calls picks which.

If you're doing $5M to $50M and your techs are booked out six weeks, you're on somebody's list. The call comes on their clock, not yours. Would you know if their offer is any good? Could you defend your number when they pick apart your book? Know it before they do.

See what your company is worth to five different buyers, free

No listing. No success fee. No one will call you about selling. That's the point of being off-market.

You’re on somebody’s list

Some owners reading this got a letter from a platform last month and haven't answered it. Some know the call is coming, the outfit two towns over just sold, and the math isn't hard. And a few are already thinking about going to market on their own timing. The Method is the same in every case. It just starts earlier or later.

Nothing here asks you to sell. It shows you what the other side already knows about your agreements, your techs, and your book.

The reframe

Your service agreements are worth more to some buyers than others. Much more.

Same trucks. Same techs. Same maintenance book. Five buyers, five very different prices. And most of what drags your price down? You can fix it now, while no deal is on the table. This is the gap table.

Line item

Strategic

PE Platform

PE Add-on

Family Office

Search Fund

Customer concentrationtop 3 accounts = 41% of revenue

STRAT PLATFM ADD-ON FAM OFC SEARCH

Service-agreement book60% of revenue recurring

STRAT PLATFM ADD-ON FAM OFC SEARCH

Books kept for taxesnever cleaned up for a buyer

STRAT PLATFM ADD-ON FAM OFC SEARCH

The full table has 14 rows. See all of it, free →

Heavy discount Discount Neutral They pay for this Not a real company. Real math.

Forbes

As featured in Forbes ("Why Founders Should Build a Gap Table Before the Letter of Intent Arrives") and Fast Company ("The New Players in Middle Market Mergers & Acquisitions"), both by Ron Smith, June 2026.

Read the article →

The Off-Market Method

Everything you should be doing in the years you're not transacting.

You spend almost your whole life as an owner off-market. That's not dead time. It's the only time your number can still be moved. The Method does the buyer's homework before the buyer shows up, so you're Offer-Ready before the offer comes. Three jobs, in the order a deal will test you:

PILLAR 01 · BEFORE ANY OFFER

Protect the asset.

The offer can come at any time

The call can come any day. So nothing stays loose: your techs signed, your agreements on paper, your story straight. A buyer can't knock down what's nailed down.

PILLAR 02 · UNDER DILIGENCE

Defend the number.

The headline only matters if it sticks

1 in 3 deals gets cut down after the handshake. Why? The buyer finds things. Do the work now and there's nothing to find, only things to confirm. You answered every question years ago.

PILLAR 03 · WHEN THE OFFER IS REAL

Own the decision.

Clarity is what prevents regret

Say no, and know exactly what you said no to. Or say yes. Or go to market on your own clock, already ready. Either way: no lying awake wondering.

MAP your market→ REHEARSE the price cut→ INTERVENE in sequence

~1,000,000

real deals behind the model (SBA, PitchBook, Tagnifi)

10,000+

runs of your numbers, per buyer type

1 in 3

unprepared deals gets cut after the handshake. Prepared ones don't.

What happens without it

The handshake was $14M. The wire was $9.8M.

A true pattern. The owner shook hands on a big number. Then the buyer's team went to work: the expired contract, the books kept for taxes, the best techs with nothing signed. Every finding cut the price. Nobody told him a signed number isn't a safe number.

That cut has a name, a retrade, and it happens to about 1 in 3 owners who didn't prep. The fix isn't at the table. It's years before, and most of it is paperwork. Everything on this page exists so the wire matches the handshake.

Who built this

The Off-Market Method was built by the team behind Cordis Group. Same engine, same data the firm uses in its private client work, including live deals in the Northeast service trades.

Ron Smith first laid it out in Forbes: "Why Founders Should Build a Gap Table Before the Letter of Intent Arrives."

Ron Smith

Founder, Cordis Group · Forbes Business Council

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