How we count, and what we don’t

Every figure on a brokerage’s page here is one of two things: a number we counted ourselves, or a number the firm told us. They look different on the page, and this is what each one means.

Numbers we counted

Live listings, deals closed in the last twelve months, and the number of brokers at a firm come from our own records of what happened on bizflip. If a firm has never listed a business here, these are empty — not zero. An empty space means we have nothing to show, not that the firm has done nothing.

What we deliberately never publish: the sale price of a named business, and no total or average built from our own settlement records. When a firm has settled one or two deals, an “average” is that sale price with a division sign in front of it — and we promise sellers, in the dialog where they record a settlement, that an exact price is never shown against a named business publicly.

Numbers the firm stated

A brokerage can ask us to let it publish figures about its own track record — median deal size, deals closed, days on market, close rate and sale price vs asking. Most of a firm’s history happened before it joined bizflip, and refusing to show any of it would make an experienced firm look new.

These are the firm’s own claims. We do not audit them. Each one is labelled “Stated by the firm” on the page, carries the month it was stated, and the firm has confirmed in writing that it holds records supporting it. A figure a firm has not updated in three years says so.

Filtering on these figures. Each filter on the broker floor takes a minimum, a maximum or both. A firm that has not published the figure is left out of that filter’s results — never ranked last. When several of these filters are set, the floor names only the one figure that left out the most firms, says how many, and links to the same search with that one filter removed; firms left out by the other filters are not counted there. A deal size stated in a currency that floor does not compare is also left out, and is not counted either. Firms state figures over different windows (the last 12 months, the last 3 years, or all time), and a filter only compares figures stated over the same window, which the page names.

Money is never converted into another currency. On the Australian floor a deal-size filter matches only figures stated in Australian dollars, and on the UK floor only pounds. The United States floor also covers Canada, so it matches figures stated in US dollars and in Canadian dollars and compares the two at face value — a US$2M figure and a C$2M figure both pass the same filter. On the all-countries floor, every firm’s figure is compared at face value in its own currency.

The number of deals a firm says it closed and the number bizflip counted itself are two separate filters, and they are never added together or swapped for each other. And nothing on bizflip times how long a business sits on the market, so a stated days-on-market figure has nothing here to be compared with.

What “matches our records” means

Where we can count the same thing, we compare. If a firm’s stated figure sits in the range our own records would support, the figure is marked “Matches our records”.

That is a smaller claim than it sounds, and here is exactly how small. It means one number is consistent with another number. It does not mean we audited the firm, checked a document, or spoke to anyone who bought or sold a business. And our own settlement records are themselves entered by the brokerage — so at present the comparison is between a firm’s claim and the same firm’s other claim. Until that changes, we do not put the mark on anything at all.

The comparison needs at least five settled deals on bizflip before we will make it. Below that, one deal decides the answer, and we would rather say nothing than say something that thin. That threshold is a count of deals, not a length of time: a busy brokerage reaches it in months, a quiet one may never, and waiting should not earn anybody a mark.

Deal sizes are compared as a ratio against both the median and the mean, not as a percentage band around an average. A firm that does nine deals at $800K and one at $9M has an average of $1.6M and a median of $800K — both honest answers to “what size do you handle”. A band around the average alone would refuse the firm quoting the more conservative figure.

Close rate is never marked, by anyone

A close rate is deals closed divided by deals taken on. We hold the top of that fraction and not the bottom — nothing on bizflip counts every mandate a firm has ever signed. So a stated close rate has nothing here to be checked against, and no route, human or automatic, will ever mark one. It is the figure a seller leans on most, which is exactly why it gets the strictest answer.

Sale price vs asking is never marked

Here we do hold both halves of the sum — asking prices and settlement prices. But comparing a firm’s stated figure with our records would mean publishing an average of settlement prices, and when a firm has settled one or two deals that average is a named business’s sale price. We promise sellers that is never shown publicly (see numbers we counted), so no route, human or automatic, will ever mark this figure. It stays the firm’s own claim.

When a person at bizflip has looked

Sometimes we look at a brokerage directly — how long it has traded, how many people work there, what it has done here — and accept its figures on that basis. When we have, the page says so in a sentence, and that sentence also says we have not measured them. A human judgement about a firm is not a check of a number, and we do not dress it up as one. A review lapses after a year.

What an empty space means

If a figure carries no mark, that tells you nothing about the firm. It is almost always because the firm is small or new and we simply cannot judge — and a great many good brokerages will never be in a position to be marked. We do not show a greyed-out badge, a “pending” state, or a count of how many firms hold one, because all three would turn an absence into an accusation.

How a firm gets this

A brokerage asks, from its own Firm tab. Someone at bizflip looks at the request and either grants it or does not. It cannot be bought: there is no fee, no tier and no advertising package on this platform that puts a figure or a mark on a firm.

What does help is trading here — the comparison needs settled deals on bizflip, and bizflip charges a fee on deals settled here. So we have an interest in firms doing that. We would rather tell you than have you notice.

Think a published figure is wrong? Find the firm and use the enquiry button on its page — tell us which figure and why. While we look into it, we take the figure down.