The 12 questions every investor asks

Every sell-side process has a Q&A phase. The buyer's team submits written questions; the seller answers in a virtual data room or formal response document. Across the 14 processes I have sat through, the same 12 questions appear in some form every time. The seller who has the answers ready before the questions arrive runs a 60-90 day process; the seller who builds answers on demand runs a 150-180 day process and loses leverage to fatigue.

The revenue questions

The cost questions

The structural questions

Why having answers ready matters

Buyers measure seller quality partly by the speed and completeness of Q&A responses. A seller who returns Q1-Q12 in week 2 with clean data, USALI-compliant P&L, and brand-inspection-quality FF&E reports signals an institutional-grade operation. A seller who returns answers in weeks 4-8 with multiple data revisions and "we will need to compile that" responses signals a less-disciplined operation and invites the buyer to price in operational risk.