The most expensive page in every CIM is the one no one reads.
Global M&A deal values climbed more than 40% year over year in 2025–2026. Transaction volumes barely moved. That gap tells you everything about where the market is. Buyers have capital and they are willing to deploy it. What they are short on is conviction, the particular kind that justifies a bid at the top of a range rather than the middle or below.
The assets that close at a premium in this environment share one characteristic beyond strong financials: a growth narrative that buyers can actually underwrite.
- 40%+ rise in deal values, flat volumes
- 6–25% pricing premium from strong CIMs
- 1–2 pp. typical length of the growth section
The structural asymmetry hiding in plain sight.
Walk into the Growth Opportunities section of any lower-middle-market CIM, regardless of industry, size, or advisor, and you find the same thing. Aspirational bullets. Expand into adjacent markets. Leverage existing customer relationships. Invest in digital marketing. Hire additional sales staff. Every advisor recognizes that section because they have all written it.
These observations are not wrong. They are simply not underwriteable. Now look at how the financial section of the same CIM is prepared: audited statements, adjusted EBITDA with normalization schedules, and a Quality of Earnings report from an independent third party. The financial story gets independent validation. The growth story gets a page of bullets.
That asymmetry is not accidental. It is structural. The QoE standard evolved because buyers demanded it. The growth narrative is where that same demand is now going unmet.
What a PE deal team actually needs to bid aggressively.
A team running a platform acquisition thesis needs to answer one question before they bid at the top of the range: is this growth narrative something we can actually execute, or is it management's best case dressed in deal language? Without independent analysis, scored frameworks, quantified opportunity sizing, and an honest assessment of current go-to-market infrastructure, the buyer's answer defaults to we do not know. And buyers who do not know discount.
Closing the gap with a Quality of Growth Report.
The fix is not a better-written bullet list. It is an independent, diligence-grade analysis of the growth story: scored, quantified, and structured in deal-room language, the same way a Quality of Earnings report validates the financials. It converts the growth narrative from aspiration into evidence a buyer can underwrite, which is exactly what moves a bid from the middle of the range to the top.