Your position vs the market (seller mirror)

What it is

When a prospective buyer invites you into a diligence review, Verinode opens a page for you called Diligence access, and on it sits a panel called Your position vs the market. It is your own free tool inside what is otherwise a buyer-side process: your normalized numbers, laid out next to the peer market median for the same metrics, in the same categories the buyer is asking about. It appears whether or not you have shared anything with that buyer. You do not have to grant a single category for it to show up.

This matters because a diligence conversation is not neutral ground. The buyer has almost certainly already benchmarked comparable deals. Verinode's mirror gives you the same read on your own business: if your numbers sit above the peer market, that is a fact you can use to defend your price; if they sit below, it is better to see the gap before the buyer's advisors point it out to you. Verinode does not take a side in the deal and does not tell you what to do with the read. It surfaces the comparison; you decide how to use it.

Where to find it

Open Diligence from the sidebar, at /diligence. The page is titled Diligence access. Everything on it, the mirror included, only exists once at least one prospective buyer has invited you into a review. There is nothing to configure and nothing to turn on: the page reads your own data and builds the comparison automatically.

The empty state, before anyone has invited you

If no buyer has invited you yet, the page shows only:

Diligence access When a prospective buyer invites you into a diligence review, it shows up here. You choose exactly what to share, category by category, and you can revoke access at any time.

There is no mirror in this state. The mirror is built from the categories a buyer has asked about, so with no invitation there is nothing to build it from.

Your position vs the market: the mirror panel

Once at least one buyer has invited you, and Verinode can compute at least one of your own numbers for a category that buyer asked about, the panel appears above the list of buyers, under the heading:

Your position vs the market Where your numbers sit against peer operators. This is yours to see whether or not you share anything.

It is organized as one block per data category, and inside each block a table with three columns: the metric name on the left, You in the middle, Market on the right.

Which categories and metrics can appear

The categories match the same four data categories used across Diligence: Financials, Jobs & Claims, AP & Procurement, and Team & Compensation. A category only shows up in the mirror if some buyer, at some point, has asked you about it, and only the specific metrics below are covered, never your full books:

• Financials: Net Margin, Gross Margin %, and a ratio Verinode labels Opex Ratio Pct (your operating-expense ratio against revenue).
• AP & Procurement: Materials Ratio.
• Jobs & Claims: Cycle Time and Days to Pay.
• Team & Compensation: Labor Ratio and Revenue / Employee.

Within a category, only the metrics Verinode can actually compute for you show up. If you have enough financial data for Net Margin but not for the operating-expense ratio, the block shows Net Margin alone and quietly drops the row you don't have data for yet, rather than showing a blank line.

The "You" column

This is your own number, computed from the same normalized facts Verinode already keeps on your business, the identical figure a buyer would see if you granted them that category. Financial ratios (Net Margin, Gross Margin %, Opex Ratio Pct, Materials Ratio, Labor Ratio, Revenue / Employee) are read from your most recent financial period on file. Cycle Time and Days to Pay are different: those are read across your own job history and shown as the median, so one unusually fast or unusually slow job does not swing the number.

If you have no data behind a given metric, that row simply does not appear in the table, and if you have no data for any metric in a category, that whole category block does not appear.

The "Market" column

This is the peer median for the same metric, resolved the same way benchmarks are resolved anywhere else on the platform (see How benchmarks work for the full mechanics of peer resolution and scope). Unlike benchmarks elsewhere on Verinode, the market number in your mirror is never gated behind your own consent or contribution status: this is your own diligence tool, so your market position is always visible to you here, regardless of what you have or haven't shared with the network.

If Verinode does not yet have enough peer data resolved for a metric, that cell shows a dash placeholder instead of a number rather than guessing. Your own "You" figure still shows either way.

Reading the gap

Verinode does not label a number "good" or "bad" on this panel, and it does not tell you what to do with the comparison, that call is always yours. What the table gives you is a same-unit read: your figure and the market figure for the same metric, in the same format (percent, days, or dollars), side by side. Direction still matters when you read it. For Net Margin, Gross Margin %, and Revenue / Employee, higher than the market figure is the stronger position. For Opex Ratio Pct, Materials Ratio, Labor Ratio, Cycle Time, and Days to Pay, lower than the market figure is the stronger position, since these are cost and time metrics where less is better.

1. 1Open Diligence from the sidebar and find the Your position vs the market panel, above the list of buyers.
2. 2For each category a buyer has asked about, compare your You figure against Market for every row, using the direction guidance above (more is better for margin and revenue-per-employee, less is better for cost ratios, cycle time, and days to pay).
3. 3Where you sit above market on a metric the buyer cares about, that is a fact you can hold to in the price conversation.
4. 4Where you sit below market, treat it as advance notice: decide how you want to frame or address the gap before the buyer's own diligence turns it up.
5. 5Use the category and control panel below the mirror to decide, category by category, whether and when to actually share your numbers with that specific buyer.

Engagements: what each buyer sees and what you control

Below the mirror, the page lists every buyer engagement, most recent first. Each buyer section shows the buyer's name (or "A prospective buyer" if no name is on file) next to a status label: Invited, Active, Closed: Won, Closed: Lost, Withdrawn, or Expired.

Under each buyer, only the categories that specific buyer actually asked about are listed (never all four by default). Each category row shows:

• The category label (Financials, Jobs & Claims, AP & Procurement, or Team & Compensation) and a one-line description of what it covers: "Profit & loss and chart of accounts," "Job and claim volume, cycle time, and outcomes," "Accounts payable and materials spend," or "Headcount and compensation structure."
• A plain-language preview of exactly what the buyer sees if you grant it, prefixed "Shared now:" if you have already granted it, or "If you share:" if you haven't:

- Financials: "Your normalized profit-and-loss ratios next to peer benchmarks. Not your raw books." - Jobs & Claims: "Your job cycle time and payment timing next to peer benchmarks. Not individual jobs or customers." - AP & Procurement: "Your materials and AP ratios next to peer benchmarks. Not individual invoices or vendors." - Team & Compensation: "Your headcount and compensation ratios next to peer benchmarks. Not individual employees."

Note that this is stronger than the mirror above it: the buyer never sees your raw books, individual jobs, invoices, or employees under any category, only the same kind of normalized, peer-compared numbers you already see in your own mirror.

Granting and revoking

For an engagement that is still Invited or Active, each category row carries a control on the right:

• If the category is not granted, a Share button. Clicking it grants that category to that buyer.
• If the category is granted, a Revoke button in its place. Clicking it pulls that category's access back.

Either action shows a brief loading state on the button, then a confirmation toast, "Access granted." or "Access revoked." (or an error toast if something went wrong), and the page refreshes so the row's state and preview text update immediately.

For engagements that are Closed: Won, Closed: Lost, Withdrawn, or Expired, the category rows still show what was requested and what state each one was left in, but there are no Share or Revoke controls, since the engagement is no longer live.

Related help articles

• How benchmarks work
• Benchmarks overview
• Reading a benchmark
• Understanding your margin
• The decision workspace