Sell-side pitch book template, with a data assets slide you can drop in

A sell-side pitch book template runs from situation overview, credentials and valuation to buyer universe, process, team and fees. This version adds one data assets slide listing the company's systems, years of records, rights status and an optional licensing track, built from metadata only, so the owner sees you looked for every source of proceeds.

Where the data assets slide fits in a sell-side pitch book

A sell-side pitch book follows a familiar order, and the data assets slide belongs straight after the valuation pages, while total proceeds are front of mind for the owner. A typical structure:

Situation overview and the owner's goals
Firm credentials and comparable transactions
Market context and positioning
Preliminary valuation perspectives
Data assets and licensing option (the new slide)
Buyer universe
Process, timeline and next steps
Team and fee proposal

The slide is one page. It tells the owner which records the company holds, whether it appears to have the rights to license them, and what a separate licensing track could look like. Everything on it comes from a conversation with management, not from files.

When to include the slide, and when to leave it out

Include it when the company has 50+ full-time employees at peak (contractors excluded), several years of documented operations and its work recorded across many systems. B2B software, IT services, professional services, engineering, logistics and distribution businesses tend to fit.

Leave it out when the company's records mostly belong to its clients, when the data has already been licensed for AI training, or when the pre-pitch call did not confirm the basic facts. A half-filled slide does more harm than no slide at all.

The data assets slide template

Fill the braces from your pre-pitch conversation and keep each panel to three or four lines.

Slide title: {Company} records: {number} systems, {years} years of operational history Panel 1, systems and history: {system 1} since {year}; {system 2} since {year}; {system 3} since {year}; archived: {retired system} from {year} to {year} Panel 2, records with outcomes: {ticket threads with resolutions}; {proposals won and lost}; {project plans with delivery results}; {SOPs with their revision history} Panel 3, rights status: Created by employees: {yes or partly}. Customer contracts restrict data use: {no, some, or to be confirmed}. Previously licensed for AI training: {no}. Authorized sponsor: {owner, CEO or CFO} Panel 4, licensing option: An optional, separate track: AI developers license the company's operational records for an agreed term in return for a single payment. The company keeps ownership, agrees terms before any buyer review, and is not bound until it signs. Footnote: Based on discussion with management only. No records were reviewed or shared. Subject to qualification, rights review and agreed redaction.

Speaker notes for the meeting:

Illustrative: panel 1 and 3 filled in for a distributor

Illustrative and fictional: a regional industrial distributor with 210 full-time employees at peak, owner-led, considering a sale within two years.

System	Records	History	Rights note
ERP	Orders, returns, supplier lead times and exceptions	2012 to today	Company-created; no customer restriction reported
CRM	Quotes, win and loss reasons, account notes	2015 to today	Contains contact details; redaction needed
Helpdesk	Order problems and how each was resolved	2017 to today	Company-created
Shared drives	SOPs, pricing playbooks, warehouse procedures	2010 to today	Written by employees
Email and Teams	Internal coordination on escalations and exceptions	2016 to today	Employee notices to be confirmed

On the slide itself this becomes five short lines in panel 1 and a three-line rights summary in panel 3; the table stays in your working file.

How to personalize the slide for different sellers

Seller profile	Emphasize	Tone down
Founder-owned software company	Engineering history: code reviews, tickets, release notes	Product usage data that belongs to customers
PE-backed services platform	Records across add-ons and the integration history	Anything tied to an add-on that has not closed
Owner close to retirement	Proceeds that do not depend on the sale	Timelines and any outcome language
Company planning a system migration	Keeping full exports before old systems are retired	Technical detail about file formats
Company with a lot of client-owned content	The internal records that remain the company's	The size of the overall archive

Follow-up timing after the pitch

Pitch day: leave the slide in the book; do not send a separate licensing proposal.
Within a week: if the owner asked about the slide, send the company fit checker link and offer a short call.
At engagement: agree in writing whether the licensing track runs before, during or after the sale, and record any referral compensation in your client disclosure.
During CIM drafting: describe any signed or pending license as set out in the guide to describing data assets in a CIM.

What never goes on the slide

Any confidential record, sample, screenshot or export
Customer names, employee names or other personal information
A value, price range or multiple for the license
Claims about which AI developers would buy, or how quickly
Referral reward figures, or any mention of your own reward
Wording that folds the license into enterprise value or the purchase price

The licensing option is a license of records, not a sale of the data or of the company; the licensing vs selling explainer helps when an owner asks about the difference.

Next step

Drop the slide into your next pitch book and check the profile against the who qualifies baseline. When an owner wants to proceed, register as a partner and pass the company to SourceX with the owner's consent; partner rewards are a share of SourceX's fee, paid only after the buyer pays and SourceX receives that fee. The guide to winning mandates with a data asset review and the sell-side process steps show how the slide carries through the engagement, and the referral program for M&A advisors gives the overview.

Step 1Share your linkSend your personal link to a company you know.
Step 2Company appliesThe company applies itself at /apply.
Step 3Buyer selects and paysThe buyer selects and pays for the data and SourceX receives its fee.
Step 4You get your rewardYour share of SourceX fees becomes payable.

Common questions

Will a data assets slide distract the owner from the valuation discussion?

It should not if it stays to one page and follows the valuation section. Placed there, it reads as thoroughness rather than a sideshow, because the owner has just been thinking about total proceeds. Keep the discussion in the meeting brief, make no value claims, and offer a separate follow-up call if the owner wants to explore licensing further.

What if the rights position cannot be confirmed before the pitch?

Say so on the slide. Mark the rights panel as to be confirmed and explain that a rights review is part of qualification. Guessing is worse than leaving it open, because the owner's counsel and later a buyer will test every statement. Never fill the gap by asking the company for sample records or contract copies before you are engaged.

Can the slide include an estimate of what a license might pay?

No. There is no price until the company completes a data inventory, agrees terms with SourceX and buyers review what is available, so any number on the slide would be invented. Describe the licensing option as a possible additional source of proceeds that does not depend on the sale, and let qualification produce real terms.

Does the slide work in a buy-side pitch?

Only partly. A buy-side client may want the same systems and rights view of a target, but a licensing introduction only makes sense with the company's owner or authorized sponsor, and a target in a sale process has its own constraints. Use the structure as a diligence prompt about data assets rather than as a licensing proposal.

Should the slide be updated after the advisor is engaged?

Yes. Once engaged, replace the pitch version with a short internal record of what the owner decided: whether to pursue a license, its timing relative to the sale, and who on the company side owns the data inventory. That record later feeds the CIM, the data room index and the disclosure schedule.

Free resources

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By SourceX Partnerships Team · Published 2026-10-09 · Updated 2026-10-09

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