Often, too often, a would-be buyers and would-be seller spend time in phone conversations, meetings, and information gathering, only to realize they are very far apart on valuation and terms. It’s good to establish ASAP whether you are in “deal making range”. We like buyers to submit an initial non-binding proposal that sketches out price and terms. This proposal can and should be market as “for discussion purposes only” and “not an offer”. It’s fine if details are missing at this early phase. The purpose is to discover whether a deal is within the realm of possibility. If buyer & seller are say 10% or 20% apart, a deal could well happen. If however, the parties are say 50% apart on price and seller wants all cash and buyer expects that seller to finance 70% of the deal, well there probably will be no deal and therefor no reason to spend more time trying to make one.