You will also get detailed financial analysis, strategic direction, and recommendations on how to structure a transaction to maximize the value of your business. This would be extremely valuable if you move forward with your competitor because you will have the opinion of an objective third party to use as basis for your selling price. The variance takes into account that each business is unique and the pricing reflects the varying complexities from business to business. Whichever you choose, the thing to keep in mind is that when you own a private company, no one can look up its value in a newspaper. So when circumstances require that kind of information about a private company, its owner must hire someone to perform a study of its value that is logical and defensible.
Rules of thumb are nothing more than the roughest of starting points.
At best, rules of thumb can only help you approximate typical market prices for typical businesses in your industry. Getting the financial statements is the start of it. We will need to spend 2 to 4 hours with you to get more company info. They generally have the results in 2 to 4 weeks.