The short answer
In the lower middle market, a good 100-day plan does three things in order. It gets one trusted version of the numbers in the first 30 days, tests management’s biggest beliefs against the company’s own records by day 60, and funds a few sized initiatives with stop conditions by day 100. It is shorter and more evidence-led than a large-cap plan because the team is thinner and the data is messier. And because buyouts now need roughly twice the earnings growth they once did4, the first 100 days should build a pipeline of tested initiatives rather than a list of promises.
Why the standard plan breaks
The classic 100-day plan was built for companies with a CFO, an FP&A team, and a data warehouse. A $20M to $150M company bought from its founder usually has a controller, a spreadsheet the owner trusted, and an ERP nobody has changed in a decade. A plan that hands this team forty workstreams in the first quarter will get forty status updates and very little change.
The math has changed too. Bain estimates that a typical buyout now needs 10 to 12 percent annual EBITDA growth to reach 2.5x over five years, about twice what the 2010s required4. In BDO’s 2025 survey of 435 fund managers and operating partners, 84 percent said holding periods had lengthened over the prior year15. The first 100 days no longer just protect the deal. They set up the earnings growth the whole hold depends on.
Days 1 to 30: get one version of the numbers
Before anyone chooses initiatives, the company needs a monthly close it can trust and a simple view of margin by customer and product. It is not glamorous, and it is the step most plans rush.
- Close the books within fifteen business days, using the same definitions every month.
- Get invoice-line data out of the ERP with customer, product, price, cost, rep, and date. Twelve to twenty-four months is enough.
- Ask each member of management to write down their three strongest beliefs about where margin or growth is hiding, with a number and a range.
Days 31 to 60: test the beliefs against the records
This is the step most plans skip. The beliefs written down in the first month become hypotheses, and the invoice data tests them. Some will hold. Some will be wrong, which is just as useful. And the data will usually surface one or two gaps nobody raised, most often in pricing, customer mix, or cost to serve.
Size each finding in three layers: what is visible in the records, what the company’s levers can reach, and what a realistic change could capture. Rank by the last number, not the first.
Days 61 to 100: fund a few sized bets
Pick three to five
Name an owner and a number
Write the stop condition
Test before rolling out
Specimen · illustrative figures
A $45M specialty distributor’s management team wrote down eleven beliefs in the first month. By day 60, four held, five did not, and the invoice data surfaced two they had not raised, including a freight policy giving away about $400K a year. The day-100 plan funded four initiatives worth an estimated $1.2M to $1.9M in annual EBITDA, each with a stop condition.
What to leave out
Leave out anything that cannot be measured in the company’s own records during the hold. System replacements, rebrands, and org redesigns may be right eventually, but they rarely belong in the first 100 days of a lower-middle-market deal. They consume the same few people the priority initiatives need.
Where AI fits
The step that used to cost the most, reading two years of invoice lines to test a dozen beliefs, is now the cheapest. That changes the order of the plan: evidence can come before commitments instead of after them. It does not change the rest. People still decide what to fund, and the stop condition still decides when to quit.
Sources
- 4Bain & Company, Global Private Equity Report 2026, press release, February 23, 2026.
- 15BDO USA, 2025 Private Equity Survey, press release, August 12, 2025.
Market figures describe the landscape and are not Modven results.