The best way to motivate business owners and sell your accounting firm’s advisory services is to keep it simple! Provide your clients with thought provoking analysis, questions and templates.
Try and show them the big picture. Look at the “why” or the “purpose behind their being” and then frame the process around helping them to achieve their goals and dreams.
We recently took a group of Business Owners through the process of creating a One Page Exit plan and the results are always the same. The process leads to the potential sale 12-36 months of Advisory work.
CASE STUDY- HOW TO USE THE PROCESS
We either run the process as a workshop with a group of business owners or use as a “one on one” early engagement tool.
We developed a one page template that creates a summary of the Business Owners major goals, personal vision, business value pers
onal & exit & succession goals.
Our goal has always been to help Business Owners start a discussion about their eventual exit and ensure that they touch upon all the most important issues well before their planned succession.
Download the Sample Template
The Exit Planning process requires expert guidance from a number of professional advisors on a variety of factors some of which we have mentioned below.
- Shareholder Alignment & Timing.
- Strategy & Value Creation (For example, social media, advertising, marketing, sales training).
- Review of Personal Issues (Goals, Legacy).
- Financial Planning.
- Business Valuation.
- Tax Planning.
- Legal Compliance & IP Issues.
- Estate Planning.
- HR & Succession Issues.
- Equity Capital Raising.
- Business Transition Broking Issues.
Download a Sample
Characteristics of the process:
- The One Page Exit Plan© is simple to understand.
- Educational for the business owner.
- Enjoyable to develop.
- Dynamic document, which can be modified and adapted easily.
- Can provide the driving force and narrative for multiple advisors.
- Ensures advisors on the same page as each other and the business owners.
- Can be done initially as a simple exercise but has the ability to be the framework for weeks/months and even years of driving actions.
- It connects the dots. Decisions about a Business Owner exit can be done in isolation between business matters, personal financial planning and your personal wellness.
Peter Hickey | CEO | MAUS
Peter is the founder of MAUS Business Systems, a firm that started as a business consultancy and grew into a software company. The company was listed as one of BRW’s fastest growing 100 private companies in 2000. It was successfully built from a one-man business to a multi-million dollar concern. The business was acquired by a multi-billion dollar publisher, before Peter re-acquired the business 6 years later.
MAUS now has one of the largest ranges of cloud based SMB management tools and business advisory tools in the world. The company has 50 worldwide partner offices, and has helped over 60,000 users to achieve their business goals.
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