Can You Help Owners Meet Their No. 1 Challenge?
When business owners want to grow the value of their companies, where do they turn? If they turn to their professional advisors, their financial and insurance advisors are not at the top of their lists.
Studies show that 86% of owners understand they need to grow business value.[1]
Who do they turn to for help? Likely no one and in any case very unlikely their financial and insurance advisor.
That’s not surprising since most financial and insurance advisors “stick to their knitting” and limit their practices to their professional training: Financial advisors generally provide financial advice and products, and life insurance advisors typically provide life insurance to cover owners’ personal needs and perhaps provisions in their buy-sell agreements. To be fair owners don’t often turn to their CPAs or attorneys either–simply because these professionals have never raised the issue of increasing company value.
Yet, ask owners what their biggest challenges are—the ones that grab their attention—and they’ll respond with some version of, “I need to grow cash flow, faster.” They know greater cash flow equates to greater business value.
The key to representing successful owners: Offer to help them grow and protect business value.
The Million-Dollar Question
What if you could help owners increase the value of their companies? Could you engage more of them? And what if the value-boosting strategies you recommended involved the use of one or more of your existing tools or products?
The key to getting the most out of your professional tools and products: Use them to help owners growing business value.
Engaging owners to address their biggest challenge is the premise and promise of Owner-Based Planning (OBP).
The Challenge to Advisors
Of course, OBP requires you to address a challenge as well: Become trained and conversant in the OBP process. You’ve got to understand when and why to recommend one value-building strategy over another, such as stock appreciation plan rather than a phantom stock plan for a key employee. Our initial and ongoing OBP training does that and more.
The Solution for Advisors / The Solution for Owners: OBP
BEI has developed for advisors the software and training, the meeting agendas, the advisor-branded marketing tools (e.g., short explanatory briefs on specific value growth or protection tools), white papers related to value growth, protection, or business continuity strategies, as well as 30-plus written recommendations designed help owners grow and protect value.
Learn More
We are excited to introduce you to this career-enhancing program that supercharges your ability to engage and help business owners. We look forward to telling you more about how you can benefit from becoming an Owner-Based Planning advisor.
[1] International Exit Planning Association BERI survey and data generated using CoreValue Software; direct quotation from The Growth-Driving Advisor by George Sandmann, copyright 2023.
