IS BUSINESS ADVISORY A RED HERRING?

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Part of the confusion that many firms have with Advisory is that they often only think about Business Advisory.

Once we start looking at Advisory as Client Advisory or indeed Whole of Client Advisory then it becomes obvious that we need to consider both Personal and Business Advisory.

Too much focus on Business Advisory can confuse and mislead. One of the reasons that this happens is that it suits the agenda of certain people to promote the idea that in order to “do advisory” you need to be some sort of business guru when of course this is just not so.

For most clients the success of their business is an important factor in improving their wealth and lifestyle and looking after their family and so on – but it is the wealth and lifestyle and family which are the drivers not the business success.

Many accountants are already doing great work with clients with regards personal advisory – wealth planning and tax planning for example. This is a vital part of whole of client advisory.

Personal advisory is a powerful way of getting closer to clients and really understanding what makes them tick. It is also something with which  accountants that feel a little wary of business advisory will feel more comfortable with – after all many are already having similar conversations already albeit maybe as organised or structured as it could and should be.

If you want to see this in action ask your client “What is the most important thing to you about building your personal wealth?” and show them a personal balance sheet of their net worth and talk about how this might be improved.

Do you feel your clients would be more interested in a personal balance sheet or a business balance sheet?

Our experience and the experiences of accountants that do this kind of work is that the personal balance sheet strikes a chord that the business balance sheet will rarely do.

An annual Wealth Review with your best clients is a great way of creating a new recurring income stream and to identify further paid for advice in areas such as tax planning and business improvement whilst also enabling commission earning referrals to IFA’s and Legal Advisers (the number of wills that need updating or even creating is astounding!).

If you want to know more how you can develop personal advisory and whole of client advisory in your practice then contact us at info@completeadvisorysolution.com

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