Two recent surveys of over 50,000 owners and CEOs found that 83% of owners want and feel they need to grow their business.[1] Our experience of over 40 years working with successful owners confirms that owners will engage the advisors who can help them get what they want. That’s why we created Owner-Based Planning for Advisors (OBP): A suite of training, marketing tools and deliverables that equips you to help business owners grow and protect business value using your professional services and products.
In addition to helping owners meet a pressing need, Owner-Based Planning sharply differentiates your practice from competitors.
Where do you begin?
Successful advisors promise and deliver the assistance owners need to grow cash flow and business. In doing so they powerfully differentiate their practices from their competitors.
If you are a financial advisor and you promise to help owners safely grow their investments, your value proposition is identical to every other investment advisor.
The same is true for insurance advisors: Promising to provide funding in the event of an owner’s death or disability does not meaningfully differentiate you from every other insurance advisor—including the owner’s current advisor.
As an OBP Advisor you differentiate yourself from your competitors because you offer a service that other financial and insurance advisors can’t: You will help owners dramatically grow and protect the cash flow and value of their businesses.
How do you help owners grow and protect business value?
The critical component of building value is a skilled and motivated management team. You can help owners by helping them incentivize their key employee(s) to 1) consistently grow revenue or cash flow, and 2) remain with the company long-term.
Protecting business value involves protecting it from unnecessary risk and providing for the company’s continuity if the owner dies or becomes incapacitated. As an OBP Advisor, you can promise owners to help them do both.
Owner-Based Planning is the Key to Differentiation
Promising to help owners protect and build business cash flow and value can seem to be outside the bounds of your typical practice area. However, growing and protecting business value uses the tools and products that you already offer. By approaching owners with the proposition of helping them achieve their growth goals you differentiate your practice and open the door to using the services and products you’ve always relied on.
With OBP marketing and planning tools, you can:
• Attract and engage successful owners to your practice using branded marketing materials, including assessments, white papers, and newsletters.
• Create a simple action plan that consists of recommendations for actions owners can take to grow and protect value. Recommendations might include deferred compensation plans, employment agreements, continuity planning arrangements for sole owners, etc. BEI has created 29 written such recommendations for use by OBP Advisors.
• Use your services and products to implement recommended actions. For example, a recommendation to create a phantom stock plan or other deferred compensation plan includes informally funding with insurance or financial investments.
• Become an Owner-Based Planning Advisor who deploys marketing materials, tools, and deliverables to help your clients and grow your practice.
In future blogs, we will detail additional OBP recommendations, so you can see exactly how they incorporate both financial and funding products and services. We encourage you to learn more about how the OBP planning process and tools differentiate and enhance your practice by joining our next webinar on January 23 at noon EST with BEI Founder, John Brown.
[1] Sandman, George, quoting International Exit Planning Association BERI survey and data generated using CoreValue Software in The Growth-Driving Advisor, copyright 2023.
