You won the seat. Now be careful who you let sit next to you.

From the Exit Planning Institute’s 2023 National State of Owner Readiness Report:

In 2013 the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) was the clear frontrunner. However, in 2023 there has been a significant swing, Financial Advisors are the most trusted advisor.

Ten years ago you weren’t in the top three. Check the 2013 rankings. Accountant. Peer group. Spouse. Attorney. Then financial advisors, at number five.

Fifth. Behind the spouse.

Today you’re first, and EPI credits it directly to the investment your profession made in exit planning education. You didn’t luck into that chair...you took it.

Now read the next line in the same report, because this is the one that should change how you handle every introduction you make:

It is important to note that the top three most trusted advisors represent three of the four most critical advisors on the owner’s core team. The missing advisor is the value growth advisor.

Financial advisor, attorney, CPA. Three chairs filled. One chair empty, and it happens to be the only one you can’t sit in yourself.

So when you introduce an outside consultant to your best business owner client, be clear about what you’re doing. You’re not doing anybody a favor. You’re seating a stranger at the table where you are the most trusted person in the room, in the one seat your client actually needs filled, on your recommendation, against your name.

That’s a loan against your reputation. Price it like one. Remember, it's your car.

Contingent currency

The pitch to financial advisors is always some version of win/win. You bring the client, we build the enterprise value, everybody wins later...maybe.

Look at what each side is actually putting up.

You’re putting up a real, present, hard-won asset. A client relationship you spent years earning, that you can’t replace, and that you don’t get back if it goes sideways.

The consultant is putting up a projection.

An increase in enterprise value that hasn’t moved out of the software and into the owner’s bank account is contingent currency. It isn’t value…it’s a number in a model that pays nobody until a transaction closes, and that transaction might be three years out, five years out, or never.

You’re trading a certainty for a maybe (and I mean maybe), on somebody else’s timeline.

This isn’t a shot at exit planning. It’s a shot at an old playbook.

The Exit Planning Institute has done more for me and for this industry than any organization I can name, and I say that as a CEPA and as their 2024 Member of the Year. They aren’t the problem. They built the standard, and they’re the ones who published the data I just quoted at you.

But look at the market: EPI credentialed 321 new CEPAs in January of this year. 276 in February. 287 in April. 250 in June. 306 in July. Round it to 300 a month, 3,500 a year, and climbing.

Good news for owners and also a signal for you.

When a credential is scarce, the credential is the differentiator. When 300 people a month are earning it, the credential is table stakes and the real difference becomes something else…it becomes what the consultant does for you.

The original playbook is just that. Old. You get to be selective now…so let's talk about how to be selective without car wrecks.

Define the ROI or you’re buying the same vague promise

My standard: an outside consultant should produce measurable return for the owner and for you inside 90 days.

Real enterprise value creation takes years. Anybody promising you a transformation in a quarter is selling a sugar high at best.

I’m not talking about transformation. I’m talking about proof of competence.

What does a 90-day return actually look like? Discovery, done properly and EPI’s own survey already told you what that discovery is going to turn up.

A quarter of the owners in the 2023 report who have a buy-sell agreement have it funded by neither life insurance nor disability insurance. Neither one. Another 18% funded it with life only. Roughly 42% have no written financial plan at all, or a plan nobody qualified ever reviewed. 70% have no updated estate plan. And 70% say they’ll need to harvest the value of the business to pay for the rest of their life, out of a business that’s typically 80% or more of everything they own.

That isn’t a research finding. That’s a revenue list.

  • Disability coverage that was never installed and/or updated for the lifestyle success has bought.
  • Life insurance nobody has looked at since the company was a third of its current size.
  • Key man policies on somebody who stopped being the key man four years ago, or no policy at all.
  • A buy-sell funded by a handshake.
  • Cash sitting dead in an operating account because nobody ever built a cash management strategy inside the business.

Every one of those is a live exposure for the owner today, not at exit. Every one of those is revenue you’re already licensed to write.

My clients are growing revenue on exactly this right now. Not on a projection. Not in a spreadsheet. Inside 90 days, off work they or an outside consultant surfaced and handed back.

Present tense. Current year. In the bank.

Adding mileage

You know the methodology from my book Can I Borrow Your Car? A referral is somebody handing you the keys to something they own and care about and, most importantly…they want back safely.

Here’s the failure mode nobody names. A consultant takes the keys, drives your client around for three years, and hands the car back with more miles on it and nothing else. No new opportunity, new relationships, revenue…just wear.

That’s mileage that costs and returns nothing for a long time, not partnership.

A consultant who understands the methodology drives differently. They’re inside your best client’s business, in rooms you don’t get invited to, seeing the whole operating picture. Two things ought to come back out of that.

Revenue you can act on, from the discovery I just described above.

Relationships. Your client has vendors, suppliers, bankers, a landlord, other owners up and down the supply chain, peers in their trade association. A consultant doing the work properly is mapping that field anyway. The only question is whether they hand you the map or keep it.

First, do no harm. Then bring the car back better than you got it.

Four questions before you hand over the keys

1. Have they sold and served in a regulated environment? Not “have they worked with advisors before.” Have they personally carried the compliance weight and the client-facing risk? If they haven’t, they have no idea what an introduction costs you when it goes wrong. That doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t refer to them…it just means that you need to explain more to them than those that do.

2. Do they understand how you make money? Can they name your revenue lines and tell you which ones your client is probably underserved on right now? If they can’t describe your economics, they can’t create value inside them.

3. What in the structure keeps your relationship primary? Not whether they’re willing. Everybody’s willing. Ask what makes it true. Who owns the client record. Whose name is on the calendar invite. Who’s in the room at closing. What the agreement says about the relationship after the transaction.

4. What do they do to keep you in the most trusted advisor seat? Your industry and you spent ten years taking that chair from the CPA. A consultant who quietly becomes the owner’s primary voice over three years hasn’t partnered with you. They’ve replaced you, using your own introduction to do it.

Your assignment

Name the three outside consultants you’d typically introduce your best owner client to this week. Run all four questions on each of them.

If you can’t answer question four for any of them, you don’t have a referral partner. You have a very pleasant path out of the seat you spent ten years earning. If you need some help or advice, don't hesitate to reach out to me.

Be real. Be human. Be authentic.