Many business owners become frustrated when their advisers don’t understand them or their business as well as they would expect.
Whilst many business owner’s goals are similar, from an adviser’s perspective, there is such a wide variety of both long-term and short-term objectives that business owners have. Overlay these with the differences each business owner places on importance and it starts to become apparent how diverse each business owner’s needs are.
We have worked on many different models to address this challenge in our service delivery and I suspect it will be an ongoing journey.
Understanding you and the needs of your business
Some of the factors which advisers need to understand to better service you and the needs of your business are:
- Are you in a growth or stabilisation phase?
- Upcoming asset purchases you may be considering
- Your leadership and succession objectives
- Business sale timing
- Whether your current structure is best for your future goals
- Your finance needs and debt reduction plans
- Your Investment goals
- Cash flow planning to fund your goals
What is your timeframe?
The timeframe of your goals and priorities are an important factor as some objectives have solutions that can implemented now, while others such as the goal to buy and own your business premises with your self-managed superfund could be a longer term plan in the next 5 years. This would involve a number of steps and longer range planning.
The Challenge
One of the main challenges advisers face in knowing what their clients really want, and clients being able to articulate their goals and objectives – is everyone having the time and good communication tools to discuss the most relevant issues. Whilst we would all like to have the time to have these rich and deep conversations, mostly immediate or urgent issues are the ones that consume meetings and planning bandwidth between clients and their advisers.
We can develop a service model specific for you and your business needs
Being aware of this challenge has led us to utilising and tailoring a system that makes the communication time more efficient and the process simple.
The system is called a WITY report – which stands for ‘What’s Important To You’.
The WITY is a simple tick box survey which we send to you (and your life or business partner) which can be completed in your own time. Upon completion, your preferences are available for us to review and understand your immediate business needs.
The report consists of a series of questions around your personal and business financial goals and objectives, asks the importance of each of these and where you feel you are at in your current achievement of these.
From the survey results, we are then able to understand:
- The goals you have for the future
- Which goals are high priority, to be addressed now
- Which goals you already have under control
- Longer term planning – we can be mindful of these when setting up structures or supporting you and your business with tax and accounting queries as they arise.
Pivot your thinking to gain the right perspective
As well as assisting us to help you better, taking 20 minutes to complete the survey pivots your thinking into working on your business, as opposed to working in your business – which is crucial to gaining the right perspective.
Our clients who have completed the survey have noted the process has stimulated them to consider known issues that needed to be prioritised, or major areas that they should have been focusing on but were not aware of them.
In reviewing this report we can provide feedback or personally guide you through the report to ensure we are all working towards the same objectives.
We are then able to implement strategies, or connect you with people who can help you achieve these goals, as some strategies may fall outside of our internal range of expertise, however still be of high importance to you and your business plans.
Our experience with the WITY has shown that equipped with this detailed report data, we can understand you better and recognise how we can support you in achieving your objectives and also your challenges or competing priorities.
Advantages and opportunities for you and your business
The end result is a much closer alignment of what you need and what we can provide you, as well as an enhanced tailoring of our services and quality advice that is specific to you. Throughout this process you will get a clearer understanding of the important goals that should be prioritised.
The WITY process has also identified opportunities where our innovation team has been able to support businesses to receive government grants for money already spent on research and development, as well as overseas marketing to develop export markets.
If you would like a better understanding of your personal and business financial goals and objectives, click below to request a link to the WITY and we can guide you through the process.
At Walsh we have cultivated a culture of freedom and responsibility, together with innovation and self-discipline to foster and support high-performance people and effective teamwork.
How can Walsh Accountants help you?
Walsh Accountants has been supporting local business owners for over 45 years.
We provide a comprehensive range of accounting, taxation and advisory services to meet the unique needs of a wide variety of clients.
With specialised divisions including Medical, Property, Hospitality, Women in Business, Business Purchase, Estates, Focus Advisory and Research & Development and Government Grants, the dedicated team at Walsh Accountants have the expertise and business acumen required to provide premium services to suit all your needs.
If you have any questions in relation to how we can help you work ON your business, please do not hesitate to contact our team today.
