Advisor Exit Strategy: What Buyers Look for in a Practice

Sellers and buyers often look at the same advisory practice and arrive at different valuations, says Private Advisor Group’s Adam Schorr. Sellers may emphasize client trust, relationships and revenue, while buyers focus on retention, transition risk, operational consistency and founder dependency, creating a gap in valuation expectations. Schorr discusses transferability, succession planning and why reducing founder dependency takes time. https://lnkd.in/gd_8CMMW #WealthSolutionsReport #RIAs #SuccessionPlanning #FinancialAdvisors

Most advisors think their practice is worth what the calculator says. Buyers don't pay for the calculator. They pay for what survives after you leave. More than 1 in 4 advisors planning to retire in the next decade aren't sure what their succession plan is. The uncomfortable part: a lot of those practices aren't sellable yet. Not at a price the owner would accept. 3 signs your practice isn't sellable (yet): 1. You are the relationship. If every client calls you, and only you, a buyer isn't acquiring a business. They're acquiring key-person risk. 2. Your revenue isn't recurring. Buyers pay up for predictable revenue. Everything else gets discounted, deferred, or tied to future performance. 3. A handful of clients carry the book. To the owner, concentration feels like loyalty. To a buyer, it looks like risk. None of these are fatal. All of them take years, not months, to fix. That's why succession isn't something you do at the end. It's how you run the business now. Operators fix the business before they sell it. Which of these three do you see most often in practices that come to market? Source: Cerulli Associates, Aug 2026. #SuccessionPlanning #WealthManagement #RIA #FinancialAdvisors

A successful succession plan is about more than valuation. Brian shares why understanding the people, culture and transition behind the offer can be just as important as the number.

A successful succession plan is about more than valuation. Brian shares why understanding the people, culture and transition behind the offer can be just as important as the number.

The highest bidder isn’t always the right answer. When it comes time to sell or transition your practice, price matters. But so do the things that made the business valuable in the first place. What happens to your clients? What happens to your employees? How will the new owner operate the business? And what role, if any, do you want after the transaction? I’ve been involved in enough transactions over the years to know that a great succession plan isn’t just about getting the highest multiple. It’s about understanding your options and finding the right fit for the business, your clients, your team — and for you. Don’t wait until you’re ready to sell to start thinking about those questions. #FinancialAdvisors #SuccessionPlanning #IndependentAdvisors Osaic Malcolm Thomas Amy Heapps, MSM Innovative Financial Group, LLC Innovative Wealth Team

Always Ready | Post 4 of 20 A valuation is a starting point Some owners receive a valuation, review the number, and assume they now understand the value of their company. The number is useful. It does not explain everything. A valuation provides an estimate under a particular set of assumptions and conditions. It may help an owner establish a baseline, but it does not automatically identify what should happen next. The more valuable questions often sit behind the number. What is driving the company’s value? Which risks are limiting it? How much of its performance depends on the owner? What would make the company more attractive and transferable? How does its current performance compare with its potential? Value maturity turns those questions into an ongoing management discipline. The owner assesses the company, protects the value already created, strengthens its key value drivers, prepares for possible transition paths, and aligns the results with personal and financial objectives. This work should be revisited as the company changes. New growth may create new risks. An acquisition may place pressure on systems and leadership. A family development may alter the owner’s goals. Market conditions may affect the options available. A valuation describes the company at a point in time. A value-maturity process helps the owner improve the business from that point forward. Knowing the number matters. Understanding how to build a better company behind that number matters more. DM if you want to discuss your process and how to evaluate the levers in your business. Jon LeDoyen Managing Director Clear Point Partners | UBS PWM https://lnkd.in/ggJkEESp

You help one client with an estate issue. Another needs coordination with their CPA. A third is preparing to sell a business. Over time, those individual requests become your service model. But have you stepped back to define what you’re actually delivering and who should be receiving it? At AE Wealth Management, we’re helping advisors bring more intention to that client experience: defining their services, aligning them with client needs and making the value easier to see. That’s the focus of my latest Kiplinger article.

If one of your best clients referred you to a friend tomorrow, what would they say you actually do for them? “My advisor is great” is a compliment. But it doesn’t tell the full story. Would they talk about how you coordinated with their CPA? Helped them think through their estate plan? Guided them through selling a business? Helped their family make a major financial decision? Those are the stories that show the value of the relationship. In her latest article for Kiplinger, AE Wealth Management President Shannon Larson shares why advisors should take a closer look at how their client experience is structured, which services different clients receive and, just as importantly, whether clients understand the full value they’re getting. It’s a good gut check for any advisory firm: Could your clients clearly explain your value to someone else? Read Shannon’s full article in Kiplinger: https://lnkd.in/gYRNejeT

A valuation expert told me last week he never meets business owners years before a sale. By the time owners call him, they need a number for a sale, a bank or the IRS, and they need it fast. Another valuation pro I met that same week told me a certified valuation at her firm runs about $25,000. That’s not a knock on either of them. It’s how the system is built. Valuations happen at the end, when the number is just a fact to be documented. But the end is the worst time to learn what your business is worth. At that point you can’t fix customer concentration, build a management team, or move one-off jobs onto contracts. The number is already baked. Most owners treat a valuation like a final exam. The ones who sell well treat it like a check-up. When was the last time someone told you what your business is worth, and what’s holding that number down?

None of the advisors I've talked about over the past few months work in isolation, and neither does a good exit. The attorney who structured the entity correctly. The estate planner who moved equity before it appreciated. The CPA who kept the books defensible for three straight years. The wealth manager who built the plan before there was a number to plan around. The banker who already trusted the business. The valuation specialist who tested the number honestly instead of letting the owner guess. None of them close a deal alone. Together, years before anyone signs anything, they're the reason a sale goes smoothly instead of becoming a six-month lesson in what nobody thought to do earlier. Most owners inherit this network by accident, whoever they happened to hire over the years, with no plan for whether those people work well together or even know each other exist. The owners who get ahead of their exit are usually the ones who built this network on purpose, deliberately, years before they needed all of it at once. If you've read this whole series and recognized your own advisor in one of these posts, that's not an accident. Good advisors tend to look like this description, whether or not anyone's ever put it into words for them.