You started your own financial services firm so you could work more closely with your clients and better serve them. So, of course you want to make sure they’ll be well taken care of when you hand the business off to new owners, but how can you be sure that will be the case?
The fact is that your clients (and their financial assets) are a big part of what makes your financial services firm worth selling. Anyone willing to buy your firm isn’t just paying for your retirement out of the goodness of their heart. They’re doing it so they can have the opportunity to work with your clients.
This means you need to be particularly careful about whom you choose as the buyer of your financial services firm, as well as how you decide to make your exit. Despite all the attention that goes to those who make a dramatic exit, sometimes it’s the graceful exit that gets the most appreciation. So, regardless of your exit plan, make sure you know how you’ll break it to your clients.
Options for Selling Your Financial Services Firm
What will happen to your clients after you sell your financial services firm has everything to do with how you go about selling the firm, so let’s talk about your options.
Selling the Business to an Employee
Selling your financial services firm to an employee who has been working with you for years – whether it’s a family member or an employee who has come to feel like family – is not for everyone, but it is the route taken by many owners of financial services firms.
While there are barriers to going down this path, the biggest benefit that comes with this option is that your clients are likely to already be familiar with the new owner of your financial services firm.
Better yet, the new owner will already be familiar with you and how you work with your clients. Not only does this mean you will be able to trust them with your existing book of business, but it also means you will be able to rest easy knowing your clients will be in good hands after you’ve moved on to the next chapter of your life.
Selling Without Leaving
Another option when selling your business is to hand the keys over to someone else with the understanding that you will stay on as an employee or a consultant.
Sometimes this means you stay on until you are ready to fully retire. Other times, the agreement includes a specific amount of time you will stay on before fulling exiting the business.
One of the biggest benefits to structuring the sale of your business this way is the fact that it provides you with the opportunity to ease the transition of your clients from your hands to those of the new owners of your financial services firm.
You get to explain to your clients what they can expect from the transition, as well as the opportunity to aid in the transition yourself to ensure everything goes as smoothly as possible.
Selling Your Financial Services Firm to a Trusted Advisor
If none of the above options are available to you, there is another option: partnering with Vertex.
Our goal is create a collaborative environment in which we can support our advisors, and our advisors support each other to ensure our clients can reap the benefits.
If you want to know more about what a partnership with Vertex looks like, all that information is here.
