Beickman Advisory Group provides personalized finance consulting to individuals and businesses. More recently, they have added exit planning and value building in addition to tax management and accounting services. As the founder of Beickman Advisory Group, Bruce Beickman brings over three decades of experience helping small to medium-sized business owners achieve their long-term goals. Beickman has helped with over 250 company transactions both on the buyer and seller side, successfully producing a high return for his clients.
Business Challenges
From 1994 -2008, Beickman Advisory group operated as a typical accounting firm and provided financial advising. In working with hundreds of clients, Beickman realized that he was doing additional business advisory and coaching, but was not charging for it. This led Beickman to shift his business model to also offer value building and exit planning consulting. Despite having some expertise in these areas, he needed a proven coaching tool that helps business owners grow and sell their companies.
Providing effective value building consulting takes time and Beickman understood the need to extend the client lifecycle. This would allow him to charge monthly installments and establish a new recurring revenue stream. With a more well-rounded and valuable service for his clients, Beickman believed this would lead to a more sustainable business.
With these planned changes to his business, Beickman’s main goal was to gain a greater work-life balance. Instead of working endless hour weeks for a long list of clients, he was interested in having fewer clients who agreed to annual commitments. With a renewed focus on delivering value building consulting, Beickman went on a search for an all-in-one platform that could help expand his advisory offering, while relying on a more consistent revenue source.
Why The Value Builder System™?
Beickman was immediately impressed with the simple methodology The Value Builder System™ provides, and now serves as the backbone for his new value building consultancy. In discussing this, Beickman said, “The Value Builder System™ helped me in several ways, and it opened up my eyes to the different drivers of value. It also gave me a process or method along with the deliverables I could give to clients.” Now with a full grasp of the value building process, Beickman’s next step was to integrate The Value Builder System™ into his current practice.
One area where Beickman has seen improvement is within what he calls his “base camp assessment”, a process used for new clients. After an initial evaluation, Beickman leverages The Value Builder Questionnaire as a test of a business’s efficiency. This online questionnaire is a 15 minute assessment completedby business owners, and provides a detailed report on the company’s strengths and weaknesses.
In a matter of a few minutes, Beickman is able to identify key aspects of the business that need improvement in order to build value and have a profitable exit. The Value Builder System™ effectively brings these issues to light, giving business owners incentive to work with Beickman on a long-term business plan.
Now with a proven strategy for acquiring clients, Beickman achieved his goal of a recurring revenue stream. Working with business owners through The Value Builder System™ can take years, and in the process has enabled Beickman to charge a monthly fee. Prior to investing in The Value Builder System™, Beickman was charging $3600 a year per client. Now, Beickman is able to charge $8000 a year per client, earning double his previous annual revenue.
Beickman notes, “the higher we raised our rates, the better our clients got”. He found that by providing accounting and value building in tandem, those interested were better long term partners. This new approach has also reduced the number of total clients Beickman Advisory Group serves, but because of the new monthly fees made possible by The Value Builder System™, they are experiencing tremendous financial success.
The number of referrals they receive are also on the rise. “We not only retained most clients, they also spread the word”, he said. With a growing number of happy clients who are noticing improvements within their business, they gladly refer Beickman’s work to others. This has helped fuel a stream a new pipeline of clients.
Results
Now with The Value Builder System™ implemented into their current processes, Beickman acheived his goal of better work-life balance. Rather than working overtime for a long list of clients, Beickman now has fewer clients committed to higher annual fees. With the help of The Value Builder System™, Beickman now works 32 hour weeks, has developed stronger relationships with business owners, and increased revenue in the process.
