Advisory 101: Diploma

Overview of Modules

Module 4 – The Advisory Circle

This module introduces the five stages of advisory service development and how to undertake a step by step approach to expanding advisory services. The vital starting point, the discovery meeting door opener and how planning and a role as facilitator is so important in the next phase of development is explored.

Consideration is given to the client’s Implementation Process and how quarterly or monthly meetings to complement successful implementation can be introduced. Stage Four of drill-down performance planning is explained and how Stage Five is represented by the additional consulting assistance for clients. 

At the end of this module, Advisors will understand the five stages of advisory development and be better positioned to plan their own firm’s roll-out.


Module 5 – The Advisory Core

This module explains the key place that strategic planning plays in a whole of client approach with clients and how an annual strategic review is a core element of client-centric advisory services, by creating a plan with objectives from which a client can implement to achieve the success they want.

Consideration is given to how both business, and personal wealth, planning are both essential and why helping the client feel more in control with a plan, is so important. The value in creating recurring fees and the place an annual strategic review plays in this process is explored. 

At the end of this module, Advisors will understand the core place Vistech strategic business and wealth planning services play in an advisory process.


Module 6 – The Advisory Choices 

This module explores the difference between facilitated planning and consulting advice and how they match and complement each other.

The pros and cons of a number of areas of opportunity are explained, including:

  • Management Reporting
  • KPI Management
  • Profit and Cashflow forecasting
  • Profit Improvement
  • Risk Management
  • People Development Planning
  • Succession and Exit Planning. 


At the end of this module, Advisors will be aware of the range of possible advisory services they can offer to clients and what’s involved in each.


Module 7 – The Advisory Pricing

This module explains how to determine pricing structures and the various options for pricing. It looks at how to build packages and rolling programs that produce the best returns for your time input.

It also reflects on the transition process between Compliance Only, Compliance with Some Advisory, Advisory with Compliance and Advisory Only. 

At the end of this module, Advisors will understand how to package advisory and compliance programs of services and the criteria to use in pricing these services.


Module 8 – The Advisory Close 

This module explains how to use advisory services as a way of leading business development in winning new quality clients.

We explain and reflect upon The Principle of Economic Symbiosis™ and what this means to accountants. The module also explains how to create a value proposition and then how to close the deal and get a “yes”. 

At the end of this module, Advisors will understand how advisory services can lead their business development, without selling.

Diploma

Modules Covered

  • 1

    Advisory 101 Diploma

    • Introduction and workbook

  • 2

    Module 4: How to Build Advisory Services

    • A Change and Improvement Process to Use with Clients

    • Strategic Planning for Business Clients

    • Personal Wealth Planning with Clients

    • Drill-Down Performance Planning

    • Consulting

    • Packaging Services and Securing Recurring Fees
  • 3

    Module 5: How to Roll-out Advisory Services

    • Profiling Your Client Base

    • Decide What You Want to Provide

    • Where to Start with Clients

    • How to Approach Clients

    • Understanding the Roll-Out Challenge

    • Having a Roll-Out Plan with Realistic Objectives

    • Reviewing Progress and Innovating
  • 4

    Module 6: How to Maximize Advisory Fees

    • An Advisory Culture

    • Core Planning

    • The Power of Referrals

    • Leverage

    • The Financial Benefits of Secondary or Tertiary

    • Properly Monitoring Success

    • Being Focused and Avoiding the Stop-Start
  • 5

    Module 7 : How to Price Advisory

    • Determining Cost Price

    • Determining Ideal Price

    • Determining Walk-Away Price

    • The Two Rates Pricing Tactics

    • Packages and the Transition Process
  • 6

    Module 8: How to Close on Advisory

    • The Principle of Economic Symbiosis™

    • Creating an Advisory Value Proposition

    • Creating a Pipeline

    • How to Close the Deal

Introducing the Advisory 101 Team

Bringing expertise together to The Advisory Qualification

Martin Bissett, Founder of USP

Martin Bissett is the founder of the Upward Spiral Partnership (USP), the international consulting firm that specialises in enabling the accounting profession to win higher-end clients, create leaders from their ranks and save lives.

His professional purpose is to alert the accounting profession to the profound outcomes that their advisory expertise can create in the lives of their clients.

At the same time, he also alerts the accounting profession to the profound difficulties that can arise in the lives of their clients when they choose not to educate their clients about the impact that their advisory expertise can have.

The Upward Spiral Partnership is the 4th business Martin has played a key role in building and the first of his own. 

In the first 5 years of USP, Martin has: 

  • Been engaged/retained by 4 of the World's Top 10 Accounting associations and 6 of the Top 10 in the UK. 
  • Authored 9 books including Passport to Partnership, content from which has been adopted into the curriculum of AAT Level 3 courses, and taught in selected UK colleges and US CPA Societies.  
  • Been retained by Accountingweb as a judge of their prestigious practice excellence awards for three years in a row. 
  • Been highlighted as ‘one to watch’ in AccountingToday’s Top 100 Most Influential countdown for 2 years running. 
  • Spoken on 4 continents. 
  • Created several trademarked items of intellectual property including the ACCOUNTS™ system and ‘Martin’s Relationship Pricing™’ Model. 
  • Written for several professional publications including AccountingToday, AccountingWeb, CPA Practice Advisor and Chartered One. 
  • Sat on many international expert panels and guested on professional podcasts in the US, UK, and Australia. 
  • Sits on a parliamentary steering committee tasked with bringing advisory services to the fore in the accounting profession. 


The outcome of Martin’s work is profitable new business for the practices he is engaged by, alongside the fine-tuning of teams of partners and emerging leaders who can develop new business by increasing their commercial awareness for themselves, without significant ongoing third party assistance. 

Previously, Martin served 10 years as a director (appointed at age 26) on the board of a marketing consultancy firm serving the accounting profession. There, he held the responsibility for the growth of the client base including six of the U.K.’s top 30 accountancy firms. 

He now coaches, mentors, speaks, trains and consults with accounting firms worldwide.

In total, he has worked with over 1800 firms of accountants and found it unnecessary to keep track of his contributions to the new business growth of those firms once it surpassed £500m collectively. 


John Thompson, Founder and MD of F3C

John is the Advisory Guy and is the Expert in how to successfully deliver advisory services.

He is one of the Founders and the MD of F3C, a company that enables accountants and their firms to build the structures and processes required to deliver advisory services by providing them with CAS - The Complete Advisory Solution

He is an FCA with the ICAEW and former national partner with a Top Ten firm. He was New Business Director in a Regional Practice which tripled their Top Line in two years by focusing on Advisory Led approaches before selling to a Top Ten firm for several million pounds.

He has also worked in the Corporate World with, what was at the time, the UK's largest Leisure Corporation and was FD of a fast growth SME.

He co-authored the Growth Program Service Manuals of a Top Ten firm where he trained and coached more than 100 partners and managers.

He continues to train and coach advisory skills and techniques, and the development of business advisory strategies, for firms of all shapes and sizes, and is also a NED and Board Advisor to several SME's.

He is a key member of the CAS Product Development Team.

John describes himself as a simple Geordie who fell into accountancy by accident, quickly realised that working with clients beyond the numbers is what makes the biggest difference to them, and now passionately believes there is a place for all accountants in an advisory led future.

Tony Sandbach, Co-Founder of F3C

Tony is one of the Founders of F3C, a company that enables accountants and their firms to build the structures and processes required to deliver Advisory Services successfully by providing them with CAS - The Complete Advisory Solution.

He is a Qualified Coach, an FCA with the ICAEW, and former partner with three Top Ten firms. He is also the former President of the East Anglia Society of the ICAEW.

As Chairman of the Audit Committee of a Top Ten frim and author of their Audit manuals, Tony travelled around the UK and Ireland delivering audit training and technical updates for partners and managers but also client engagement and the art and science of advisory services.

He co-authored the Growth Program Service Manuals of a Top Ten firm and continues to train and coach advisory skills and techniques and the development of business advisory strategies for firms of all shapes and sizes.

He is a key member of the CAS Product Development Team.

Tony describes himself as an army brat who grew up in Germany and Cyprus before returning to the UK when his father set up an engineering business in the North of England, before training as a Chartered Accountant.

Richard Walters, CEO of HWL Innovation Ltd

Richard Walters is one of the leading experts on strategic planning for entrepreneurial owner-managed businesses and led the way as a Thought Leader in the UK, as the inventor and author of the Strategic Planning Toolkit and the Complete Advisory Solution, which have been successfully used by accountants with their clients, for over 15 years now in the UK, Ireland, Canada, Africa and the USA. 

He started, as so many chartered accountants, by forming his own start-up practice, and developed an expertise in advisory services which enabled it to grow significantly and when it was sold to a Top 10 firm, he employed approximately 80 people. Richard now focuses on helping accountants grow client-centric, 'whole of client' advisory services in their firms using virtual meeting toolkits through a number of strategic partnerships around the world.

Richard is the author of the acclaimed thought-leading book for accountants, ‘Delivering Advisory Services – the essential guide’ and is author of several books on small and medium-sized business strategy and success, with book total sales now over 100,000 worldwide. 

He is also a serial entrepreneur and notably took one business in partnership with others, from an innovative cottage industry manufacturing start-up to its ultimate sale to a public listed company and to this day the boiler is Europe’s biggest-selling electric boiler.