Building a practice is no easy task, but when the time comes time to sell you want to make sure you’re getting the best possible deal. Unfortunately, many advisors don’t know the first thing about putting their business up for grabs.
There is no hard rule of thumb or magic formula that can be used to value a practice and typical valuation guidelines can be simplistic and fail to produce a realistic market value for the average financial services practice. Understanding the factors that drive the value of a financial services practice, however, is an important part of increasing short-term and long-term profitability.
It’s true that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. The trouble is you can journey in the wrong direction entirely if you don’t know where you are going. Successful exit planning begins with careful consideration of what you want and what's possible. First there is a list of practical and emotional questions to consider.