Every financial advisor who works with business owners wants the same outcome. When your client sells their business, you want them to trust you with the proceeds.
After all, you've been their advisor for years. You've helped them build wealth, navigate markets, and make important financial decisions. Surely that relationship carries over after the biggest liquidity event of their lives. Or does it?
According to Cornerstone’s 2025 National Study on Selling Your Business, only 4% of business owners said they are completely confident their current financial advisor is the right person for them both before and after the sale of their business.
Think about that. That means the other 96% are at least open to considering someone else after the transaction closes. Nearly all of your business owner clients, the ones with the highest potential to increase your assets under management, could walk away.
So the question is, are you in the 4% club? Are you one of the few financial advisors guaranteed to keep their business owner clients through the sale of their business?
Many financial advisors assume their biggest competitors are other wealth managers. What we found is that’s actually not the case. Your biggest competition is irrelevance during the most important financial event of your client's life.
When we asked business owners why they would consider replacing their financial advisor after selling their company, three reasons rose to the top. And it might surprise you to learn they weren’t about fees, brand, or the size of your firm.
The number one reason business owners said they might leave: “My financial advisor never had a proactive conversation with me about my eventual business sale and financial goals to live my ideal post-sale lifestyle.”
That's a big conversation to skip when you consider that, for most owners, their business represents the majority of their net worth.
Although most advisors spend years discussing retirement accounts, investment allocations, and estate plans, many never ask the question that matters most: "What's your plan for your business?" Or even better: "What does your ideal life look like after you sell?"
The second reason: “My financial advisor brought no value to the preparation and sale of my business.”
A lot of advisors define their job narrowly. They manage the wealth and get scored on the returns. And for the average client, that's a perfectly reasonable approach.
But a business owner is not the average client. When the largest financial transaction of their life arrives, returns and rapport from the last ten years go out the window if the advisor adds nothing to the event that matters most.
The number three reason business owners told us they'd leave: “My advisor assumed an incorrect estimate on business value or tax implications.” Build their plan on the wrong information, and every decision that follows—when to sell, how to live afterward, what they can give—rests on a faulty foundation.
And here's the part advisors should sit with: In a separate question, when we asked owners how they arrived at the value of their business, 36% said they built that assumption together with their advisor.
That's a dangerous place to be. When that assumption turns out to be wrong, the owner doesn't blame themselves. They blame you.
The same is true when tax consequences are misunderstood or underestimated. Business owners expect guidance. If expectations are built on inaccurate assumptions, trust quickly disappears.
Again, these are the top three reasons business owners said they would leave their advisor. The table below shows the full slate of options owners could rank. Fees and experience do matter, just not as much as whether you were there for the exit.
To be clear, business owners aren't expecting their financial advisor to personally perform valuations, negotiate transactions, or structure sophisticated tax strategies. But they do expect their advisor to guide them.
In fact, 72% of business owners told us they expect their advisor to help them understand the true value of their company, maximize the value of the sale, and minimize taxes.
That doesn’t mean being the valuation expert, the investment banker, or the tax attorney. It means being the one who brings them together.
After 28 years advising business owners through transactions, I've never met one professional who excels at every aspect of an exit. Nor should they. The best advisors know their strengths. Just as importantly, they know when to bring in specialists.
When you're the one asking the right questions, building the right team, and coordinating the process, you become indispensable. You become the advisor your client wants beside them through the whole journey, before and after the wire transfer arrives.
Some advisors will read these numbers and become defensive. Others will see opportunity. If 96% of business owners remain open to changing advisors after a sale, that doesn't just represent risk. It represents one of the biggest opportunities in the advisory profession.
If your goal is to retain assets under management after a business sale—and earn more referrals from business owners—you don't need to become an expert in every discipline. You do need to do three things consistently.
That's how you become more than a financial advisor. You become the trusted quarterback of one of the most important transitions in your client's life. That's what separates the advisors in the 4% Club from everyone else.
And once business owners experience that level of guidance, they don't just stay with you after the sale. They tell other business owners to call you before theirs.
Download our whitepaper: The $100 Million Opportunity Hiding in Your Book or set up a call to learn how we help protect the relationships and the AUM you’ve spent years building.