As business coaches, our role is to help clients build scalable, transferable, and ultimately more valuable companies. The Value Acceleration Methodology (VAM), developed by Exit Planning Institute® (EPI), provides a comprehensive roadmap to do just that. It aligns business, personal, and financial goals to help owners create transferable value and prepare for future exit options.
But executing this strategy takes more than a framework. It requires coaching, structure, and various strategic partners and tools that help promote accountability and transformation.
VAM as the Strategic Backbone
The Value Acceleration Methodology includes three primary stages:
- Discover – Understand the owner’s personal, business, and financial goals. Identify the current value and readiness of the business.
- Prepare – Strengthen business value, develop leadership, and execute strategic initiatives that increase scalability, reduce risk, and improve operational efficiency.
- Decide – Evaluate exit options, transition plans, and personal legacy goals when the business is ready
Each stage demands intentional leadership development, cross-functional alignment, and accountability systems where coaching plays a vital role.
The Role of the Business Coach: Integration and Amplification
As a Value & Transition Advisor (VATA)/business coach using Focal Point’s proven Clarify, Grow, Lead coaching process, you’re uniquely positioned to help leaders:
- Clarify Vision: Align personal values, financial goals, and business purpose & mission into a Vision to finish well, not just within the next quarter, but over the next 3–5 years.
- Drive Growth: Combine Marketing and Sales efforts with focus on the Four Intangible Capitals as value drivers to be enhanced.
- Develop Leaders: Support growth mindsets, communication skills, and leadership capacity that drive cultural and financial value in alignment with the owner’s Vision.
- Measure Progress: Use quarterly strategic planning, value builder assessments, and personal, financial, and business goal tracking to monitor and celebrate value growth.
Coaches Collaborating with Strategic Partners & Tool Providers. VATA coaches have used the following along the first 4 of the 5 Stages of Value Maturity
- Identify – Focal Point Coaching Program, Quist, Maus, The ValueBuilder System, Biz Equity, Capitaliz
- Protect – Focal Point Coaching Program, ValueBuilder System, Financial Planners, Wealth Managers, Estate Planning Attorneys
- Grow – Focal Point Coaching Program, EOS
- When clients are already using EOS or want to adopt it, business coaches don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Instead, we can collaborate with a Professional EOS Implementer® to enhance and reinforce what’s being taught—especially when the Implementer focuses on session facilitation, and the business coach works on individual and team development between sessions.
- Harvest – Focal Point Coaching Program, M&A Advisors, Business Brokers, M&A Attorneys
Do your research on strategic partners and tools that can fit effectively within the Value Acceleration framework. Here are two examples:
Where The ValueBuilder System Can Fit In
- Assessments that Identify Gaps & Guide Gap Closure, one for each of the Three Legs of the Stool
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- Value Builder Score – Provides a range of value based on eight value driver scores with a scenario planner of improved value as each driver is improved.
- Freedom Score – Raises the owner’s awareness of what their business will need to sell for to close their wealth gap.
- PREScore™ - Personal Readiness to Exit is a series of questions that help the coach guide a conversation around factors that are, or could soon be, pushing or pulling the owner to sell. Ideally, the pull factors provide a passion for what is next.
Where EOS Can Fit In
The Entrepreneurial Operating System® (EOS) is often viewed as a standalone system; it is most powerful when integrated into a broader coaching program like Focal Point’s Clarify Grow Lead coaching process, utilized by Focal Point Value & Transition Advisors, which aligns execution, leadership, strategy, and personal development.
EOS provides a simple, structured approach to running a business. It’s an execution system that helps teams gain traction on their vision, get the right people in the right seats, and build operational discipline. While EOS is excellent for day-to-day management and operational structure, it doesn’t address broader strategic and exit planning goals. That’s where VAM and the Focal Point Value & Transition Advisor coaching approach come in.
By positioning EOS as a tool within the Prepare stage of VAM, coaches can offer clients both the structure they need today and the strategy to drive long-term value.
Execution: Use tools like EOS to implement operational disciplines (Level 10 meetings, scorecards, accountability charts).
Key ways to collaborate:
- Bridge Strategic Gaps: EOS focuses on execution; coaches align that execution with long-term value creation.
- Support the Integrator & Visionary (EOS implementors identify these two key internal leaders): Coaching helps them strengthen communication, clarify expectations, and maintain alignment with exit goals.
- Develop the Team: Provide targeted coaching to help team members grow into their roles as the business scales.
Why This Matters
Owners rarely build valuable, transferable businesses by accident. It requires strategic intent, cultural alignment, and operational excellence. By combining the Value Acceleration Methodology, Focal Point Value & Transition Advisor coaching, and tools like EOS and others mentioned, business coaches can help clients:
- Build companies that run without them.
- Develop leadership teams that drive results.
- Create real options for exit, succession, or continued growth.
Conclusion
Think of the Value Acceleration Methodology as the Strategic Backbone, your Partners & Tool Providers as numerous pieces of the broader strategy, and business coaches, like a Focal Point Value & Transition Advisor, as the orchestrator of applying the selected systems to the business and the team, the champion of clarity, and the accountability partner who ensures execution aligns with long-term goals. When your Partners & Tool Providers are utilized inside a Value Acceleration strategy, with the coach leading the charge, the result is a business that’s not just better. It’s more valuable, more scalable, and ready for whatever comes next.
Business Coach? Check out Focal Point and Focal Point with EPI.
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