The exit conversation: where consulting ends and the advice referral begins

When an owner tells you they are "thinking about getting out in a few years", they are usually asking two very different questions at once. The first is a consulting question: is the business ready, is it profitable enough, is it dependent on me, will a buyer want it? That is squarely your work. You can model the operational improvements, tidy the management accounts, build the second line of leadership, and make the company genuinely sellable.

The second question is personal and financial. What will the sale proceeds mean for the owner as an individual? How much will they actually keep? What happens to their pension, their family, their estate, their income for the next thirty years? These are not consulting questions. They are questions for a regulated adviser. The owner rarely draws the line between the two, and if you do not draw it for them, they will assume you cover both.

The drift is understandable. You know the numbers, you know the owner, and you have earned their trust over months or years of hard operational work. When they ask whether they should take the earn-out or the clean cash exit, or whether to put the proceeds into a pension, it feels natural to offer a view. Resist it.

The moment you comment on the personal tax efficiency of an exit structure, the suitability of a pension contribution, or what to do with investable proceeds, you are straying into regulated territory that you are not authorised to occupy. SmartPeer exists precisely so you never have to. Your role is to recognise the question, name it honestly, and introduce the owner to a vetted, regulated advice firm. You introduce; you never advise.

• Deal structure and its personal tax consequences
• Pension funding from sale proceeds
• Investing a lump sum for future income
• Estate and inheritance planning after a liquidity event

Consultants sometimes worry that referring the personal side signals the end of their usefulness. The opposite is true. An owner who feels their whole exit was handled well, not just the operational readiness, remembers who orchestrated it. You remain the trusted generalist who assembled the right specialists at the right moment.

The handover is simple. You frame it as part of getting the exit properly done: "The business side is my job and we are on track. The personal financial side of a sale is genuinely specialist and regulated, so I will introduce you to a vetted, regulated advice firm to handle that properly." Owners hear diligence, not deflection.

The most common mistake is leaving the personal referral until the deal is nearly done. By then the structure is largely fixed and the owner has lost options that early planning would have preserved. The personal financial and estate conversation should begin while the exit is still a plan, not a signed agreement.

Because you are usually working with the owner years ahead of any transaction, you are perfectly placed to introduce the specialist early. That early introduction is often where the owner derives the most benefit, and it is also where a tracked referral is most clearly attributable to you. SmartPeer records the introduction, so the relationship and any resulting member share are documented from the outset.

SmartPeer is a commission-only referral network. You are a referrer, not an adviser. When you introduce an owner to a vetted, regulated advice firm and that introduction leads to business, you receive a member share of the resulting fee, typically in the region of 60 to 70 per cent for members. There are no figures beyond that to promise, and nothing about outcomes to imply.

What matters is that the introduction is logged and tracked, so there is no awkwardness later about who introduced whom. You do the thing you already do well, recognise the moment, make the introduction, and let the regulated specialist carry the personal advice. The owner gets proper advice; you get a documented, rewarded referral; and the line between consulting and advice stays clean.