Advisory Into Action: Your Next Strategic Move
Accountants Minute 415
In the previous edition of Accountants Minute, we explored how Business Health Checks, Business Evaluation Workshops, Benchmarking, and the 52-Week Business Enhancement System can help you shift from compliance to strategic advice.
Now that you understand what’s possible, it’s time to talk about how to make it happen.
Here’s how to confidently take the first steps and start delivering results for your SME clients – without overloading your team or your calendar.
Step One: Choose Your First Client Wisely
Start with a client who’s open to advice and eager to grow. They don’t need to be your biggest – just someone who’ll appreciate your input and be willing to collaborate.
Use the Business Health Check as a soft entry point. It's low-pressure, high-impact, and sets the stage for deeper engagement.
You’ll be surprised how quickly this opens the door to conversations around cash flow, profitability, staffing, or market strategy – the very issues business owners lie awake worrying about.
Step Two: Structure the Engagement with ESS BIZTOOLS
You don’t need to reinvent anything. ESS BIZTOOLS gives you a complete advisory framework:
✅ Health check templates and questionnaires
✅ Business Evaluation Workshop toolkit
✅ Cash flow and KPI monitoring resources
✅ Weekly and monthly check-in templates
✅ Action plans, quotation forms, proposals, and reports
This means you can offer professional advisory services from day one – and build a reputation as a problem-solver, not just a form-filler.
Step Three: Package It – and Price It Properly
Clients are more likely to commit to advisory when it’s clearly defined.
That’s why ESS BIZTOOLS includes all the tools you need to create bundled services like:
✅ “Quarterly Business Reviews”
✅ “Growth Strategy Workshops”
✅ “Virtual CFO Packages”
Use the provided quotation and proposal forms to present your services with clarity and confidence – and shift your revenue model away from hourly rates.
Step Four: Scale Up With Confidence
Once you’ve implemented advisory services with one or two clients, you’ll quickly build the systems, language, and confidence to offer it more widely.
The 52-Week Business Enhancement System makes it easy to run ongoing advisory services for 5, 10, or even 20 clients at once – without needing to double your team.
And because everything is templated and systemised, you’ll spend more time delivering value and less time on admin.
Advisory Isn’t Just the Future – It’s the Now
Your SME clients need help navigating uncertainty, seizing growth opportunities, and making better decisions. You already have the trust. Now you have the tools.
With ESS BIZTOOLS, you’ll go from wanting to offer advisory to delivering it professionally and profitably.
Ready to Move From Planning to Doing?
Your next client conversation could become a long-term advisory engagement – if you have the right system in place.
EXPLORE ESS BIZTOOLS AND SUBSCRIBE HERE
Visit our website – www.essbiztools.com.au – to discover the detailed overview of the services provided by ESS BIZTOOLS. You are also welcome to contact us on 0418 190 181 or email .
Free Webinar by ESS BIZTOOLS
Real-Time Results: Turning Reports into Action
📅 Thursday 17 July 2025
🕚 11:00 AM AEST
💻 Live and Complimentary
In this webinar, you’ll learn how to deliver fast, insightful financial interpretations using business health checks, valuations, performance metrics, and benchmarking tools.
Discover how to turn daily, weekly, and monthly data into actionable advice that helps SME clients improve profitability, spot issues early, and stay on track for long-term growth. If you're ready to offer more than compliance, this is your chance to lead with insight.
Help your clients make smarter decisions – faster.
ESS BIZTOOLS Podcast
Most accountants and bookkeepers still deliver what SMEs have come to expect: an annual set of accounts and a tax return. But what if that’s no longer enough?
In this powerful episode, Peter Towers, founder of ESS BIZTOOLS, challenges the profession to step up and become the trusted strategic advisor every SME desperately needs. From real-time financial insights to weekly performance reviews, Peter reveals how you can help clients make better decisions – faster – using tools like KPI dashboards, business health checks, cash flow forecasting, and the 52-Week Business Enhancement System.
Discover how to:
✅ Build retainer-based, Virtual CFO services
✅ Set up weekly and monthly reporting rhythms that drive accountability
✅ Use business evaluations, checklists, and survival strategies to lift SME performance
✅ Add real value beyond compliance – before AI and automation redefine your role
If you're ready to stop reporting history and start shaping the future for your clients, this episode is your roadmap.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST
Listen to more Accountants Minute Podcast episodes here
Want to know more?
Visit www.essbiztools.com.au.
If you would like to have a discussion about how this concept of virtual CFO services can be supplied by Australian accounting firms please ring our Managing Director, Peter Towers, on 0418 190 181 and we will arrange a complimentary 45-minute Zoom meeting to discuss your firm’s position and to give you our advice.
We believe that this is the blueprint for the delivery of an enhanced range of services by Australian Accounting and Bookkeeping firms to assist SME businesses to add value to their businesses and to assist accountants and bookkeepers not only to attract but to retain outstanding talent who want to be involved in the delivery of “real accounting services”.
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