Lead SMEs Through the Innovation Journey: Final Part
Accountants Minute 438
What if your clients could access the financial leadership of a seasoned CFO — without hiring one full-time?
What if you could deliver it… confidently, profitably, and with systems already built for you?
Welcome to Stage Nine of the Innovation Journey — the final step in a pathway that began with “It Starts With an Idea” and has progressed through feasibility, prototyping, commercialisation and capital raising. Now, we arrive at the stage where the SME needs something more valuable than money:
📌 Financial leadership.
📌 Sharp commercial judgement.
📌 A strategic partner who sees what they can’t.
This is the moment the Virtual CFO steps in.
Why SMEs Need a Virtual CFO — And Why That CFO Should Be You
Most SMEs will never employ a full-time CFO.
But they urgently need the capabilities of one.
Today’s technology, software, and communication tools mean Virtual CFO Services can be delivered with extraordinary precision — not just in major cities, but in every regional area, every state, every sector, across Australia and the USA.
And the responsibilities?
They mirror those of a CFO in a listed company:
✅ interpreting financial and non-financial metrics
✅ guiding strategy
✅ monitoring performance
✅ managing cashflow
✅ supporting governance
✅ advising on scaling up, risk and capital raising
The only difference is delivery mode — virtual, flexible, and accessible to SMEs who could never afford the salaried equivalent.
Scaling Up: The Real Story Behind This Final Stage
The Innovation Journey is not just for tech start-ups or R&D-heavy businesses. Every SME navigating new markets, new services, new products or growth ambitions follows the same pattern:
✅ Vision emerges
✅ Prototype or new initiative forms
✅ Commercial model develops
✅ Funding needs arise
✅ Scaling Up becomes essential
This stage — Stage Nine — is where CEOs must answer the hardest questions:
📌 Can we grow sustainably?
📌 Can we manage cashflow during expansion?
📌 Do we understand our performance drivers?
📌 Are we accountable to ourselves?
📌 Is our business valuation increasing or decreasing?
Their accountant is the natural person to step into this role. But only if you offer Virtual CFO Services.
A Career-Level Opportunity for Your Firm — And Your Team
There is another truth we must acknowledge.
Across Australia, accounting firms are struggling with:
❌ Talent attraction
❌ Talent retention
❌ Team members bored with “endless tax returns”
Virtual CFO Services solve this instantly.
Why?
Because you’ll be offering commercial, strategic, high-impact work — the kind your team wants, the kind that energises career-minded accountants, and the kind that keeps ambitious staff inside your firm instead of looking elsewhere.
What Virtual CFO Services Actually Include
ESS BIZTOOLS has built the frameworks, templates, checklists and workflows so you don’t have to.
Below is an overview of the systems, documents and processes included in this advisory model — all of which are supported by ESS BIZTOOLS Financial Forecasting Package.
Due Diligence & Deep Insight Analysis
Gain “an inch wide and a mile deep” understanding of your client’s operations:
✅ full operational review
✅ internal control system checklist
✅ risk assessment
✅ identification of financial and commercial blind spots
Vision, Strategy & Business Plan Development
Guide the leadership team as the “Strategic Storyteller”:
✅ documenting the CEO’s vision
✅ leadership team workshops
✅ business plan structure and development
✅ business plan finalisation and sign-off
This becomes the navigation map for the entire organisation.
Predictive Accounting Reports — The CFO’s Core Toolset
Translate the business plan into numbers:
✅ budgets for every business operation
✅ key driver subaccounts
✅ cash flow forecasts
✅ projected balance sheets
✅ KPIs and business metrics for weekly, monthly and quarterly review
This transforms you from a historian into a navigator.
Rolling Forecasts
Never let the plan go stale. Rolling forecasts enable:
✅ immediate adjustments
✅ rapid responses to performance variations
✅ forward visibility on upcoming challenges
52-Week Business Enhancement System
A genuine Virtual CFO system requires rhythm and frequency:
✅ daily business report
✅ weekly performance and profitability report per operation
✅ weekly KPI and business metrics dashboard
✅ system review and refinement
This is where SMEs begin to operate like professionally managed enterprises.
Monthly Financial Accounts — Interpreted, Not Just Printed
Your monthly reporting package includes:
✅ full monthly accounts by business unit
✅ budget vs actuals
✅ variance analysis
✅ KPI reviews
✅ TaxFitness benchmarking
✅ working capital analysis
This becomes the financial backbone for Board and CEO decision-making.
Monthly Board Reporting
A strategic, executive-level report including:
✅ refreshed 12-month cashflow forecast
✅ scenario modelling
✅ risk alerts and mitigation options
✅ growth strategy recommendations
✅ financial commentary the Board can act upon
This is where you become the CEO’s right hand.
Annual Business Valuation
A valuation methodology aligned with “IPO-ready” principles:
✅ comparable company multiples
✅ discounted cash flow
✅ strategic position analysis
✅ key risk assessment
This enables leadership to understand:
💡 How is our valuation shifting?
💡 Are our decisions increasing enterprise value?
💡 Are we becoming investment-ready?
Growth, Funding & Scale Up Advisory
Support your clients through their growth strategies:
✅ pricing optimisation
✅ capital raising pathways (s708, ESIC, Crowd-Sourced Funding, Venture Capital)
✅ loan applications
✅ government grant identification
✅ acquisition or succession planning support
✅ risk management strategy development
This is the advisory accountants were meant to deliver.
Corporate Governance & Board Support
Provide the structure SMEs lack:
✅ corporate governance frameworks
✅ Board of Advice establishment
✅ director mentoring
✅ secretarial documentation
✅ shareholder communication
✅ annual report preparation assistance
This is how SMEs transform into professionally governed businesses.
And the Best Part? You Don’t Have to Build Any of This Yourself
Peter Towers — with decades of experience as:
✅ CFO & Company Secretary of a listed company
✅ Senior Partner of an accounting firm
✅ Advisor to a major Australian government innovation program
✅ Company Director
✅ Innovation commercialisation expert
…has developed the ESS BIZTOOLS packages specifically so accounting firms can deliver Virtual CFO Services without spending hundreds of hours creating frameworks.
You get:
📌 Checklists
📌 Templates
📌 Forecasting tools
📌 Strategic planning structures
📌 KPI dashboards
📌 Training
📌 Monthly Business Plus Newsletter
📌 Marketing resources
Everything is done for you.
Start Delivering Virtual CFO Services in 2026
The new calendar year is the perfect launch window.
Your SME clients need deeper insight, more support, more structure — and the ability to scale up confidently.
You can deliver it.
EXPLORE ESS BIZTOOLS AND SUBSCRIBE HERE
Money Back Guarantee + ROI You Can Count On
We fully stand behind this program.
✔ 60-day MONEY BACK guarantee
✔ Significant Return on Investment when you implement the system
✔ Confidence knowing you’re delivering world-class advisory services
75% OFF BLACK FRIDAY SALE – OFFER EXTENDED TO 15 DECEMBER
The tools, templates, predictive accounting modules, and capital raising resources used in all stages of the Innovation Journey are included in ESS BIZTOOLS packages (use coupon code ESSBF75 at checkout):
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 .
Insights From Our Affiliates
How Accounting Practices Can Get Started With Benchmarking
By Darren Gleeson, CEO — TaxFitness
Accountants ask me all the time, “Darren, how do we actually start benchmarking our clients? How do we introduce it without overwhelming them?”
The truth is simple: benchmarking isn’t a “service” you sell — it’s a conversation you start.
And once clients see the power of Top 20% benchmarks, they lean in. Every time.
Here’s the roadmap I give practices who want to make benchmarking part of their core advisory offering.
1. Start with your existing conversations — not a new product launch
Don’t overcomplicate it.
You’re already reviewing BAS, profit & loss reports, wage costs, and margins.
Just add one line:
“Let me show you where you sit compared to the top performers in your industry.”
That one sentence reframes the entire meeting from compliance to improvement.
2. Use simple visuals that hit hard
Clients don’t want spreadsheets.
They want to see:
✅ Your COGS is here → Top 20% are here
✅Your wages are at 47% → Top 20% sit at 34%
✅ Your net profit is 6% → Top 20% achieve 18%+
No jargon. No long reports.
Just clear, visual gaps that make the message unmistakable.
When the gap is obvious, action becomes obvious.
3. Educate clients by telling the truth about Australian SMEs
Small-business owners don’t know the real numbers.
When you tell them:
✅ 43% of SMEs make no profit
✅ 75% of owners earn less than the average Australian wage
✅ Most businesses aren’t priced correctly, staffed correctly, or structured correctly
…you give them perspective — and relief.
Clients realise it’s not their fault.
They’ve simply been comparing themselves to the wrong benchmark.
4. Show them what “good” actually looks like
When you benchmark to the Top 20%, something changes.
Clients stop seeing problems and start seeing possibilities.
You’re no longer talking about last year’s results —
you’re talking about what’s achievable.
Real-world improvement targets:
✅ “Here’s how you add $120,000 to your bottom line.”
✅ “Here’s how you get wages back to industry standard.”
✅ “Here’s how you regain a 15% net profit margin.”
This gives clients clarity, direction, and — most importantly — hope.
5. Make benchmarking a routine part of your workflow
The biggest mistake practices make?
They run “one-off” benchmarking sessions.
Top firms do this instead:
✅ Benchmark new clients from day one
✅ Re-benchmark annually as part of tax planning
✅ Use benchmarking to frame every advisory conversation
✅ Track year-on-year improvements to prove value
When benchmarking becomes normal, advisory becomes natural.
6. Let clients absorb it in their own time
Some clients “get it” instantly.
Others need to sit with the numbers.
Give them a simple takeaway:
“Here are the 3 changes top businesses make — and here’s what those changes are worth to you.”
The moment they see the dollar value of improvement, the conversation moves from information to action.
7. Start small — and build fast
You don’t need a complicated system.
You need:
✅ A benchmark
✅ A conversation
✅ A next step
TaxFitness gives you all three in under five minutes.
Once you deliver benchmarking to five clients, the confidence clicks.
Once you deliver it to ten, it becomes your unfair advantage.
Benchmarking isn’t optional anymore — it’s essential
Australian SMEs are struggling. They’re flying blind.
What they need is clarity and a pathway forward.
Accountants who benchmark:
✅ Make meetings more valuable
✅ Turn compliance clients into advisory clients
✅ Grow revenue without working harder
✅ Become the “trusted advisor” every business owner wants
If you want to differentiate your practice in 2025, start benchmarking now.
It’s the quickest, cleanest way to show clients what’s possible — and guide them there.
More info: www.taxfitness.com.au
Make sure to use the Referral Code: ESS100 for $200 off your annual subscription.
EXPLORE TAXFITNESS AND SUBSCRIBE HERE
Why We Need a New Way of Looking at an Age-Old Art
Selling is not only a critical part of every business, but a critical part of every society.
We need to trade products, services and ideas in order to create the world we want, and we need the skills to be able to do that effectively and ethically.
Hi, my name is Trevor Marchant …from Marchant Dallas Consulting.
Having spent the last thirty-five years of my life training salespeople, it is clear to me that one of the most critical barriers to selling is the attitude that it is somehow distasteful or dishonest.
In order to learn the skills necessary to convince anyone to buy anything, we first need to adopt a new attitude towards selling, one that is positive and practical, and sees selling for what it is: an opportunity to help another human being make a decision about a product, service or idea in a way that serves them best.
Everybody is a salesperson.
Whatever you do in life, the ability to sell is a useful skill to have. Understanding what it takes to change another person’s mind is a prerequisite for getting things done – and everyone in business needs to get things done. Being able to get someone to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to an idea, an activity, or a purchase is critical. And, of course, outside of business it is equally important to be able to use your skills of persuasion.
Whether it is getting your children to eat spinach or your grandmother to come snowboarding, the ability to get a ‘yes’ is an art that helps us in every area of our lives.
In his wonderful book that has highlighted a new approach to selling, To Sell Is Human, Daniel Pink argues that whatever our profession, in order to get results we need sales skills.
For you, without an understanding of what selling really is or without even the basic skills you are going to miss out on the ‘rapidly growing’ stream of revenue available to all accountants right now – the sale of advisory services and I emphasise sale because advisory services are sold – they are not bought. They are not bought because no one but you know about them.
CAN I SUGGEST ONE COURSE OF ACTION TO YOU – RIGHT NOW …
Download and READ this publication from The BOSS Factor Library (a library created for you and your clients – no one else – just for you and your clients).
Over 500 Accountants have now completed this course and on average 10 people start the course every week…
RIGHT NOW, in conjunction with ESS BIZTOOLS there is a Christmas Special on this course with a 40% reduction in course fees per person. And the best part you can start the course anytime during the first half of 2026 …providing you REGISTER for the course between now and the 15 January 2026.
CLICK HERE For a brief INTRODUCTION to the SALES Factor Course.
CLICK HERE For a brief BIO on Trevor Marchant & Eve Dallas both of whom have been featured in the TOP 1% of Sales and Performance Coaches in Australia and New Zealand.
Free Webinar by ESS BIZTOOLS
Smart Succession Planning for SMEs
📅 Thursday 18 December | 11am AEST
ESS BIZTOOLS Podcast
In this final Accountants Minute Podcast episode for 2025, Peter Towers is joined by Darren Gleeson, Managing Director of TaxFitness, to explore how benchmarking and virtual CFO services can transform struggling SMEs into top-performing businesses. They discuss why benchmarking against the top 20% (not the average) is critical, how to turn profit gaps into advisory opportunities, and why accountants and bookkeepers must move beyond compliance if they want to stay relevant in an AI-driven world. Perfect for firms ready to lead clients—and their own team—into 2026 with stronger profitability and sharper advisory services.
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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