In my previous blog I explained what a business advisor is and why they are so important. Hopefully that entry motivated you to go out and look for a business advisor. However, now you are probably asking yourself, how can I tell a good business advisor from a bad one? Much like any profession, business advisory takes years of experience and honing of skills. You want top-notch advisors working for you to ensure the utmost quality. That is why I’ve decided to offer a few skills and traits that you should be looking for in a business advisor.
Communication
Communication with one another is an incredibly crucial part of not only business advisory, but society in general. Your business advisor should always be able to communicate in a timely and efficient manner. You should never wonder when you will hear back from your advisor. Great advisors will never leave any suggestions or thoughts unclear or vague. An advisor should also honest in communicating whether or not he or she is earning a fee from services or products that he or she is recommending. Clarity in communication is key.
Organization
Because business advisors need to work with so many different aspects of a business, they must always be organized. If you notice that your advisor is consistently forgetting or late to meetings, losing documents or files, or generally poor at organizing and presenting materials, then you may want to consider a new advisor. Great business advisors can maintain not only a large portfolio of clients, but also juggle the various fields they are assisting in. For example, if a business advisor is helping to address the financial accounts of a business while also addressing some of the company’s organizational processes, he or she should have an organizational process in order to effectively provide solutions to these problems.
Experience
This is probably the most important quality you would want from any business professional. While education is important, there is so much more that actual, hands-on experience can offer that textbooks and classrooms simply cannot. You want an advisor who has worked in the field of business. You want an advisor who has managed companies, large or small, and has overseen dozens of projects and employees. These veterans know the ins and outs of business management, business development, finance, accounting, and several other sectors.
Business advisors, as I’ve mentioned several times before, are important to any industry. They can offer keen insights to business, large or small, and help to provide better productivity and profitability. But you need to know what to look for. As a business advisor who has a combined total of over 30 years of accounting and executive management experience, I know exactly what any company needs to function properly.