By Brett Kaufman. 8 years using relationships to build sales pipelines, from political fundraising to a 7 figure business to running matchmaking for two communities. Over 1,000 introductions facilitated.

A wealth manager keeps a business owner through a liquidity event by staying recent and useful in the 36 months before the sale, not just at reviews. Know the owner’s deal team, answer the money questions a sale raises, and be the first person the owner texts when an offer lands, because the advisor present during the deal manages the proceeds. For a wealth manager, business owner liquidity event planning is a relationship job before it is a math job.

Picture your best business owner client. You manage his brokerage account and retirement plan. The company itself sits on the balance sheet as one line you do not touch. Then a buyer calls him. Over the next nine months he spends more time with an investment banker, a deal attorney and the buyer’s team than with anyone else in his life. Some of those people work at firms with their own wealth teams. At close, a check arrives. The question is whose name he thinks of when it does.

If you buy businesses rather than advise owners, this is the wrong page. Read wealth managers as a deal source instead. This one is for the advisor.

Why does the liquidity event change the relationship?

Because the biggest asset moves from outside your plan to inside someone’s plan. The Exit Planning Institute notes owners can have “80% of their wealth tied up in” the business. Before the sale, you advise on the 20%. After the sale, the whole number needs a home.

The owner also gets new advisors overnight. A banker to run the process. An attorney to negotiate. A quality of earnings firm. Each one is in daily contact during the deal. You are in contact twice a year. That gap is the risk, and it has nothing to do with your returns.

What does a wealth manager business owner liquidity event timeline look like?

Here is the touch timeline I would run. It is illustrative, built around how a typical sale unfolds, and every owner moves at a different pace.

Months before close	What is happening for the owner	Your touch	Reasons that work
36 to 18	Thinking about exit, maybe with an exit planner	Every 6 to 8 weeks	Model what a sale does to their plan, intro to an exit planner or estate attorney
18 to 9	Getting the company ready, talking to bankers	Every 4 weeks	Their CPA’s year end planning, family conversations, what they want life to look like after
9 to 4	Process running, LOI signed	Every 2 weeks, short	Structure questions, seller note or earnout effect on the plan, how they are holding up
4 to 0	Diligence and close	Weekly, two lines	Close date, wire logistics, a note to the spouse
0 to 12 after	Cash, new life, maybe rollover equity	Every 2 to 4 weeks	The first year plan, the next act, people they want to meet

Structure changes your plan as much as price does. A seller note can make it an installment sale, which the IRS defines as “a sale of property where you’ll receive at least one payment after the tax year in which the sale occurs.” Rollover equity means part of the value stays illiquid. Earnouts mean part of it may never arrive. Each one is a real reason to reach out during the deal, and a conversation the banker is not having with him.

How do you stay close without getting in the way of the deal?

Be the calm person in a loud process. Bankers and attorneys are pushing the deal. You are the one asking how he is doing and what he wants after.

1. Ask who is on the deal team. Get names for the banker, attorney and CPA. Offer to join a call when structure comes up. Most deal teams welcome the advisor who knows the family’s numbers.
2. Keep texts short during the process. Two lines. “Saw the LOI is signed. When you know the structure, I will rerun the plan so you know what each option means for the house and the kids.”
3. Remember the personal things. The daughter starting college. The boat he wants. What his wife worries about. I learned this in political fundraising, where I raised $3M by writing down what mattered to each donor after every call and using it next time. People stay with the person who remembers.
4. Never pitch the proceeds before close. It reads as circling the money. Be useful now, and the proceeds conversation happens on its own.

Who else should a wealth manager stay in front of?

The CPA, the estate attorney, the exit planner and, once you know them, the bankers and brokers who sell companies in your clients’ industries. These are the people around the owner in the 36 months, and they are the ones who will say “talk to your advisor about that.”

Keep them on the same rhythm with real reasons: a mutual client update with permission, a tax change, an intro to another professional who serves owners. See CPAs as a deal source for how buyers court the same CPAs, which tells you how crowded their inbox is.

Two compliance lines. If a banker or broker offers you a referral fee, FINRA Rule 3270 says a registered person may not be compensated for outside business activity “unless he or she has provided prior written notice to the member.” And FINRA Regulatory Notice 17-18 says firms must be able to retain business communications sent by text. Send client texts only through your firm’s approved, archived channel. I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.

Where does pre liquidity follow up break?

At the book level. Say you have 25 owner clients, and in any year three or four of them are somewhere on that timeline. You will not know which ones unless something tells you. The owner who mentioned “maybe in a couple of years” at a review 14 months ago is now talking to bankers, and you are on the twice a year schedule.

That is the problem I built FRONT OF MIND to solve. It opens on your 10 minutes for today. Each person has a one line reason why today: their company was in the news, they posted, a follow up is due, or they are going cold. Every draft is a text style message, 40 words max. Nothing sends without your tap, and it learns from your edits. Ask Liala “who do I know that is an M&A attorney” and get the right people with why.

It runs in your phone’s browser and can be saved to your home screen. There is no native iPhone app yet. Your contacts are encrypted. No one on our team looks at them. Export or delete anytime.

For the full daily system, read the super connector operating system. If an owner is selling and needs to warm up their own circle first, send them before you go to market.

Start free with your first 25 contacts and see which owner comes up first.

See how it works