The succession wave is an opportunity, most advisers are not positioned for it

Two founders came to see me recently. They were in their late thirties, ten years into a business they had built from nothing, and they knew, honestly, that they weren't the right people to take it to the next stage. The business was worth approximately $20 million. Their combined superannuation sat at a few hundred thousand dollars.

Their financial adviser had been managing that super carefully for years, and by all accounts doing it well.

Nobody had yet had a conversation about the $20 million.

The liquidity event your client hasn't mentioned

When a business-owner client exits successfully, the proceeds land somewhere. The adviser who was part of the exit conversation early is positioned to manage them. The adviser who was not may not even get the call.

A successful liquidity event for a business-owner client is typically the single largest wealth event of their life. The super balance, which a planner has been managing for a decade is, in many cases, a footnote by comparison.

More than half of Australian small business owners aren't making regular superannuation contributions (AMP Bank, 2025). Their wealth isn't in the planner's portfolio. It's in the business. The adviser who understands that is already having a different conversation with that client.

The relationship that becomes hard to replace

The planner who sits alongside a client through the most significant financial event of their life is very difficult to replace afterwards. Business owners who exit well remember who was in the room. They also talk to other business owners.

An adviser who understood exit planning early, asked the right questions, and referred at the right moment becomes a natural source of referrals within the business-owner community. Most financial planning practices haven't deliberately built that referral engine. It's available to any adviser willing to develop the capability.

For every business-owner client who exits, there are likely others in their professional network facing the same question. The adviser with a reputation for understanding this territory isn't just serving one client well. They're building something that compounds.

A repeating opportunity, not a demographic blip

The succession conversation tends to get framed as a baby boomer issue. The scale there is real. Approximately 800,000 Australians intend to retire within the next five years (ABS, 2024-25), and a significant proportion are business owners. McKinsey estimates more than one million viable SMB sale candidates will face ownership transitions by 2035, representing up to $5 trillion in enterprise value.

The two founders in my opening are in their late thirties, and they're fairly representative of what I'm seeing. Every cohort of founders will eventually face this question. Advisers who develop the capability to support clients through exit now, are building a practice competency that will remain relevant for every generation of business-owner clients they work with.

Five conversations worth starting early

The conversations worth having start well before the client is ready to sell. Advisers who understand these five areas are positioned to open them at the right time and to refer when the moment arrives.

Value: What does the business need to be worth for the client to exit on their terms? What does it currently return, and how does that compare to what they will actually need? This is already a financial planning question with an investment lens.

Timing: Even a well-prepared, motivated seller with clean financials needs nine to twelve months to complete a transaction. Post-sale earnout periods of one to three years are common at the $5 million to $50 million level. The client who mentions they're thinking of selling next year is, in most cases, already behind. Planners who raise the timing question earlier give clients room to make better decisions under less pressure.

Legacy: Family members, long-serving staff, customers and suppliers with decades of relationship. The human dimension of exit is consistently underestimated, and planners understand this territory better than most advisers in the process. That's familiar ground.

Deal structure: Clients will encounter earnouts, working capital adjustments, and deferred consideration. Knowing broadly what to expect reduces the shock when terms are presented, and helps clients stay rational when it matters most.

Personal readiness: What does the client do after the sale? Purpose, identity, structure. I've sat with business owners who regretted selling a good business on good terms because they had no real answer to this question. Planners are already in this conversation. The exit dimension simply needs to be part of it.

When the plan depended on one transaction

Between 70 and 80% of businesses listed for sale never complete a transaction (Exit Planning Institute, 2025). The primary causes are owner unreadiness, insufficient preparation time, and valuations that were never tested against the market.

In Exit Like an Expert, I put a number to it: 70% of sellers who struggled with the process had started preparing less than two years out, and 81% wished they'd had more time.

When a sale falls through, the liquidity event that was meant to fund the next thirty years does not arrive. That becomes a financial planning problem regardless of whether the planner was part of the exit conversation. The advisers who were part of it are in a very different position when it matters.

There are two versions of the story for those two founders.

In one, their planner asked the right question a few years earlier, stayed close to the process, and referred them to the right adviser at the right time. That planner is now managing the proceeds of a $20 million transaction alongside the portfolio they had before. The relationship deepened. Referrals followed.

In the other, a thank you card arrived. And someone else's name was on the paperwork.

This scenario will repeat with the next cohort of founders, and the one after that. The opportunity is structural. The question is whether your practice is positioned for it.