Advisory 101 - Foundation Course
'Certified Advisor'
Advisory 101
The Advisory Qualification for Accountants
Advisory 101 for Accountants offers you the world’s first comprehensive training program to develop the essential advisory skills to enable you to achieve the distinction of becoming a Qualified Business Advisor (QBA). This enables you to be appreciated by your clients and colleagues as a specialist in 'whole of client' centric advisory services.
The high-level curriculum, supported by online and self-study resources, provides a wide understanding of the advisory landscape including the skills and knowledge needed to create new and lucrative advisory revenues.
The full course includes 12 modules covering the key elements of client-centric advisory, including ‘Integrating a Whole of Client Approach’ and ‘The Advisory Pricing’.
Advisory 101: The Foundation Certificate
Become a 'Certified Advisor'
After successfully completing Level 1, you will be able to better understand and articulate the essence of advisory services to their colleagues and clients.
The foundation level consists of three modules, each with video lessons, workbooks and other resources. A the end of each module there is a compulsory exam which once all exams are complete you will be a Certified Advisory.
To complete the full Advisory 101 qualification, the Foundation level must be completed first. The price for the Foundation certificate is per candidate. Content and certification can not be shared.
Overview of modules included in The Foundation Certificate:
Module 1 – Why Advisory?
This module explains why advisory services are so important to the future of accountancy firms and how technology is driving the changes in the accountants’ traditional market place. It explores the clients’ wants and needs and how these can be integrated into a modern advisory offering.
The module reflects on what is an accountant and what are the key elements of an accountant’s business model. The technological impact on this business model is explored. The status of Most Trusted Advisor, not just trusted, is explained, and how this impacts the accountants' role and approach with clients.
At the end of this module, advisors will clearly understand why advisory services are essential to many accountants' future success.
Overview of this module:
a) Introducing the Foundation Stage
b) What is an Accountant?
c) The Accountants’ Business Model
d) The Technological Impact
e) What Clients Want, Not Just Need
f) In Summary
Module 2 – Integrating Whole of Client Advisory
This module explains how traditional accounting and tax services are in harmony with a whole of client advisory approach. The module introduces and explains the concept of a genuinely whole of client approach in the relationship between an accountant and their client. It explains what the whole of client Vistech Advisory Services are, and how they are the gateway to develop Fintech and other services and complementing Compliance services.
The concept of Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary advisory is introduced, explaining the services at each level. Consideration is given to ways of building a firm's Advisory Stack of services. The essence of facilitation and coaching, and how these roles fit into Vistech Advisory Services, is explained. At the end of this module, advisors will understand how a true client-centric, whole of client approach to work with clients works in harmony with traditional services.
Overview of this module:
a) Introduction
b) The Whole of Client Concept
c) The Status of Most Trusted Advisor
d) It’s Not Compliance OR Advisory
e) Your Advisory Stack Including Vistech and Fintech
f) The Essence of Facilitation and Coaching
g) In Summary
Module 3 – Onboarding Clients for Fee Growth
This module explains how to use advisory services as a way of expanding what existing clients spend with their accountants.
Using free discovery meetings and onboarding clients is explained and why structured meetings and copies of meetings are so important. The module also explains how to create a value proposition and then how to close the deal and get a “yes”. At the end of this module, Advisors will understand how advisory services successfully upsell and cross-sell, without selling.
This course: Foundation Certificate - Certified Advisor – Modules 1, 2 and 3
After successfully completing Level 1, the Advisor will be able to better understand and articulate the essence of advisory services to their colleagues and clients. This will enable them to enhance the delivery of their advisory services.
This is essential in creating a 'whole of client' approach.
Course Information
Each module will include:
1. A video lecture
2. A workbook enterable PDF with:
3. Exam questions
4. Designated correct exam answers for marking
5. Total CPE time for a module will include watching the video and completing the workbook.
How Advisory 101 is delivered
Proposed video structure of screen visuals and voice-over, with three learning stages:
1. Introduction to learning objectives, workbook and module learning stages.
2. Learning Stage 1 video with a pause at the end for reflective self-question and use of the workbook.
3. Learning Stage 2 video with a pause at the end for reflective self-question and use of the workbook.
4. Learning Stage 3 video with a pause at the end for reflective self-question and use of the workbook.
5. A summary, exam questions and close.
Introducing the Advisory 101 Team
Bringing expertise together to The Advisory Qualification
Martin Bissett, Founder of USP
Martin Bissett is the founder of the Upward Spiral Partnership (USP), the international consulting firm that specialises in enabling the accounting profession to win higher-end clients, create leaders from their ranks and save lives.
His professional purpose is to alert the accounting profession to the profound outcomes that their advisory expertise can create in the lives of their clients.
At the same time, he also alerts the accounting profession to the profound difficulties that can arise in the lives of their clients when they choose not to educate their clients about the impact that their advisory expertise can have.
The Upward Spiral Partnership is the 4th business Martin has played a key role in building and the first of his own.
In the first 5 years of USP, Martin has:
- Been engaged/retained by 4 of the World's Top 10 Accounting associations and 6 of the Top 10 in the UK.
- Authored 9 books including Passport to Partnership, content from which has been adopted into the curriculum of AAT Level 3 courses, and taught in selected UK colleges and US CPA Societies.
- Been retained by Accountingweb as a judge of their prestigious practice excellence awards for three years in a row.
- Been highlighted as ‘one to watch’ in AccountingToday’s Top 100 Most Influential countdown for 2 years running.
- Spoken on 4 continents.
- Created several trademarked items of intellectual property including the ACCOUNTS™ system and ‘Martin’s Relationship Pricing™’ Model.
- Written for several professional publications including AccountingToday, AccountingWeb, CPA Practice Advisor and Chartered One.
- Sat on many international expert panels and guested on professional podcasts in the US, UK, and Australia.
- Sits on a parliamentary steering committee tasked with bringing advisory services to the fore in the accounting profession.
The outcome of Martin’s work is profitable new business for the practices he is engaged by, alongside the fine-tuning of teams of partners and emerging leaders who can develop new business by increasing their commercial awareness for themselves, without significant ongoing third party assistance.
Previously, Martin served 10 years as a director (appointed at age 26) on the board of a marketing consultancy firm serving the accounting profession. There, he held the responsibility for the growth of the client base including six of the U.K.’s top 30 accountancy firms.
He now coaches, mentors, speaks, trains and consults with accounting firms worldwide.
In total, he has worked with over 1800 firms of accountants and found it unnecessary to keep track of his contributions to the new business growth of those firms once it surpassed £500m collectively.
John Thompson, Founder and MD of F3C
John is The Advisory Guy and is the Expert in how to successfully deliver advisory services.
He is one of the Founders and the MD of F3C, a company that enables accountants and their firms to build the structures and processes required to deliver advisory services by providing them with CAS - The Complete Advisory Solution
He is an FCA with the ICAEW and former national partner with a Top Ten firm. He was New Business Director in a Regional Practice which tripled their Top Line in two years by focusing on Advisory Led approaches before selling to a Top Ten firm for several million pounds.
He has also worked in the Corporate World with, what was at the time, the UK's largest Leisure Corporation and was FD of a fast growth SME.
He co-authored the Growth Program Service Manuals of a Top Ten firm where he trained and coached more than 100 partners and managers.
He continues to train and coach advisory skills and techniques, and the development of business advisory strategies, for firms of all shapes and sizes, and is also a NED and Board Advisor to several SME's.
He is a key member of the CAS Product Development Team.
John describes himself as a simple Geordie who fell into accountancy by accident, quickly realised that working with clients beyond the numbers is what makes the biggest difference to them, and now passionately believes there is a place for all accountants in an advisory led future.
Tony Sandbach, Co-Founder of F3C
Tony is one of the Founders of F3C, a company that enables accountants and their firms to build the structures and processes required to deliver Advisory Services successfully by providing them with CAS - The Complete Advisory Solution.
He is a Qualified Coach, an FCA with the ICAEW, and former partner with three Top Ten firms. He is also the former President of the East Anglia Society of the ICAEW.
As Chairman of the Audit Committee of a Top Ten frim and author of their Audit manuals, Tony travelled around the UK and Ireland delivering audit training and technical updates for partners and managers but also client engagement and the art and science of advisory services.
He co-authored the Growth Program Service Manuals of a Top Ten firm and continues to train and coach advisory skills and techniques and the development of business advisory strategies for firms of all shapes and sizes.
He is a key member of the CAS Product Development Team.
Tony describes himself as an army brat who grew up in Germany and Cyprus before returning to the UK when his father set up an engineering business in the North of England, before training as a Chartered Accountant.
Richard Walters, CEO of HWL Innovation Ltd
Richard Walters is one of the leading experts on strategic planning for entrepreneurial owner-managed businesses and led the way as a Thought Leader in the UK, as the inventor and author of the Strategic Planning Toolkit and the Complete Advisory Solution, which have been successfully used by accountants with their clients, for over 15 years now in the UK, Ireland, Canada, Africa and the USA.
He started, as so many chartered accountants, by forming his own start-up practice, and developed an expertise in advisory services which enabled it to grow significantly and when it was sold to a Top 10 firm, he employed approximately 80 people. Richard now focuses on helping accountants grow client-centric, 'whole of client' advisory services in their firms using virtual meeting toolkits through a number of strategic partnerships around the world.
Richard is the author of the acclaimed thought-leading book for accountants, ‘Delivering Advisory Services – the essential guide’ and is author of several books on small and medium-sized business strategy and success, with book total sales now over 100,000 worldwide.
He is also a serial entrepreneur and notably took one business in partnership with others, from an innovative cottage industry manufacturing start-up to its ultimate sale to a public listed company and to this day the boiler is Europe’s biggest-selling electric boiler.