ENGAGEMENT OVERVIEW AND PROPOSAL
PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL
FROM: Bill Black, Certified Exit Planner
President, Exit & Retirement Strategies, Inc.
This letter describes our process of preparing your Business Owner Road Map & Strategy Playbook, a comprehensive written strategy for accomplishing your objectives. In order to begin the creation of your plan, we will need to receive your signature below and the initial engagement fee retainer.
An Overview of the Process
I use a systematic, organized process to manage the design and implementation of the tools that best meet your unique goals. The following is an overview of my client representation process:
Data Collection. We will request data from you to develop the initial draft of the plan. I will help you to prioritize competing objectives and understand how certain strategies and exit paths may (or may not) allow you to achieve your objectives.
Strategy and Design. After our Data Collection meeting, I will develop a preliminary Road Map, which will serve as a central location to organize and present important facts about you and your business, your objectives and recommended strategies to achieve your goals.
Preliminary Plan Presentation. In this meeting, I will walk you through your preliminary Road Map / Strategy Playbook to confirm basic facts, revisit and solidify your objectives and carry all of that information through to one or more Recommendations that will be included in your plan.
Questions & Clarification Meeting: Most business owners modify this first draft as they see how their objectives and their unique circumstances interact and affect their potential options. After this initial presentation and revision we will invite all members of the Advisor Team to participate to receive their comments and to agree on changes to the Recommendations for which each of them is responsible, so that a final plan can be created.
Your Road Map & Strategy Playbook will include an "Action Item Checklist" – a comprehensive "to do" list that I will manage and maintain for you and the Advisor Team that you select. The Action Item Checklist tracks tasks necessary to complete each Component of your planp, the person responsible for each task and the date by which the responsible person has committed to complete the task. This Checklist will be an effective tool for measuring your progress through the process and holding your Advisor Team accountable for that progress.
Final Plan Presentation. Once you have reviewed the preliminary draft of your Road Map, we will schedule a meeting with you and any constituents or stakeholders in the process to present the elements of the Road Map that affect them and to seek their comments and approval of the strategies we have identified and recommended. It is important to obtain the support and enthusiasm about your strategies from this group to avoid obstacles in the implementation phase. There is no need to implement a technique that will be resisted by someone close to you or that will create problems in other areas. That is why we pause here to make sure that all who have influence on your decisions and implementation are on board.
Implementation. Finally, we monitor the implementation of the Recommendations described.