The standards you can expect from a BLP approved advisor
BLP approved advisors are experienced, highly professional people who understand business.
When you engage a BLP advisor you can expect the following standards and skills:
Professionalism
You can expect BLP approved advisors to be respectful, communicate clearly with you about their services, provide a clear timeframes and scope of work and deliver their services on time.
Provide clear parameters around their services
Advisors should provide you with clear information about their services, including the costs, deliverables, and timeframes. Often advisors will provide you with a letter of engagement, a quote or a proposal outlining the services they propose to deliver and their terms and conditions.
Ability to listen, empathise, and problem-solve
A BLP approved advisor has good listening skills and is be able to communicate clearly with you to obtain a thorough understanding of the business problem you are looking to solve.
They may also use a range of problem-solving tools to help understand and diagnose your business needs. Sometimes problem-solving can be complex, but they should be able to clarify information with you to provide a clear way forward to resolve the issue.
Confidentiality and privacy
BLP approved advisors have good systems for ensuring client confidentiality. This includes ensuring your financial records, documents, or intellectual property is only accessed and used by the advisors performing the services agreed for your business.
Ideally your advisor will have a confidentiality statement that outlines their undertakings. This could be a clause in their letter of engagement or proposal.
Similarly, you can expect that any personal information you share with your business advisor, will not be disclosed to third parties, unless it is required by law. Personal information might include your date of birth, home address or identification details.
Conflict of interest
Your business advisor should be mindful of any conflicts of interest that could arise in their dealings with you. A conflict of interest is anything that prevents them from providing impartial advice that is in your business’ best interests. Such as business or personal gain that can be obtain from servicing your business.
If their personal interests conflict with your interests they should declare it and discuss with you how to best handle the situation. In some instances, it may mean removing themselves and referring someone else to work with you. An example could include having access to your confidential information while also working with one of your competitors.
There are often simple ways to handle conflicts of interest, through declaring and discussing in advance. Sometimes there could be no ‘actual’ conflict of interest but there is a ‘perceived’ or ‘potential’ conflict, which also need to be discussed and addressed as if it were real.
A clause in their letter of engagement or proposal outlining their process for handling conflicts of interest is a good tool to prevent this issues
Work within the law
You can expect a BLP approved advisor to know and comply with the relevant legislation relating to their services.