You can capitalize on the increased demand for business valuation services, even if yours is a small firm with limited resources. One place to start: Study the success of your competitors. Watching what they do and don’t do can help you think of your own ways to take advantage of this unique opportunity.

How are they handling their marketing and intake processes? What principles do they use to organize their teams? Who are their teams — regular, long-term employees, or freelancers, or both?

You might not be in a position to emulate their staffing strategy if most of their people are regular, long-term workers — the start-up costs and time investment here are considerable, plus you need to be sure you have enough consistent work to keep them busy — but do pay attention to how they use freelancers.

Hiring freelancers is a smart way to scale your business because the flexibility of the arrangement allows you to hire when the workload’s heavy and pare back when it’s light. This is why the freelance force has become essential to this ebb-and-flow industry in recent years.

So essential, in fact, that the supply isn’t keeping up with the demand: Current data indicates that American membership in the three major organizations offering BV credentials is trending downward.

India, on the other hand, is an enormous, energetic country with world-class educational institutions turning out superbly trained professionals in a variety of industries. Per capita, it boasts as many business schools as the US does.

When Assurent Advisors hires these talented, skilled graduates, we make sure they’ve got field experience at prestigious firms (usually one of the Big 4), speak flawless English, and understand the norms of American business culture. We do the work of vetting these BV pros, onboarding them, and making sure they’re able to move easily between our in-house forms and our partners’ forms as needed.

In short, we make sure our teams are ready to roll as soon as our partners need them. While the bigger, “successful” firms you’ve been keeping your eye on and learning from lurch through the vetting and onboarding process with their US-based freelancers, you’ll be taking on new clients, generating top-notch reports at a steady clip, and — who knows? — maybe even taking a well-deserved vacation to boot.