With asset values plummeting,investors hunkering down and advisors scurrying for business, there is still a major untapped market for new clients: small businesses. Millions of small businesses are out there, and most of them need advice on things such as taxes, estate planning and the possibility of selling their businesses. (Spoiler alert: You can pretty much forget that last one for the time being, but preparation now is the key to capitalizing on future opportunities.) With asset values and interests rates low, and an expectation of higher taxes in the future, this is an especially good time for small businesses to start planning-and for you to offer a helping hand.

To underscore just how badly these business owners need advisory help, Ira Bryck, director of the University of Massachusetts Family Business Center tells this story. At a seminar attended by more than 100 small business owners, the speaker asked how many of them had at least 90% of their net worth in their businesses. Everybody in the room raised their hands. Then he asked how many of them checked the remaining 10% of their net worth (most of which was in their stock portfolios) three to seven times a week. Nearly everyone. How many knew the return on investment of their businesses? Only three people.

That illustrates the notion that a lot of small business owners simply do not think of their businesses as an investment. But Bryck says they need to get used to that idea. "A good broker can help them think about what part of their income should be in their own business, and what part shouldn't," Bryck says.

One thing a financial advisor may be asked to do is assist a business owner who wants to sell. Good luck with that for the foreseeable future. Buyers have dried up and acquisition prices are way down from where they were two years ago. So any patriarchs dreaming of selling it all and retiring to a sunny clime may have to keep the suntan lotion in storage a while longer. It's not just the smallest businesses that are feeling this pressure, of course. Going up the food chain a notch, mid-market companies are in the same boat. Brian Keane, head of Citi Capital Strategy, the mergers and acquisition unit within Citi Wealth Management, works with companies valued from $50 million to $200 million. "We tell them 'the market isn't what it was two years ago,'" he says. "It's a good time to wait-six months, nine months, 12 months."

But that doesn't mean advisors have nothing of value to add. Quite the contrary. Now is the time for small businesses to get their shops in order in expectation of better times-whether a sale is in the cards or not, says Matt Brady, head of the Wealth Advisory Group at Barclays. "Small business owners are going to have to wait a while for the market to come back. But until then, what do you do? You have to plan for the situation we're facing right now. Small business owners need to plan as if they're going to retain the business."

The vast majority of small businesses are family businesses. Indeed, the majority of all businesses are family-owned and Brady says one of their top concerns now is estate planning. (A recent study commissioned by Barclays Wealth said that family-owned business accounts for 70% to 90% of global economic output). Brady says he spends much of his time these days getting these clients ready to pass their businesses on to the next generation. In fact, he says, there is a glimmer of light in today's lower asset prices. It's easier to get a bigger portion of the client's assets out of his estate in a tax-efficient way.

Consider an example of a couple that wants to pass a family business to its children with the lowest tax burden possible. Each parent can make a gift of up to $1 million in value during his or her lifetime without triggering a gift tax. If the company was worth $5 million a few years ago, they've just given away 40% of it with no gift tax. But if that same company were worth only $3 million today, because of the recession, they've given away two-thirds of the firm before Uncle Sam gets a cut.

However, Brady notes the gift must be made today, at today's prices. Simply setting up a will dictating what the children will inherit will not lock in today's value for the business. But the notion of turning over the family business, or a piece of the family business, before death may be a difficult discussion to have with a client. "First generation wealth, people who founded the business, are very hands-on managers and are reluctant to give over control," Brady says. "Many of them do it, but over a period of time so they get comfortable."