Irv Blackman and Brian Whitlock

Raise your hand if your company has a qualified retirement plan (QRP). Your QRP can be a 401(k), profit-sharing plan, SEP-IRA, pension plan or any one of the many other QRPs. Listen up! Chances are this article is going to make you and your employees lots of money.

But first a little warning: Your author is a tax guy, not an investment advisor. Yet the nature of my professional work - estate planning, business succession planning and the many related areas - has allowed me to review the personal financial statements of about 1,500 business owners over 50 years of practice. You would be amazed at what I have learned over the years about my business-owner clients. This article is based on the answer to one of the questions I ask every client: "What is your average annual rate of return on your investments, including personal funds, QRP funds, excess funds in your business and other funds you control?"

The shocking answer is 80 percent earn less than the general market (measured by the DOW or S&P) average percentage growth of about 10 percent per year. About one-third only average 6.5 percent or less. But here's what's even more interesting - almost all of those in the 80 percent group do their own investing. Great business people, lousy investors.

What about the other 20 percent who, most of the time, beat the general market growth? Almost all of them had a professional money manager. When this 20 percent group used professionals to manage their QRP funds, their employees enjoyed the same investment success.

Over the years, I've done some extensive research to show you the best way to improve your and your employees' investment results. Let's start with a chart of what the impact of a better rate of return can do for your retirement nest egg over time.