LFA – Columbus RPO Contact Us Home About Us Planning For Clients For Advisors Contact Us The Future of Your Business: Succession Planning Find out how to protect your financial independence and the future of your business with a comprehensive succession plan. Start here. If you’ve developed a successful business through years of hard work, you may want the business to continue in some form in the event of retirement, death, or disability. Perhaps you want a family member to inherit and manage it, or you want the family to own the business but have it be run by a trained management team. Perhaps you want to sell the business and make sure that it sells at a fair value and is run well. There’s a lot to consider: to make sure everything will run smoothly at the time you leave the business for whatever reason, you need to prepare what is called a succession plan. By their very nature, these plans are fairly complicated: so start thinking about gathering together your professional advisors, such as your business attorney, your estate planning attorney, your business accountant, and your financial advisor. One of the most important decisions you’ll need to make is choosing who will take on the responsibilities of ownership and management. It may be that you have already have a great management team, and that team can continue to successfully run the business. Or you may want to draw up a detailed job description and hire your successor. If family members will be running the business, look at the different skills of family members and discuss with them your needs and their interests. Once decisions are made about who will succeed you, whether you keep the business in the family or sell it, you need to train the successor, to ensure the continued success of the business. If you plan on selling the business, you will need to valuate it—determine what it’s worth. This again is a complicated process, and you’ll have to draw on the expertise of your team of advisors to get it right. And those advisors will shepherd you through the other complexities of planning a business succession: for example, setting up a buy-sell agreement and funding the buy-sell with life insurance. The key to success is to create a comprehensive plan now that addresses all eventualities. Related Resources Executive Compensation: Keeping Competitive Business Succession Disclosure We are licensed in the following states. If you are a legal resident of one of these states, please proceed. We are sorry if we are unable to offer you our services at this time. Securities: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming Unless otherwise identified, Associates on this website are registered representatives of Lincoln Financial Advisors Corp. Securities and investment advisory services offered through Lincoln Financial Advisors Corp., a broker/dealer and a registered investment advisor. Member SIPC. Insurance offered through Lincoln affiliates and other fine companies and state variations thereof. Lincoln Financial Group is the marketing name for Lincoln National Corporation and its affiliates. Firm disclosure information available at www.LFG.com. See Lincoln Financial Advisors (LFA’s) Form CRS Customer Relationship Summary, available here, for succinct information about the relationships and services LFA offers to retail investors, related fees and costs, specified conflicts of interest, standards of conduct, and disciplinary history, among other things. LFA’s Forms ADV, Part 2A, which describe LFA’s investment advisory services, Regulation Best Interest Disclosure Document, which describes LFA’s broker-dealer services, and other client disclosure documents can be found here. *Associated persons of Lincoln Financial Advisors Corp. who hold a JD and/or CPA license do not offer tax or legal advice on behalf of the firm. Portions © 2014-2015 Liberty Publishing, Inc. Portions © 1996-2021 SiteQuest Technologies. All rights reserved. “It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.” - Eleanor Roosevelt CRN: 3096169-052120