Succession planning at the very least entails integrating an estate plan with your business. Are your shares held by your trust? Does your trust have S-Corp language or language allowing the trustee to operate your business? If you don’t have the basics, your business will certainly fail if something happens to you. If you have that covered, you might be on your way to planning a sale in some number of years. Perhaps selling to a key employee or key employees. Perhaps a transfer to your children. If you want to sell to a third party, are your books and accounting systems optimized to get the maximum sale price? Putting together a succession plan for the operation and ownership of your business is a necessity for the well protected business owner.