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How can you make sure you are thinking smartly about your goals for selling your company? Are you being thorough enough, considering all the angles and stakeholders for this momentous transaction? What is it you have been working so hard all these years for? Is it just about the money? You know that is an easy answer, and it is not true. Getting the reasons right becomes the foundation for a successful sales process.

What do you see as the most important outcome for you, your business, your family, your employees, and other stakeholders? As we’ve said many times to many business owners, your business is more than a source of income; it is a source of identity, pride, purpose and relationships. Making a leap to something new is daunting, especially if you haven’t taken the time to define it. Who is comfortable jumping into a fog?

Take that time, and include others in the discussion. Who can help you figure out your exit strategy, which is to include designing your life after the sale? Bring in experts, but also include people who both know you well, and have different experiences and perspectives. If they are just like you, it will be like talking to yourself!

Thinking about it only financially is short changing yourself and the opportunity before you. Do you want to sell a piece of your business or all of it? Is it important to cash out immediately, or would you consider keeping a small investment in the newly sold company? Should you stay or should you go, as the song says? If you stay, what role would you design for yourself? Would you want to retain control and finance growth through recapitalization? Do you want to leave, and if so, within what timeframe?

Continuing on with the business, for example, may be an attractive alternative financially and psychologically. Are you interested in a transitional consulting contract, staying on the board, or running the company as a division of a larger buyer for a few years? Do you need a complete break from your company, or just a sabbatical?

Do you expect to pursue another business opportunity, or are you departing the world of commerce entirely to reengage your experience, time, and talent in a new way with new meaning, perhaps with a nonprofit or family foundation?

To sell a company is to sell a life’s work. Now what work will you do? Golf will get old fast. And we’ve frequently seen that involvement of charities will fill in the vacuum, but too often it is not done strategically. As soon as the community realizes your talent is available, many offers may come across the transom. It can be easy to fill up your day, but is it filled up the way you want it to?

Consider the larger and more holistic picture: the best-case picture of your future—work, family, activities, charities, adventures, spiritual and community commitment—after the sale. Run the numbers and determine what money you will need to make it happen.

While many business owners don’t realize it at first, these goals and objectives for the sale will influence how to sell a business and the buyers to target. Determine how you define success, and how selling a business can get you there.

I invite you to use these ideas to create goals for your exit strategy.