If you’re a financial advisor, you know your clients’ plans for retirement must begin well before they actually stop working. That may hold even more true for your own retirement. Indeed, if you’re 50 years old and own your own firm, it’s not too early to start planning for succession.

“When I hit 50, I realized that from a client’s perspective you’re going to become less and less attractive, because they’re going to look at you and wonder what’s the plan for the future,” says Timothy Watters, 59, founder and principal of Watters Financial Services in Paramus, N.J. “They’re going to ask you about succession for you.”

Jessica Karner, an attorney at Keegin Harrison LLP in San Rafael, Calif., who counsels clients on succession planning and handles sales of investment advisory firms, says advisors must allow at least five years to prepare for the transition out of their firms. The most common ways owners divest is through internal successions (by grooming junior partners who gradually take over the business) or by selling their firms (and clients) to a larger entity. Either way, the process takes “years, not months.”

If the succession is done internally, it could take a few years just to find the right people to take over, and more years to comfortably shift clients to them. And if your business is worth something, your succession candidates may need time before they can afford to buy you out.

If, on the other hand, you’re a “lone wolf” and planning to sell your firm to a larger company, there’s often a transition period in which you will become an employee of the acquirer for a few years, helping the buyer hang on to clients and getting those clients moved over to the new firm. This effort can be challenging if you’re used to being your own boss.

Karner helped Lynn Ballou merge her firm into EP Wealth Advisors in Lafayette, Calif., two years ago. Ballou founded Ballou Financial Group in 1986, and it was later merged into Ballou Plum Wealth Advisors in 1998.

Ballou, who is 65, said she started looking for a succession solution when she was in her late 50s and her former partner, Marilyn Plum, was in her early 60s. Ballou says, “We knew [Plum’s] retirement was coming up and that we needed to look for the right solution sooner rather than later. We determined that we had three stakeholders in this journey: our clients, our team and the founding partners. We came to realize that to really protect the experience for clients and team members, we needed a larger company solution. All our staff stayed with us. And for EP, they acquired a committed team of professionals who had a long, deep connection with their clients and community. So it was a win-win for both buyer and seller.”

Watters is transitioning ownership of his firm to his son, Colin, 29, who received some of his financial training by working at a stock brokerage company and is a certified financial planner himself.

“I thought about merging with another firm, but didn’t want to do that; I wanted to do something internally,” says Watters, who began the process five years ago. “We’ve been making sure that Colin is involved in a lot of the client meetings. That’s important. The clients have to accept that person. It takes a while before they see that person as someone they can really trust. They now see him as a professional, as someone with enough gravitas to be here.”

Jay Marsden, 50, an elder law attorney in Holliston, Mass., who also runs Solares Hill Advisors, a full-service wealth management firm, is not only planning his own post-retirement succession but also looking to help other advisors sell their firms when they retire. Three years ago, he created a succession plan for both his legal practice and his financial advisory firm, but he’s also looking to take in other FAs. He plans on working “at least another 20 years or more.”

To that effect, he bought a small office building on a main road in town “to make ourselves more visible with the idea of having a place for people who are looking to sell their practice and move on. If we want to be able to seriously approach people so that they feel that we are a serious practice that they would want to leave their practice to, we needed to have a real physical presence. They can transition into our system, then slowly walk away from their practice.”

Advisors must not only prepare sooner rather than later, but think about several other things if they hope to maximize their post-retirement lives, for themselves, their families and their clients. “As a sole advisor business, I think it’s critically important to have a valuation done on your practice annually,” says Watters. “If you have a heart attack and die, the first thing a consultant is going to want is to see the numbers. And who has the numbers? The guy who just died. That’s a big problem. If you have a yearly valuation done, you have the numbers available in order to launch the sale.”

“If you don’t have a buyer for your business and you die, your family will be really lucky if they get half of the value of your business,” he adds. “When there’s a buy-sell agreement in place, everything is smooth. It’s also better for the client. They can stay with the firm unless they don’t want to. At least there’s a choice. The other way, there is no choice—the doors are closing.”

Karner notes that transitioning clients to a new firm requires their consent, so a well-drafted client engagement letter anticipating a succession planning change will make the transition go smoother, especially if a large number of clients are involved.

She also recommends documenting and organizing all of your business processes, including systems and contracts. “In a succession plan, whether it’s an internal transition or a third-party sale, those things really count and can impact the value of your business.”

From the client’s perspective, one of the most important considerations, but one also often overlooked, is the simple word, “fit.”

“The most discomfort I’ve seen post-transaction is because there was inadequate attention paid to whether the fit between the old firm and the new firm was right,” says Karner. “You want the client to feel that their money is still being managed by the right people.”

That means examining the new firm’s investment philosophy as well as its fee structure, says Marsden. “It shouldn’t be just a grab for assets,” he says. “If you try to assimilate a bunch of disparate things, it might not work out as well as you might think. Your clients will not be happy moving from one extreme to the other. That’s the biggest challenge.”

“You want to make sure there is continuity for your clients,” Watters says.