What varieties of insurance coverage do you need? Well that depends on several different factors. First, there is the size of your small business and how it's organized. Is it a one man sole proprietorship or a 50-employee corporation. Next, you have to take into account how you pay yourself and your employees. Do you pay a salary? Commissions? Then you need to think about your small business? location, your exposure to liability or law suits and whether your small business sells products or services.

Things that you should consider:

Should you die prematurely, do you have enough life insurance to protect your family? Why is this so important? Well, if you have a small service oriented business, it will be worth $0 when you die. For example, the spouse of a deceased doctor or lawyer can only sell the tools of the trade, not the clients (the true bread and butter of any small service business). Get a crystal ball and see into the future to know when you are going to die then you could sell your small business before you kick the bucket. Otherwise, all small service business owners should protect their families with a minimum coverage of 7X gross income.

Do you have a small business that your are setting up to have a family member run after you pass away? Well, be sure that they are capable, willing and licensed to do so.

Do you have disability insurance, in case you're incapable of running your enterprise because of illness or injury? For a stipulated period of time, you will be paid approximately 60% of your income when you have disability insurance. On top of that, your disability benefits could be non-taxable or taxable depending on whether you claimed the premium as a business expense.

More important...do you have "business overhead insurance"? Of course, even when you are out of commission, your small business still wants to cover expenses like salaries, insurance and utilities. Who will cover those costs? Disability Insurance will not cover your small business overhead expenses, unless it is an add-on.

Got business partners? Do you have a buy/sell agreement? Well, if you or your partner should suddenly die, your interest in the business will be protected. Here's a great example of this: your partner dies and his wife wants to claim her share of the business. Is it in you best interest to have your deceased partner's family involved in the business? They may not know anything about how to run the business and cause huge headaches. Wouldn't you simply rather buy out your partner's share of the company? Well, with this additional insurance, you wouldn't have to worry about your partner's family interfering with your small business.

What about "disability buy-out coverage"? Do you have it? If your partner was to become severly disabled, you would be presented with several problems without this particular type of insurance. How would you feel if you had to keep on paying your partner for years to come when they cannot do any work because of their disability? After a period of time, this type of coverage would force your disabled partner to sell you his share of the business, based on a previously signed equitable agreement.

Of course, it's entirely possible that none of these problems may ever come up but it's your small business after all. Decide which varieties of coverage you deem most important...then speak to a professional who can give you the varieties of coverage you need to protect your enterprise.