Posts Tagged ‘business financing strategies’
Strategies For Faster Closings
“Strategies For Getting Deals Done Faster That Require Financing”
What I’m about to say may sound counter intuitive, but bear with me for a moment.
When a business is being acquired or a business is purchasing assets from another business, the one main deal killer is getting the amount of required financing in place in a defined period of time.
And because many times the deal cannot or even will not be completed by the purchaser without sufficient leverage being in place, it can be hard to get deals done, especially if the amount of leverage required is considerable.
Even if you know you are strong enough financially to qualify for the required amount of business financing, the process for getting the financing can take longer than you have, especially when dealing with a bank or institutional lender.
So what can you do to avoid this problem or at least reduce the chances of it being a factor?
Choose another approach to financing.
This can involve leveraging other assets you may own that are free and clear, going to an asset based lender who has a faster application and assessment process, putting more short term cash into the deal, and so on.
The point here is that there are ways to get money in place faster than perhaps the ideal financing structure.
But once the deal is closed, you can spend whatever time is necessary to arrange a better financing set up.
Will this type of approach cost more money?
Well, potentially yes, but it depends on how you’re adding up the cost and building them into your decision making.
An asset based lending approach for instance is going to be more expensive than a bank or institutional credit facility, but if you can’t close the deal, what good is the cheaper money to you and how much opportunity cost have you lost by not moving forward.
The key here is that you’re confident in your ability to secure the right type of financing sooner than later, so the costs of taking a faster approach to closing are ones that should be factored into the initial purchasing decision.
If you buy into the argument that business financing is going to be difficult for anyone to arrange for the deal, and that its unlikely what you’re trying to acquire will be purchased for cash, then why not discount your offer to purchase to reflect the costs associated with a faster close financing strategy?
By being more creative in terms of how you price the opportunity and get the deal closed, you are putting yourself in an enviable position in the market to land great deals and avoid the frustrations of your competitors who take the traditional (but may times flawed and ineffective) approach to business financing.
In a business acquisition scenario, if you can get through the business ownership transition process quickly without negatively impacting the bottom line, you may actually be able to secure a better long term financing deal after the fact as the transition risk from the sale has been removed from the lender’s list of things to be worried about.
This approach isn’t always going to work, but if you have cash and other assets to play with, and are confident in your ability to generate positive results from your capital investments, then faster close strategies are something to think about.
Click Here To Speak To A Business Financing Specialist
Business FinancingHaving An Up To Date Business Financing Strategy Is Becoming More and More Important
Does Your Business Have a Business Financing Strategy?
If you’re like most business owners, the answer to the question of having an actual formal business financing strategy is likely No.
The status quo for decades for most businesses has been to focus on what generates cash flow and deal with business financing as a short term project, whenever its required.
This typically has some form of time pressure associated with it, and because there is no regular attention spent to how to properly go about getting financing arranged, brute force tends to be employed to get through the process, get the required money in place, and then get back to work.
This has been the “business financing strategy” for many small and medium sized business largely because it worked.
Leaving things to the last minute and scrambling around to get funding in place has been an effective strategy for many. Yes, it can be a pretty stressful process to go through, but its not required very often, the results get achieved, and the pain generated quickly dissipates due to small time box everything is forced into.
The challenge going forward is that the world, at least for the foreseeable future, has changed. The probability of leaving business financing needs to the last minute and then depending on brute force and will power to muscle things through has gone way down for a number of reasons.
First, there are significantly less business lenders now than 2 years ago, and the number continues to decline on an almost daily basis as the recession continues to unfold.
Second, many of the surviving lenders aren’t lending money as they scramble to collect the accounts they already have. Even if they wanted to lend money, many of them are having a hard time finding sources of funds to finance new business loans.
Third, the more established lenders are taking a more cautious approach to the market and are being more selective with opportunities and taking their time with deal assessment, not being particularly interested with anyone in a flaming rush.
And based on the current state of the capital markets, things are not going back to the status quo any time soon, effectively changing the status quo.
So now is the time to move to a more formalized business financing strategy and approach. This is something that all businesses require. Obviously smaller businesses are less capital intensive, but they still have cash flow and have to be able to fund it if they want to stay in business.
In my next post, I’m going to get into even more specifics as to why a business financing strategy is something that business owners are going to have to start investing time in to either stay in business or grow their business.
Click Here To Speak With Business Financing Specialist Brent Finlay
Business Financing