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