Why is this so important?

Building and maintaining adequate cash flow is obviously essential to keeping your business running, enabling you to meet your financial obligations, meet your payroll, accounts payable and loan payments. You may decide that in order to do this, you need to obtain a business loan in order to insure that you are able to maintain a steady stream of cash flow. The Relationship Manager can be the key to helping unlock your access to many of the banking products that you are seeking to help grow your business, such as:

• Most efficiently obtaining loans, mortgages, and lines of credit to help you purchase equipment, expand facilities, finance space, and more.
• Helping you to establish "lines of credit" which can enable you to finance your short-term business needs, giving you access to cash for one time expenditures (acquiring new business assets or receivables, for example) or long-term finances (like permanent working capital or cash flow management).
• Guiding you in obtaining Small Business Administration (SBA) loans, which can offer you the credit you need with lower than average down payments, longer repayment terms, and lower monthly payments.
• Helping to guide you through the bank's offerings for obtaining Business Credit Cards, free Business Checking, fee-free transactions, reduced maintenance fees as well as special equipment leasing offers.
• Providing you with a set of cash management tools designed to make managing your business finances easier and more convenient.

The benefits of having one individual coordinate your business' entire financial portfolio can prove to be invaluable in opening the possibility for obtaining better pricing, whether it's through loans or deposits, because of the totality of your relationship. They can work on your behalf to internally persuade loan officers and mortgage lending professionals look at your total banking relationship, pricing your relationship with the bank as a whole, rather than simply by isolated transactions. This can translate into a great deal more leverage and open the door to preferential pricing on loan rates and mortgages, preferential CD rates, based upon the cumulative dollars you have invested within the institution.

However, beyond the obvious lie many other benefits that you may be overlooking, which can also prove beneficial as you build and expand your business empire:

• The Relationship Manager can provide you with valuable advice; knowledge of your total financial picture will enable your professional to give you guidance regarding financial planning, as well as improving your business structure.
• They have a strong working knowledge of the local marketplace and have internal and external contacts for both expansion and/or eventual sale of your business.
• They can help you to consolidate all of your business accounts, making it easier for you to review your business finances and facilitate wrapping things up during tax season.

Adding your bank's Relationship Manager and their colleagues to your team can instrumentally aid you in building a successful business, leveraging your relationship and profitability, thus ensuring your solid financial future!

© 2008 Cathleen R. Pratt. All Rights Reserved.