Small and medium-sized businesses often require a finance resource in order to take the necessary steps toward growth.  Businesses  are often hampered by a lack of sufficient capital to fund growth through its own means or conventional sources.  In addition, the rising cost of money can leave uncertainty as to a company's fixed costs over a long period of time.

The U.S. Small Business Administration's 504 program provides a unique opportunity for small businesses looking to finance fixed assets, such as machinery, equipment, real estate and improvements.  These loans include such advantages as a low down payment (10%), longer repayment terms, and a fixed interest rate that is typically lower than the market's.  Eligible companies include any for-profit company with a net worth of $7.5  million or less and an average net profit of less than $2.5 million over the last 2 fiscal years.  The size of these loans ranges from $250,000 and up.

Typically, these loans are structured as follows:

·       10% down due from the borrower (although there are opportunities to obtain financing with 0% down).

·       50% financed by a conventional bank.

·       40% financed through a CDC (Certified Development Corporation) who creates a SBA guaranteed, and subordinated, debenture. 

The structure of these loans makes loaning money much more attractive to any bank, due to the bank's low loan-to-value ratio, and the obvious security of the SBA guarantee on 40% of the total financed funds. 

At Rodman & Rodman we have had the opportunity to work with New England Certified, a CDC Company who provides such loans, in addition to solving many other financing issues businesses typically run into.  They are currently the only company offering a premium 504 loan program, with additional benefits available on borrowings of $750,000 and up.  New England Certified is headquartered in Wakefield, MA, doing business throughout the New England area.  If you are interested in this loan program, please call or email your main contact at Rodman & Rodman, or Robert Leonard (bob@rodmancpa.com) to arrange a meeting with NE Certified.  If you would like to contact NE Certified directly, feel free to call Liz Trifone at 781-928-1100, extension 102, or email her at etrifone@newengland504.com.

As the Managing Director of Small & Emerging Firms for a sales advisory firm, I tend to do a lot of work with the owners and presidents of, well you guessed it, small & emerging companies.  There are clearly many challenges that someone who runs a small to medium sized company faces including wearing way too many hats.  That being said, whether they are a professional services firm or an actual sales-driven organization (and everywhere in between), filling the pipeline with consistent, real opportunities is an ongoing challenge.  The best way to do that is by building a rock-solid referral building system.  The days of "build it and they will come" are long gone.  Sure if you do a good job, eventually you may get some calls inquiring about your products or services, but the question is: Are you building a referral system and being proactive in getting fruitful introductions and referrals consistently?

May I suggest that you think about this...

Most people in business hate cold calls, but unfortunately they have to make some version of them. If salespeople/business owners see cold calling as the only way to get business, most of those same salespeople will eventually get out of the business and business owners will eventually go out of business. Cold calling is a killer. Think about it: you are calling on people who would rather not see you or talk to you. And if they do talk to you, they want the information first, fast and free. They might not even be nice about it. This is not to say you should stop making cold calls! However, you should develop a prospecting system that gives you at least five different ways to obtain business besides cold calling. Build a referral and introduction system so that cold calls are not forever!

Scott Robbins is the Managing Director of Small & Emerging Firms at Next Level, Inc., an affiliate of the Sandler Sales Institute. Scott's focus is helping companies with challenges as they relate to sales in these three areas:  People, Process and Pipeline. Scott can be reached at 508-553-8844 or by email at srobbins@nextlevelinc.com. Rodman & Rodman has referred several of our clients to Next Level over the years with excellent results. Rodman & Rodman is also a client and has been for ten years.

• Closing all those windows: Often when I get going in a bunch of different areas in QuickBooks, I find myself with a dozen open windows. Going to each window and closing it was a pain until I remembered that there is a quick Windows-based remedy: Simply click on Window up on the menu bar and then click on "Close all" and voila! All the windows close up in one shot and your screen is uncluttered again.
• Calculator shortcut: For those of you who need the calculator when working in a register, you can just tap the = key and the calculator will pop up for you to help you breakdown split transactions or for any variety of reasons.
• Using the history button: The history button is a neat little thing that shows you all the transactions related to the one you are viewing. For example, if you are viewing a vendors invoice, you simply click on the history button, and if the invoice has been paid, all of the payment details will be reflected on the screen.  So when a given transaction has a bit of a story attached to it, I find that by clicking the history button, I can quickly get a picture of the entire story at one time.
• Make "finding" quicker: The "find" function is a nice QuickBooks function that helps you locate a transaction that you have lost somewhere in QuickBooks (by mis-dating, wrong amount, etc.). I encourage you to make the find function move quicker by including as much as you know about the transaction, including the amount, date and transaction type. Obviously, you may not know one of these and that is the problem, but put in as much information as you do know to avoid a long wait. Another way to find something you are specifically looking for that is contained in a large report is to export the report to Excel and use the <ctl>+F  function which is the Excel function for finding data and I often find it searches better than QuickBooks can for what I am looking for.

See you next time with some more QuickBooks tips!

• Tuesday, September 18th - Surviving The Cost Of College
• Tuesday, October 16th - Understanding & Analyzing My Financial Statements
• Thursday, November 15th - Sales / Business Development 101 - You May Be Surprised!
• Thursday, December 13th - 16 Ways To Improve The Value of a Business

In order to attend any seminar, you must reigister by call Jen Reading at Rodman & Rodman. Jen can be reached at 617.965.5959 or by email at jen@rodmancpa.com. We suggest early registration as attendance is strictly limited.