How To Develop Your Business Financing Strategy

You do not have to become a top-notch CFO or an accountant to develop your business finance strategy. Just know that it will require significantly more than you show up at your lender’s doorstep with a number of financials in hand.

By looking back at your greater business plan, understanding just what a lender typically looks for in a client, and knowing how to provide your key financials when the full time comes, you can successfully increase your chances at acquiring the financing you need to grow your business.

Follow these three steps and you will be well on the way towards a solid business financing strategy.

Be very clear about your objectives.

No, the objective is not just to obtain financing. What are the overarching goals of your company? So how exactly does obtaining financing assist you to achieve those goals?

Ensure that you have a good solid notion of the “big picture” strategy of your business. A great way to get this done is to appear back at your company plan and identify the key objectives of your operation.

If you’re able to develop a case on why you need financing and how it aligns along with your greater business strategy, you are instantly ahead of numerous business owners and entrepreneurs who are often not very clear on the subject.

Educate yourself on just what a lender looks for.

Whenever a lender needs to take care to seem sensible of confusing financials, the odds of obtaining financing for that potential borrower drops significantly.

Take a moment from your busy schedule to understand what underwriters and lenders search for when given a business’s financials.

When the lender has fewer questions while looking over your financials, the greater the chances of these truly understanding why they should extend a loan to you.

Presentation matters.

When the full time comes to provide your case for financing, take all the knowledge and tactics from steps one and two and turn it into a presentation that is clear and concise.

Apart from clarity, be honest about your business’s performance on the years.

While this may sound counter intuitive, fully disclosing your business’s performance and explaining the information they see might help build an exact case for the business.

Stay prior to the game.

A terrible situation that afflicts many business owners is if they finally recognize that their business needs financing, but are unprepared to approach the problem.

Invest time into fully understanding your business’s financial status. This implies creating some sort of system for tracking key data points, or seeking outside help from a business finance specialist. When the full time comes to get financing, you will be fully prepared to find the correct lender to simply help grow your business.

It is interesting that people are ready to make an effort to prepare for harsh elements by weatherproofing their homes, or spending money on car insurance in the event of an untimely and unfortunate accident.

You do not have to become a top-notch CFO or an accountant to develop your business finance strategy. Just know that it will require significantly more than you show up at your lender’s doorstep with a number of financials in hand.

About Prof Janek Ratnatunga 1129 Articles
Professor Janek Ratnatunga is CEO of the Institute of Certified Management Accountants. He has held appointments at the University of Melbourne, Monash University and the Australian National University in Australia; and the Universities of Washington, Richmond and Rhode Island in the USA. Prior to his academic career he worked with KPMG.
Scroll to Top