The Color of Money & Your Technology Business

Normally money is a nice calming green to everyone. Right about now, money is pretty close to being see through.

The money I'm referring to is your back up, credit based funds. This means credit cards, lines of credit and any other pool of money you have access to dip into in tough times or just to cover things while waiting for your receivables to actually be in the bank.

Besides a good end of the year thing to do, tightening up the funds and checking on how your credit is doing is a very good idea in this rough financial market. Knowing you have the funds right now for when you need it or at least making sure you are in a position to get money when the time comes is a must.

My advice to you is to jump on the following to help put your business in the best position possible coming into 2009:

1. Check your personal credit score (FICO) from all 3 bureaus. Unless you are in a very rare position of not needing to personally guarantee business related financing, making sure there are no dings in your credit report that shouldn't be there is a good idea every quarter. If you see something fishy, check it out immediately.

2. Check your business credit rating with D&B. Although for small businesses this is not as important as the credit score of the personal guarantor, for things such as leases and equipment loans as well as some other financing, this score will be checked to see how well your business pays up. Again, fix any dings that shouldn't be there.

3. Call your creditors that hold your credit cards and lines of credit. Ask them if you can get a small bump in the amount of credit you have with them even if you don't use that card/fund at all. The more credit you have available, the better off you will be if you have to use it. It's a good way to make your debt to available credit look better to other financial institutions as well as a good way to keep your credit used for each individual card/fund to under 50%.

4. Check with your creditors, especially credit card companies, to see if they will be willing to lower your interest rate. You'd be surprised how many will. This also works with personal cards. It doesn't hurt to try this once a year.

5. If there are any funding people you can have a relationship with, have a relationship with them. Bank loan officers, leasing people or anyone else that has a face and is not anonymous to you regarding any of your business funding/credit. Make sure they know you and keep in touch with them. If they have any room to maneuver, they will do it for those people they know best.


That's it for now. Doing these 5 things (with 1, 2 and 5 being done on a quarterly basis if possible) should be added to your end of the year activities.

Happy Holidays!


To Your Business Success-

George Sierchio
The Consultant's Coach