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How To Get A Small-Business Loan
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Article 7: How To Present Yourself
You can anticipate much of what a lender will need and gather it ahead of time. You can prepare before ever sitting across a desk from a loan officer because often, initial contact is made by telephone.
“A lot of it is done without meeting the customer initially,” says Fullerton Community Bank Vice President Joan Earhart. “A lot of the time we get packages brought in by … a courier or we have talked with them over the phone.”
Earhart says that traditional sit-down introductions are less common today, “because this is such an instant information age” that lenders have accelerated the process.
Rather than a loan applicant waltzing in for the first encounter with a sheath of papers the lender has never seen, some lenders prefer applicants provide basic documentation beforehand.
Eventually the face-to-face meeting occurs, and the lender has already digested basic financial information. Neatness and organization count. The more orderly your material, and the more closely you follow lenders’ instructions, the more smoothly the process flows.
Earhart also advises borrowers to be proactive, particularly when dealing with large institutional lenders.
A borrower’s first discussion might be with a loan officer who doesn’t handle the type of loan being sought. But that presumes the borrower knows what type is best. A borrower may think a long-term loan is needed, when in fact a line of credit would suffice. “We’ll help them understand,” Earhart says.
Not all lenders are always helpful. Earhart’s bank sometimes gets business from borrowers who were told by a larger institution that they don’t do a particular type of loan, when in fact that lender does, but the loan officer was unaware or wasn’t personally responsible for that type.
“The more you can tell the banker, the more they will be able to help you,” Earhart says. “But some bankers don’t take time to find out things. Be persistent.” And don’t hesitate to, “ask at a higher level” in the organization.
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