• What to delegate and why
  
• When to delegate
  
• Who to delegate to
  
• Common obstacles
  
• Identify the value of your own time
  
• Discuss tools that can help

In our very first blog post a month ago, we offered a special gift pack for the first person who gave us a question related to small business. The winner is Dani Weinstein, a past HP colleague and fellow UC Davis MBA alum of Tina’s. Thanks for being a reader and for participating in our contest – look for your Starbucks gift card in the mail soon!

Here is the winning question: How are small businesses managing with the financial meltdown in securing sufficient financing & loans to get their businesses off the ground?

Excellent question Dani, and of course of interest to most small businesses. In an interesting coincidence, our bank manager called us last week to set up an appointment with us to find out more about our business and to see if there were any loan products they could interest us in. Here are the options we were presented:

1. An overdraft line – this is straightforward and it has come in handy when Accounts Receivables time increases. It has a moderate interest rate and only kicks in when needed.

2. For larger amounts, they also have a line of credit called the Cash Flow Manager. Generally you will qualify for 20-25% of your annual gross receipts. It only takes a couple of weeks to approve and has a low interest rate.

3. The last option was actually the one I had gone in to ask about, and that is SBA loans. With all the press these loans have been getting lately I thought for sure this would a product the bank would be pushing. Actually it was quite the opposite. They said SBA loans are usually the last resort for funding– they take upwards of 6-9 months to approve and require a large amount of paperwork. Additionally, they said, the criteria to actually get an SBA loan approved has tightened up just as on most loans.

There are other SBA products that are available that you can get much quicker, but they are for small amounts and can only be used to pay off existing debts (i.e. credit cards or other loans). You can check with your lender or the SBA directly about loan options such as ; ARC, 7a, 8a and others.

By the way, if you need a good banker, I recommend Lois Coady at the Roseville branch of US Bank – she made me feel like a valued customer.

Two weeks ago Valerie received a call from one of our clients who was in a minor panic. She was scheduled to be at a tradeshow in Los Angeles in just one week and her assistant had to cancel on her at the last minute. She called us with the slim hope that Cybertary could send someone to assist her during the event. With some minor schedule juggling, Valerie was able to make it work in her schedule (this is Valerie on the left with our client, Debi Silber). Sure it was a bit of a challenge to make last minute arrangements, but in the end, we asked ourselves a simple question – what if it was us in that same position? If we had invested a lot of money in something and then lost our support team, we too would hope someone would come through for us in our time of need.

So why are we telling this story? Aside from the obvious plug for the excellent service that we strive to provide our clients, it is important that we as business owners think about how we can provide that extra special touch that differentiates us from our competitors. This client was so thrilled she even mentioned Valerie in her newsletter that she sends to her clients.

The moral of the story is not that you can call Cybertary at the last minute and we’ll jump on an airplane (although we just might). The moral is – treat your customers as human beings, not an invoice. If you do, you will be remembered and your customer will be forever loyal.