Financing - What Banks need from Business

We recently interviewed Michael Cearns, Managing Partner - Business Development at National Australia Bank.  We asked him about what they are looking for when approving finance and how this has changed over recent times.

You may be an engineering firm that sources your leads from two areas.  One is government for large infrastructure projects and the other is the private sector.  The former may require more emphasis on high quality proposals to win jobs and the latter will rely on relationships in addition to high quality proposals.

You are standing at a party or at a trade show display and someone comes up to you and enquires about your school. You give them a business card and you take their details asking if they would like to go on the mailing list. 

If you are going to measure how effective your marketing is it helps to know when to record the “lead”.  It is not just any old lead it has to be a qualified lead.

There are two things to explain first before we give a couple of examples of when best to record a lead.  These are the “sales process” and “qualified lead.”