SMB Who's Hot: Wells Fargo (Again)

Wells Fargo is at it again. After a successful launch of their small business webcast series, the well known bank is airing their second webcast on Protecting Your Business tomorrow as part of the company's commitment to celebrating Small Business Appreciation Month.

The interactive webcast will feature leading industry experts who will offer relevant and practical advice for small business owners on protecting the physical and virtual assets of their businesses. The panelists will include internal experts at Wells Fargo as well as external sources with legal and security backgrounds.

Protecting your business is not the sexiest of topics. Most entrepreneurs only really deal with these issues when they are forced to and are reactive instead of proactive. From experience any topic relating to sales, marketing, and financing will always bring a crowd.

That being said, Wells Fargo is taking the right steps to reach out to the small business community and go beyond the call of duty to provide additional value to their clients. I am looking forward to seeing their future lineup of webcasts.

The webcast can be viewed here: http://www.wellsfargo.com/biz/webcast

Have Credit Card Financing Options

Managing cash flow and securing startup and growth funds are among the biggest challenges a small business owner faces in building a successful company. To help finance their development, entrepreneurs are increasingly turning to their last resort: credit cards.

According to the Small Business Association, the number of small businesses carrying debt increased by 25% from June 2004 to June 2005. Over that period the number of businesses carrying under $100,000 in debt increased from 15.2 million to 19 million. A full 70% of that increase can be attributed to credit cards.

The study also found that the total dollar amount increase was only 1.9% suggesting that the developing trend is a larger number of small businesses spending on small dollar amounts as supposed to existing small businesses increasing their spending amounts.

Even though the small business lending as a whole has been slowing down, Chad Moutray, chief economist for the SBA's Office of Advocacy feels that the "small business credit card market continues to be quite dynamic."

Does your company offer small businesses the option to finance their purchases by credit card and over a period of time? If not, you could be missing out on a rapidly growing trend that can help drive significant sales.