Indeed, presidents now mix it up with customers out on the banking floor itself. A merchant banking firm that owns and operates several companies, New Canaan Capital LLC, in New Canaan, Conn., affiliates with a number of lenders. But, according to senior partner Ronald J. Manganiello, none is as accessible as New Canaan Bank & Trust Co., also in New Canaan. The president's desk there is right out in the open, and "you can go straight to him," says Manganiello, who often does just that. "It makes me feel like a big shot, though I'm not."
Banks have other ways of making customers' jobs easier. "They do the walkin' while I do the sellin'," is a ditty Rick Kramer, CEO of Arlington, Va., telecommunications-marketing company Faxplus, likes to recite on behalf of NationsBank, in Bethesda, Md. The bank's Professional and Executive Banking Division is designed specifically to save time for busy small-business managers by assigning a single "point person" to deal with a customer's banking needs across the board -- loans, investments, personal accounts, corporate accounts, and such.
First Union National Bank of North Carolina, in Charlotte, N.C., didn't have branches in four of the five states in which American Ophthalmic does business. Normally, it falls to the customer to line up its own banks in other states and set up a fund-transfer arrangement among them and the prime bank. But First Union took care of the whole thing for Connie Fraley, treasurer of the $21-million (in 1994 sales) operator of eye clinics based in Winter Park, Fla. The bank suggested various out-of-state banks and, once they were selected, filled out the paperwork. Leaving no stone unturned, First Union went so far as to call the selected bank branches to determine which were most conveniently located for American Ophthalmic's offices. "This," says Fraley, "is the most unusual banking relationship I've ever seen."
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Does it treat you as an individual?
Don't take it personally, but when you come down to it, a company is nothing more than its profit-and-loss and balance sheets. Well, a little more. Before he would accept even a loan application from rReynolds, a retail-store-fixture manufacturer in Lynnwood, Wash., the officer at Enterprise Bank, in Bellevue, asked rReynolds CEO Paul A. Abodeely an inordinate number of questions: Is your business cyclical? What's the composition of your accounts receivable? How do you depreciate your equipment? "They wanted to find out how much I knew about my own business," Abodeely says, "so they could determine whether I was worth lending to." After the banks voted yes, Abodeely applied his own criteria. "I decided that if they were smart enough to ask these intricate questions, they must be worth banking with."
Because the founder and CEO of the Merco Group, Erwin J. Merar, had had to deal with six loan officers in four years at his previous bank, he shopped around for a new bank that promised not only a long-term relationship but also to remain faithful even if his Milwaukee distribution company posted a bad year. Thus, he found Milwaukee's Norwest Bank Wisconsin. When his then $30-million business (it distributes pet foods, among other products) had the chance to purchase more merchandise at a rock-bottom price, Merar invited Norwest's president and vice-president to his company's offices, where he showed them a solid building, a polished operation, and a sophisticated computer system. In turn, the officers showed sufficient confidence in Merar to allow him to go over his credit line. Now that they know the way, the executives frequently drop by "just to stay informed."
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Does it teach and advise?
To the extent that federal lending laws allow (and bankers' interest in clients dictates), not only do bankers sometimes serve as business counselors, but they sometimes virtually move right in, computers, spreadsheets, and all.
Tampa Bay Vending founder Marie Bartholomew "couldn't believe it" when a vice-president from First Union National Bank of Florida in Tampa asked to ride around Tampa in a company truck to bone up on the eccentricities of the vending-machine trade. Bartholomew's banker saw enough to "save our butts" many times over. Among the gray suit's contributions: when Tampa Bay Vending acquired another company, the bank made sure the new company's records were accurate; it provided on-site supervision while an old building was being reconstructed; it helped Tampa Bay Vending gain minority status; it counseled on exporting, advising the company to make sure overseas deposits were held in escrow and that products were insured while at sea; it coached an in-house certified public accountant on setting up a retirement fund for employees; and it showed Bartholomew's young son how to finance a gum-ball machine for personal profit.
A bank that takes that kind of interest in its customers can save the day. "It was kind of a start-up thing for us," says CEO Rodney Barstein of the way his family and lead partners Jimmy Filler and Janak Shah purchased Simply Fashion Stores, in Birmingham, Ala., out of bankruptcy in 1991. The 190-store retailer's books seemed impossibly tangled -- until AmSouth Bank of Alabama, also in Birmingham, sent over some software to straighten them out. The bank's financial models guided the company past such cash-hungry chimeras as pre-Christmas inventory buildup -- and into loan structures that would carry the stores' stock from September to January.
A couple of years after founding Collegiate Sports Design, a New Strawn, Kans., stadium-concessions business, Gregory Schuh wanted to go vertical by adding a souvenir-manufacturing arm. First National Bank of Kansas, in Burlington, showed Smith how to efficiently apportion his investment between the two business modes, and then set up a program to monitor subsequent cash flow "so that after we got the machines in, we'd have the capital to keep them going," Smith says.
