How do i increase my sales for Export

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hello everyone and welcome to export week and our session on how to finance and increase export sales and limit risks my name is brian beams and i am a member of the us and foreign commercial service some housekeeping items before we begin everyone is asked to stay on mute if you are not speaking today's program is being recorded the question and answer session will take place at the end of today's program feel welcome to type in your question at any time in the q a feature we will begin q a when we begin q a please raise your hand and wait to be called once our moderator acknowledges your raised hand please unmute yourself and state your question there is time to register for other export week sessions you can view the list of all 18 events by visiting trade.gov that again that's t-r-a-d-e dot g-o-v lastly the views and opinions expressed during this program may not reflect the official policy and position of the us government i'd now like to introduce our moderator for today's session mr leslie robertson vice president of td bank leslie you're on mute mute leslie you're on mute sir sorry about that here we go thanks for joining us for this conversational webinar on how small businesses can finance and increase international sales while at the same time managing payment risks my name is leslie robertson td bank and i'll be moderating the program as was mentioned uh it's a one-hour webinar will be kind of informal and will include a panel of export industry uh specialists who will answer some key questions that small companies face when doing business internationally i'm a commercial lender here at td and along with my international trade partners work actively with our own clients and prospects to access these important export sales markets so let's begin with some brief introductions from our panelists and then we'll jump into the program melissa great thank you so much leslie good morning everyone thank you so much for joining us for this first webinar of export week i'm melissa grosso i'm the director of the u.s commercial services connecticut office and really i'm here to briefly set the stage for the overarching discussion of why exports matter and the federal assistance that's available to u.s companies good morning i'm andrea rattay i'm a td bank member a trade finance specialist with the bank we provide solutions to exporters to mitigate risk support cash flow needs and we are an exim delegated authority lender as well as an sba lender really glad to be here at this kickoff connecticut export week event thank you good morning my name is jenny norris i am with meridian finance group we are a trade credit insurance broker we are the largest broker for exam bank as well as we offer credit insurance through all the private sector and i look forward to speaking with you later on today good morning my name is uh richard foy i'm a regional director for xm bank responsibilities include new york up to maine xm bank is the official credit agent export credit agency of the united states uh our mission is to grow jobs through export and we do that by reducing financial risks associated with exporting to ensure that exporters are not missing out on opportunities hey good morning my name is joe raycraft i'm with the small business administration i'm the export finance manager for the new england region and i am one of 22 export finance managers that the sba has throughout the country my background is in international banking and trade finance and with the sba my role is to promote the three sba export financing programs through direct outreach to our sba lender partners and to small business exporters as many as you may know sba is not a direct lender but rather we offer loan guarantees to lenders for loans that small businesses apply for through their own banks pleasure to be here and look forward to spending a little bit of time with you today good morning i'm denise whitford i'm a business advisor for the connecticut small business development center my focus is largely on helping entrepreneurs and small businesses get their businesses started and grow and the majority of that activity in regard to international trade is helping them do their assessments and move them forward into either new markets or new to export opportunities we're spread across the state of connecticut i am one of 20 advisors and since covid march of 2020 we've all been working remotely traditionally however we're focused in various chambers of commerce economic development entities and we also have an office at the department of economic and community development and the department of commerce in middletown glad to be here today okay um so it's again back to leslie robertson here um i asked you to turn to slide number three if you would please um not going to spend a lot of time on this but this particular slide just illustrates the interconnected nature if you like of how export activities and export finance kind of come together uh with the us small business exporter clearly in the middle of this uh promoting facilitating uh and successfully exporting um and that sales driving that sales activity so that's the only thing that's the only time we'll spend on this slide um next slide please so it's my pleasure to introduce our first presenter melissa grosso of the us department of commerce melissa as you walk through the slides could you keep in mind a couple of key thoughts one as a company looking to increase my revenues why should i consider exporting a second obviously is what federal programs are available to help me do just that and finally uh with overseas travel currently difficult right now how can i identify and vet potential customers when i can't meet them face to face just some thoughts for you to consider as you go through the slides thanks certainly and thanks so much again leslie for participating in for the introduction so to your first question about why a company should consider exporting uh really it's pretty simple it comes down to purchasing power uh more than 70 percent of the world's purchasing power is located outside of the united states so really diversifying your customer base is a key strategy for continued the continued growth of your business uh next slide please and this is this is really where our organization comes into play uh the u.s commercial service is the federal government's trade promotion agency so we work with companies across the u.s to help those companies define and implement their international business development strategy and we do this through a global network of trade professionals who are located across the u.s and around the world really what makes us unique is our worldwide presence of industry specialists who are situated at u.s embassies and consulates in over 75 countries you know and with this they have the local industry and country expertise to guide companies uh to success next slide please and these are just some of the ways that we work with u.s companies so our u.s based staff works with u.s companies to help your company to help understand your company's products and services your business model your distribution chain and other factors that are germane to your business we provide technical counseling to in-depth market research reports and then utilizing that worldwide network of industry specialists that i that i just mentioned we provide business matchmaking uh to help connect your business with potential partners and end users internationally and finally to leslie to your question about um vetting potential partners one of the services that our organization provides is a due diligence background check report on a potential international partner so we have with with the onset of the pandemic our organization shifted we pivoted to virtual services so we are still doing all of these things uh in a virtual world so please feel free to reach out to us um and i definitely encourage you to take a look at our website which i've left listed here uh on this page which is really a robust resource for u.s companies and if you can go to the next slide please so i i would just uh my final slide is just to encourage you if you have international related questions i definitely encourage you to get in touch with your local us commercial service office we have staff in a hundred plus offices across the u.s and those staff are really well connected in their local communities to other trade experts and they really act as a central trade advisor to your firm so again definitely encourage you to go to this website and get in touch with your with your local us-based uh us export assistance center and with that i'm going to turn things back to leslie so we can get to the meat of the program on trade finance which is a critical critical component of a company's export strategy leslie i'll turn it back to you thank you melissa that was excellent and we are truly blessed honestly to have the middletown office under the malicious melissa's now leadership um kind of supporting all all of our efforts here so thank you for all you do um we'll go next over to uh to andre andrea retay of td bank i think you will tell us andre about several different tools that are available to exporters who you work with that answer the question thank you thanks leslie and very pleased to follow on melissa's presentation thank you melissa u.s commercial service is really a wonderful resource no matter where you sit in the united states and i'm always pleased to to work with commercial service uh so just starting maybe with the broad umbrella question which is how do i make sure that i get paid uh this slide has a lot of information on it i do hope that you'll use it as a reference guide something that you might refer back to when you are talking to your potential customers overseas and then i would also encourage you to do talk to your bank about uh any one of these products as a follow-on and as you as your export sales get underway um so that we're going to start with the picture in the middle we're not going to spend a lot of time on the sides this is really this i call it a risk ladder it's really the foundation of any export sale it's really the foundation of any commercial transaction too if you think about it we started the book ends the advance payment and the open account you can see that there's an inverse relationship between the risk that the exporter takes and the risk that the importer or buyer takes and they're diametrically opposed so as an exporter you're probably going to say well i want the most secure payment method i want to be sure that i will get paid i'm going to start with advanced payment the issue there really is that if you're competing not only with u.s exporters but exporters around the world who might be in the same industry you might end up finding that you're not very competitive with an advanced payment term payment term on the open account side of course is an exporter you take the most risk because you might ship and not get paid so the banks really look at the middle how do we close the gap how do we help companies close the gap to get comfortable so i'll start quickly with commercial letters of credit just to highlight those um that's really where the bank your bank is or rather your buyer's bank is stepping in to your buyer's shoes and saying to you the exporter if the buyer doesn't pay as long as you meet the terms and conditions of the letter of credit we the issuing bank will pay you there's two reasons that this can help to make you more comfortable one is we do still live in a time when uh where when buyers and sellers don't know each other or aren't yet familiar with each other uh they feel like a bank can be a trusted partner the other key reason for a letter to consider a letter of credit is because if you the a bank is saying to you exporter that they are willing to undertake the credit risk of your buyer and that should give some level of comfort that a bank is willing to underwrite your buyer uh the the there are some other sort of details around letters of credit that we don't really have time to get into there are some bills and west bells and whistles that you can attach uh including lc confirmations discounting time lc drafts if you find that you have to extend your terms under an lc but they're a really useful tool for managing the risk standby letters of credit can be used at the bookends for either to secure an open account relationship or to secure an advanced payment from your buyer to make them comfortable and then documentary collections i'll just close with that is really not a bank undertaking but it's just a method of transferring title between seller and buyer using the banking channels but not with the undertaking of a bank so it is a way for an exporter to get your bill of lading over to your buyer and to ensure that the bank will the overseas bank will collect your payment before releasing those documents so hopefully this ladder has can illustrate for you how the banks can help you manage that payment risk thanks for your time and andrea leslie here so just in terms of how banks price these these products is the fees for the leaders of credit how does that work thanks for the question leslie so um for export letters of credit it's really going to depend on what type of letter of credit you need and what country potentially it's from generally speaking you're going to be looking at about an eighth to say about 3 16 of a percent flat for an export lc overall if you should require a confirmation of a letter of credit which can come into play if you're not comfortable with the issuing bank risk or the country then there will be additional uh sort of a risk premium that you'll want to build in the last thing i'll say about this leslie is it is important in that case to talk to your banker early to find out what those costs will be so that you the exporter can build them into your uh pro forma invoice price thank you very much thank you okay let's move on now to uh to jenny norris of meridian finance um jenny a question i've heard uh asked a lot is you know as a small business exporter how can i protect myself from the risk of non-payment particularly if i have to offer open account payment terms um thanks uh please go ahead please jen you want me to jump in yeah richard i think richard's gonna go first and then i'll follow richard yeah i know we have uh this slide's a little uh a little out of order perhaps so uh my name is richard foy as i said before agent director of uh xm bank this is a pretty simple uh slide but i think it illustrates well you know what it is x and bank can do um you know for the exporting community it's important to understand that for the most part xm sits behind um the other people so in case of td bank td bank may put out a working capital uh loan for an exporter to produce or procure goods for export xm bank may guarantee that loan taking the risk out of uh td banks hands or helping mitigate the risk of non-payment from you the exporter and then we move move on to after you sell the goods and this is what um was alluded to by by leslie when you sell the goods on open payment terms as andrea illustrated in the risk ladder that can be very risky when you're selling open payment terms we help mitigate that risk by ensuring those receivables it's important to understand now that how these things can work together um so as you're exporting you're in inc you're in assuring your foreign receivables so you have some some risks there balance sheet you know you have um your balance sheet is growing but it's also an asset now that you can go back to the bank and you can get an advance on those because now insured receivables are looked uh kindly by the bank so now this can help you continue to grow your operation because you have an insured receivable that the bank will loan on and you can fulfill new uh new orders now i'm not going to go into too much detail because fortunately we have some other experts on the the panel here jenny's going to talk more about the specifics of export credit insurance and then we're going to have joe later on um and myself talk about the actual working capital elements so right now i'll just turn it over to jenny thanks rich and so i'm going to piggyback off of what rich was talking about and going a little bit a deeper dive as to what credit insurance is and and these are the benefits of credit insurance credit insurance is ensuring your accounts receivable it is a risk management tool um think about it with the this this pandemic that we're in right now if you had open account sales during this past year you may have been a little more worried about getting getting paid on those if you have credit insurance we also call it sleep insurance you have the um the confidence to know that those sales that you've made on open account terms will be collected if for some reason your your clients not going to pay so the risk management tool we also call it the sleep insurance um sales tool think about this as you are going out and making sales and trying to determine who you're going to be selling to you may not know your customer on the other end having a credit insurer like exum bank or even some of the private credit insurance carriers will help you make those decisions whether or not you should go ahead and sell an open account terms so it really puts you in a competitive advantage because again imagine if you are trying to sell to a company and your competitor is offering terms and you're a little worried and you're saying well i have to uh sell cash of advance you may lose that sale and it may appear that your competitor is strong or larger or has more ability to provide terms when actually they could be used in credit insurance so for sure if you're out there selling internationally at least understand what credit insurance is so that you can be potentially more competitive now financing tool this is going to be talked about down the road as well in this presentation but i think it's a very important point that a lot of exporters may not understand when a when an exporter goes to a bank and is requesting um financing and they come to the bank and they say i want a 500 000 or a million dollars the bank doesn't just throw that out there the bank has a calculation that they use and part of that is a percentage of your inventory part of that is the percentage of your receivables if the bank sees that your receivables are open account receivables to anywhere overseas and they're not comfortable with that they will pull that the amount that they're going to lend to you down if you come back to them and say hey i've got credit insurance on my foreign receivables well you've effectively just strengthened one of your assets and and it actually makes you look better in front of the in front of the bank so again credit insurance uh many benefits we can certainly go into a lot more detail not expensive and something that again if you're selling internationally at least you should know about and and it'll help you sell more internationally uh i think leslie i'm going to send it back to you thank you very much and uh so we're delighted now to also have uh denise whitford here with us from connecticut small business development centers she's going to discuss export readiness strategies and and planning which i'm thinking denise would come under the topic of how do i prepare myself for a discussion with my bank about export financing would that be right that would be absolutely right leslie thank you so much for um kicking that off that way i'm wondering if we can go to the next slide right away i think what we've heard so far from a lot of our guest speakers is what you want to know and and how you would want to get prepared and the key role of the small business development center is to help you rationalize right through a lot of these questions and as you can see on here just like the jeopardy board there's a couple of categories that we start looking at first of all cash is king or should i say cash flow is king and so what a bank is generally going to want to look at is are does your business have the ability to demonstrate that you have a healthy amount of cash but also in comparison to your existing expenses so knowing how you sell your product who you sell it to and where that product is going is going to be really critical as we analyze some of those questions we start to think about how you get paid from your overseas buyers and keeping in top of mind what are those payment terms how will that operate so again i think that a bank is also going to want to know how you cover your current debt but also how you would bring on any additional debt and as we're going to hear in a little bit some of the options for the sba offers to help you get there so along with maintaining a positive cash flow having your debts under control is one of the biggest signs of a financially healthy company but it's also a thorough understanding of your supply chain and your distribution channels a bank is going to want to know if you have a really good understanding of what your product and services are and how you get your supplies for the raw materials in and out of the us so we want to be able to make sure that you understand your customer base and their needs and their capabilities as well in addition to that lenders are are going to also look at a couple of other things in terms of your revenue is this a large number of customers that you're working with or is it one or two customers with a large amount of activity so again a good sign of a healthy business is that in the eye of the lender that you really know your customers and then also what happens if they drop you as jenny just indicated and rich how do you back that uh that client up if you don't have xm in your side and you don't have the credit insurance a bank is going to have a couple of questions there about how you're going to fill that gap additional questions might revolve around the credit worthiness again in the payment terms from the time of purchase until that opportunity is delivered and then you know the last thing that i want to touch on in this chart here of questions is um when something does go wrong and you have a supply chain blip like we've had in the past year and maybe year and a half what are your backup plans do you have a plan b or a plan c if your supply chain goes dead and you can't get the things that you need that said if we can go to the next slide please um the connecticut small business to center center has a couple of different options and recommendations to help you offset and mitigate some of those things and as you can see on this slide we start off with a different type of assessment and then we go into the strategic planning side to help you analyze and forecast as well as develop an action plan but starting off with that assessment i just want to touch on two quick things on the assessment it really is an evaluation to look at the company's readiness whether you're new to export or you're expanding in that particular channel we divide things up and look at them are you successful currently in the united states getting your product out there and have you done export research in the markets that you want to penetrate do you understand what the risks are do you know what the tariff or the tariff barriers might be in moving into different countries and then how is your freight forwarder working with you those are the kinds of questions that we want to assess to help you prepare best for that bank conversation once that survey or that questionnaire is finished we start looking at other types of export readiness and and identify those needs to help you improve your activities and that deeper dive is a further analysis and that analysis if you will is going to be coming back to the bank questions um that strategic development and exporting in different areas if you're going into new markets it's going to involve that deep dive and those wonderful projections that we always want to do if we can move to the next and final slide for me as you can see on this spreadsheet this is about financing and many people say i'm not very good at financing and yet at the same time the bank wants to know can you pay will you pay and what if you don't and this spreadsheet is a very simple tool for us to get you up to speed and and confident about your operational and your financial questions um for example what happens if i have tremendous success how will that impact my um my cash flow how will it impact my inventory or even my product offering should i limit my product offering so i don't get into that kind of financial difficulty what are my funding options should i do a line of credit should i do a working capital loan what are my options in those international markets when we look at those considerations we want to do those projections to look at your financial future and then how you'll manage that cash flow and this bottom line tool is really a very valuable part of establishing your budget managing your profits and even your cash flow so with that i think i'm going to kick it back to you leslie um next is rich foy again from exim and joe raycroft from the sba um we'll talk about the all-important topics of working capital management preservation and financing that and we all know that liquidity and working capital is a finite resource for all companies as an exporter i guess i would be interested in what help is available to support my working capital needs and can i leverage my receivables inventory related to those export orders that i traditionally cannot do with a domestic line of credit other questions too but i'll let you guys jump in okay john you want to start or uh rich why don't you start joe yeah sure uh so xm bank you know we have right here on this slide we have uh on the left xm banks uh program on the right sbas i'll quickly go over xm bank's program what it does and what it can't do for you as well so again it's designed to assist companies mainly small mid-size companies obtain working capital for the purposes of fulfilling export orders so it's not meant for expansion it's not meant for you know opening an overseas office or things of that nature it's really designed to execute on sales opportunities immediately so a line of credit is typically used to fund the acquisition of of goods that will be made into a product or acquiring goods actually to be sold as as is we provide a guarantee to the lender of 90 so in this case the lender is our customer not the exporter directly the exporter is the beneficiary of this um of this guarantee but um but really the customer we're protecting here is the bank while exim bank doesn't have a minimum or a maximum loan amount uh the determination as to which guarantee program a bank uses is at the sole discretion of the bank so they will make a determination what fits what guarantee uh fits their portfolio best or where this fits in their portfolio i should say um it's we can use export related inventory and export foreign receivables as collateral on this loan and one of the great benefits of this loan or line of credit when used with a bank is the collateral requirement one for standby letter of credit uh we only will require 25 collateral so this is great if you're receiving some advance payment for goods or if you're going to manufacture a product you receive advanced funds you can park 25 uh to collateralize the lc and then use the rest for uh production one limitation is that we cannot support defense related exports or uh sales to a defense related um buyer those are some uh some of the restrictions that that we have uh joel i'll turn it over to you and your program sure thanks rich um appreciate it and um you know the again joe raycraft from the sba export finance manager for new england so the sba's export working capital program is is very similar to to exit banks so i'm not gonna reiterate um everything that rich just said um you know again uh jenny hit on this denise hit on this you know cash is king right so if if if you've got a large order or export order that you need to fill and you need working capital usually it's a good idea to use somebody else's cash than your own we all know how important liquidity is so this is a great program for that and as jenny noted enrich you can monetize assets that are on your balance sheet currently you can monetize those export receivables in export inventory for collateral purposes generally lenders do not conventionally offer export financing because they see there's too much risk associated with those assets so these are excellent programs to take advantage of again rich noted that the main difference between these programs is the loan amount sba can go up to 5 million where exim bank is you know it's unlimited so for companies that have very large working capital needs exim bank is typically a good a good structure and also the sba is eligible for military and defense exports and there's also no 51 content rule under the sba's program so there's some flexibility a little different from exim bank but overall these are great programs to help companies with that export working capital component when it's necessary uh joe and uh and then rich can i ask you one question um say my business is a service provider and i don't and i sell internationally but i don't obviously don't have any inventory but i you know do require working capital to complete my work am i eligible also to for an export loan that would help me in that uh rich do you want to talk from exim bank perspective sure from uh xm's standpoint we we do allow uh some service related um exports under the working capital program it is uh fairly restrictive in terms of uh you know what we can support and and so on i believe the sba's program uh has a little bit more latitude in that regard um but we've we can support uh some service related work sure and we can move to the next slide um so so for service based companies absolutely um there's sba's export express program um is a perfect option for service providers who you know tend to have you know maybe not as large of working capital needs as say a manufacturer so the ex the sba export express loans can be up to five hundred thousand dollars uh so you know rather than use your cash an export express loan would be a perfect way to you know facilitate uh the working capital necessary for um you know a service type type business you know we we all think of manufactured goods and product sales as exports but services are a very big part of u.s exports and we're lucky enough today we're going to hear from another exporter exporter of the year for the state of maine and kathleen o'haran is going to tell us about her experience in a few minutes and just to kind of show you how how this is directly related to service providers with the export express program it's very flexible so it can provide both a working capital line of credit but if there's also a need for some equipment we can structure deals that also have an equipment term loan component to them we really can finance any legitimate business need so it's really you know talking to your lender talking to them about your business and you know what is the specific financing need that you're trying to uh to cover leslie i think you have another question for me maybe i do and it's it's basically um financing to support my business expansion which is you know i'm looking to to to move into overseas markets with my small business to develop and expand that export market but am i i'm able to obtain expansion financing even if i've not got an order just yet uh yes absolutely you can um and that would be you know the ideal program would be an international trade loan from the sba and these are term loans that support the financing of more fixed assets whether it be equipment real estate permanent working capital to support equipment purchases or even for business acquisitions with the international trade loan there really is no specific export sales threshold so you may not even be exporting yet however you you need to have a clear export plan in place with revenue projections for the next 12 months just to demonstrate to the bank that you intend to really attack the export market and again for an export plan highly recommend working with a small business development office like denise to help you put that together and and get the best plan possible to your banker so that they understand what your financing need is um with the international trade loan it's up to five million dollars so it's it's it can be a very large loan or it can be uh you know on the smaller side so very flexible uh long-term financing i had one other question which was really not so much on loan funding but grant funding um are the grant grants programs available what are the qualifications and what sort of activities would be eligible for those uh yes and we can move to the next slide the um so the fba grant program it's referred to as a step program that is the state trade expansion program which is a partnership between sba and the individual u.s states and the purpose of the program is really to provide reimbursable grants to help small businesses or to provide incentive to small businesses to go global and what that does is it will reimburse a small business exporter for lots of different eligible expenses you can see a few of them on the screen some of the most common would be participation in overseas trade shows and trade missions maybe product compliance testing translations of websites and even export training these can result in every state is a little bit different but they can result in reimbursable grants of up to you know 6 000 even up to maybe 15 000 depending on your state's program so for more information about this this is just a a great program i think it's one of the the golden nuggets from this presentation i would you know recommend you go to the sba.gov step and you can find your state's program manager where you can see the guidelines and application requirements thank you joe um and i just want to just to clarify really you know on the sba program there's more development you know overall helping you export more and getting uh systems put in place and whatnot and xm's program is solely on fulfilling orders uh really you know not uh capital uh investments and and so on so those are two distinct um things i just want to to clarify between the two programs thank you so this is a i think a good segue here to i mentioned before we have a success story we wanted to share with the participants and i'm happy to introduce kathleen o'haran from jinx productions her company was the 2019 maine exporter of the year and her business is a service provider founded in 2005 and they operate in the media and film production industry and they serve global clients kathleen's company has taken advantage of both the step grant program and the export loans program and uh funny kathleen and i met on a webinar like this when kathleen as a participant asks about um export financing options so with that um leslie i think you had a couple of questions for kathleen yeah um thanks uh thanks joe and special thank you too before we go into this special treat at the end of the program here with jinx productions but i want to thank each of the participants on the on the panel so thank you for that um welcome kathleen uh very interested to have you tell us a little bit about your company um how you got into exporting and specifically which which export programs work to help you the most expand your business overseas so welcome again thank you and thank you for having me it's a great treat um i love any opportunity that i get to talk about my little company um and um let me you know start by just kind of explaining the work that we did when jinx production was founded in 2005 we were already exporters um most of our clients that we started out with were based over in germany um and we produce uh documentary content for television networks over in germany to a german-speaking audience and that's kind of what we did when we got started um we have a few clients over in the united states um but mostly we're working with television networks but and you know some international organizations uh as well um so really we've been exporting the entire time that uh jinx productions has been in business i never really thought of myself as an exporter until maine recognized my company for exporting i was chasing emmys and oscars i wasn't chasing sba awards so i was pleasantly surprised and it gave me the opportunity to uh interact with the sba more um and i met joe and he introduced me to a few um funding options and so um my i wasn't really looking obviously to begin exporting but i did want to diversify my client base and i wanted to look at other german speaking companies who might need some production support in the united states the cost of sending crews over here can be unsightly and i wanted to make sure that companies were aware that we were over here and if they needed any kind of production work done that we would be able to answer their call so it was you know an outreach effort um that really uh i relied a lot on the step grants to help me fund those outreach efforts to find a matchmaker over in germany who could help me compile a list of potential targets and then come up with a pr strategy to be able to reach them um i've relied on the step grants for a couple years now and they've been really great because i've been able to do some outreach and and and develop a few strategies and not take on a ton of risk um in case those things don't don't work out um you know i it's i'm not i'm not in the hole by too much um but it has been really great enabling me to reach potential clients that i wouldn't otherwise have reached and we were able to translate our website and do some localization for our um online footprint um and get some ram name recognition through those and then i was um the other um loans that i wanted to talk about were the exporter express loans that i was able to take advantage of um cash flow is king for small businesses like ours and we would run into these um it it felt like bottlenecks where um you know we had a lot of money that we were waiting on to come in from our clients who were not delinquent in payment but you know it took a few reminders um and so we would often have to float those costs which prohibited us from you know taking on some bigger projects that we were really eager to do and so you know the export express loans helped me to free up some of the cash flow in order to say yes to those projects and to build up our equipment base whenever we needed to do that for larger projects so it's been a real blessing for us and it's helped us to both of those grant opportunities and the loan have you know helped help me to think bigger about what my company can achieve and and who we can service that's i mean that's brilliantly inspiring and um do you i mean obviously the the learning curve for you obviously in these programs was huge did you find uh when you had questions or you needed a further assistance you got the the kind of hands-on help that you needed oh absolutely once i knew who to talk to um you know and and you know everybody was really good at pointing me to the right people with to answer the right questions um and you know it's i've had this amazing support system um you know since my introduction to the sba that i didn't really feel like i had before i i don't come from a business background i'm you know a very creative person who decided to open up a small creative services business and it took me a while to understand that i had to run it like a business and not like a media shop so once i did and i and i was able to meet the right people um yeah everybody's been very supportive and and they know exactly who to direct my questions to no matter how many questions i ask in a day well that's that's just truly we really do appreciate you being here because it's uh it's just uh hands-on evidence of the fact that all of this all these pieces that can come together to make something work like this so successfully so thank you very much for doing that with us thank you for having me um brian or uh or tony go back to you i mean i've got some wrap-ups things we've got some time for q a i think from the audience if we have those uh queued up thank thanks leslie um i do have one and if the panel uh panelists can see or all the presenters can just uh click over to the our q a session they can kind of review some of these questions um first i i think we're just opening it up for uh peter can you um open up your line and ask the panel your question sir sure um i heard a lot about you know cash's king cash flow liquidity and i was just wondering if the panel partners with international factory companies uh that may provide a non-recourse solution that may not have the minimum maximum requirements the us content requirements or even the services requirements that some of you may have just curious to your thoughts on that can you repeat that question please on the factoring yeah there are some international factoring companies out there that will transact internationally on a non-recourse unsecured basis just curious to see if sba or xm will partner with those factoring companies that don't necessarily compete because for instance you know some may just do spot or transactional uh financing um so i in my mind not really a competitor but potentially offering solutions to our respective clients as a whole and not having some ineligible receivables that the sba or xm cannot service yeah no i understand we do see typically a lot of the customers that we see are already in the process of um you know selling the receivables or factoring the receivables and um you know they get to a point where they want to diversify their funding sources and they'll talk to us so in a lot of situations the company will continue maybe to factor certain receivables but then other receivables are securing its export line of credit that it has with the sba so i think there is a way to to work uh together uh but that would be directly through the uh through the company yeah and from my standpoint um you know we always look for the benefit of the client so we're constantly building out our network to understand what resources are available in the market because no two exporters are alike so it's important to have folks like you uh you know available to perhaps refer a client over to as appropriate thank you for your question peter i'm moving on to michael's question in regards to melissa can you help um just explain our due diligence package or service we have our international company profile certainly and and michael i'm not sure if you had a if there was a particular nuance to the question but as brian mentioned our international company profile is um sort of sort of a 360 perspective on a company on an international company so our my counterparts in france or brazil or in taiwan will go and uh meet with the company uh post-pandemic of course pre-pandemic post-pandemic um to get an understanding of the history of the company to make sure that they actually do exist where they say they exist uh they will get financial background where that's feasible not every country uh depending on the transparency level of the country not every country may allow uh that information to be divulged but where where possible we can pull financials uh for the company and then probably most importantly to kind of round out that service uh we will get uh customer references for that international company uh for current customers uh of that international uh company so again it's it's a little bit more it's definitely more diverse than a traditional dun and bradstreet um a lot of companies uh sometimes use trace certification as well although that's a much more involved process but the international company profile um definitely well worth the the small amount of money that you would pay and and that you could get stuff grant reimbursement for um i i would imagine that your company is doing its own vetting most companies have their own vetting uh internal vetting procedures but this is a nice additional check uh that that u.s companies often use uh to ensure that a company that they may sign up a contract with is on the up and up so i hope that answers your question michael if not i'm happy to chat with you offline or um if you want to unmute uh and ask an additional question i did on view melissa um what's the fee you said a small fee certainly generally all of our services for a small to medium-sized company are under a thousand dollars if you're a small company it's a 700 fee for a full international company profile so and i will send i think we can i can drop it in the chat it's it's in my presentation i have i have a link for all of our virtual services which include our our fee structure and uh michael this is uh joe raycraft from the sba i'll just add to that i have direct experience working with melissa's office on these international company profile reports that are excellent and you know they're again they're right around a thousand dollars and melissa i'm sorry i forgot to mention that commerce services can be used for the step grant that's a a very big part of it and to me these are these international company profile reports are excellent due diligence tools for exporters um i mean it's basically you have an u.s embassy person knocking on the door of your potential overseas customer so it really shows them that you're very serious about this and you want to get a background on the company and you know besides just the the report and the quality of it um there's you know you can always have ongoing kind of q a with either melissa's group in in in middletown or even what i've found with the commerce folks overseas if you have a specific question related to the company so there's a lot of value add in in that type of report and um commercial finance company that i used to work with we would that was part of our credit policy was to obtain that that report so i can't speak highly enough about that thanks joe that's independent from what used to be called the gold key program that's correct we still we still offer the gold key program that falls under the bucket of of uh the business matchmaking thank you michael i just dropped the link in the chat so you can go direct to to our website to see all of our services thank you thank you michael for your question and melissa thank you for answering it um moving to terence has a question in regards for andrea andrea have you been able to review his question uh it's really dealing with the cost associated with letters of credit and maybe some other minimum or maybe hidden costs can you uh note on that yes thank you uh thanks brian and thanks terence for your question in terms of the minimum so i had mentioned uh in my remarks that the percentage is about ends up being about 3 16 of a percent but if you really were actually yeah about that um if you look at the amounts and the minimums terrance to your point an unconfirmed letter of credit meaning an issuing bank is issue is just issuing the lc and the exporters bank is simply advising that on that cost is about 350 now what do you get for that you have a bank that is receiving the message the letter of credit via swift so there is a whole authentication process that the banks go through to ensure that none of the parties to the letter of credit are any on any offac list and that generally speaking the letter of credit is workable and essentially compliant with uh ucc uh so um or ucp 600. so that's one consideration in the situation where you have a confirmed lc it's hard for me to comment directly without knowing what the country would be the country of the issuing bank of the letter of credit but in terms of minimums the confirmation would add about 350 uh on it as a minimum to a letter of credit so that takes us to the last part of your question which is um is there sort of a transaction minimum that i might uh recommend and uh you know the transaction size might dictate whether you decide to get the lc confirmed or not so that would be a decision the exporter would make depending on the transaction size usually i would say a letter of credit is best used for sales that are at least twenty thousand dollars uh but certainly you know as you go up the scale to fifty thousand a hundred thousand um it's a very strong way to sort of underwrite or risk mitigate a single transaction the letters of credit are irrevocable meaning the issuing bank cannot pull that away from you and the same goes for nlc confirmation if a bank confirms a letter of credit uh the confirming bank cannot just step back from that without getting certain permissions from the exporter so those are things to keep in mind as well i hope that answers the question thank you thank you so much um question for i i think i even know the answer to this but i'll let rich and joe ask um can funding be obtained by a small business both at the same time or xm and sba yeah that's an interesting question um i think i think it's yes um we would just have to make sure that the collateral is is um you know each bank or each program has its own distinct collateral package um you know so if a company has an export working capital loan with with exim bank it might be a transaction based or it might be asset based where the receivables are the main collateral for that line of credit with the sba they could have maybe a small export express loan that could be used for you know some other working capital needs but it would have to have its own separate receivables and export inventory to secure that rich i don't know if you want to add to that yeah when i read it that's exactly the response that um i had it largely is dependent on the collateral and how that's handled by you know by the bank we see a lot of uh folks graduate from sba or they outgrow their sba facility because they have a cap of 5 million and then they need you know more so we move them into an xm program typically it's with the same bank so if you're looking at an xm your facility either to replace or to have in conjunction with the sba facility it's probably the best idea to keep within the same bank because they'll be able to handle the collateral um separation it would be my statement there yeah good point all right i appreciate everyone that does conclude uh all the time we have for our q a leslie any closing remarks remark excuse me uh yes i'll just say uh thank you all for joining us this morning um we enjoyed a conversation with you and i hope you found it uh useful interesting and hopefully encouraging as you consider your own export opportunities um thank you to our panelists uh thank you to kathleen o'hara for her inspiring story and all of you the audience and let us know if we can help you in any way goodbye for now thank you everyone this does conclude our