If we have an inquiry about a product we don t currently list, I ll get on the Web immediately and see if we can put it together through our sources. They asked us, as one of their suppliers, and within 24 hours I had a quotation on their desks. It s just as easy to locate the people you need to do a job. Says Snead, I did a big party for Coldwell Banker, and I needed some jugglers and stilt-walkers. I couldn t find any who were reliable through offline channels, so I went on the Net, and after searching for a few hours I was able to locate people here in the Bay area.
Some Web sites catering to entrepreneurs even offer online small-business loan apps.
One advantage of Internet loan shopping is that the consumer can readily compare different companies offerings and focus on the best ones. In the process of combining his first and second mortgages, magician Lance Snead pitted two online loan companies against each other to see which would give him the best deal. I got a good faith estimate from one and sent it to the other, and vice versa, he says. Every time I talked to one of them, my costs went down. Of course, the fact that a company has a Web site is no guarantee of its responsiveness.