It will be important to think carefully about the amount you are requesting, and over what term you want to repay the loan. It may be tempting to extend the loan over a longer term and thereby reduce your monthly payments, but you will be paying a lot more interest over the long run, thus cutting into your business profits and reducing your return on equity.
At the same time, you want to ensure that the amount you are requesting will provide you with sufficient financing. Almost enough financing will probably not help you, and may actually keep your business from having the resources it needs to generate enough cash flow to repay the loan.
You will want to have sufficient leverage in your business to adequately manage operations and avoid liquidity problems. But you should not overburden your business with debt. If you do, your profits and cash flow will go toward paying back loans and not toward reinvestment in your business. This can affect your ability to continue making payments in the future on existing loans. It will therefore be more difficult to obtain even more loans. Your debt to equity ratio should be kept as low as possible, without losing an adequate degree of leverage.
Your business plan
Hopefully you will already have a written business plan when you go to request a loan. Having gone through the exercise of documenting the business plan will leave you much better prepared to explain your business, how you intend to manage it, what your projected income and expenses will be, how soon you expect to start generating a profit, what your cash flow will look like, and finally, how you intend to repay the loan.
If you are requesting additional financing for an ongoing business, you can still refer to your business plan when you are requesting a loan, and make the necessary modifications and updates.