We got involved in using financing about seven years ago and it’s changed our business for the better. In fact, our financed jobs are on average 23% larger than our cash jobs.
Here are some tips on how to implement a successful financing program in your business:
1. Show Your Sales Staff How a Financing Program Will Benefit Them
As business owners and sales managers, it's our job to give our salespeople tools to help them overcome customer objections. A financing program is one of those tools because it allows your sales team to handle price objections by making projects more affordable.
You can very quickly layout for a salesperson how much more money they’re going to make by closing more sales when offering payment plans through a financing program.
2. Ask Your Financing Partner to Train Your Team
We've had some amazing mentors over the years and Certified Contractors Network, or CCN, offers a really strong program with several different vendors. Those vendors came to us and actively taught and trained our sales teams how to position financing in the home.
If your sales team is successful in selling financed jobs, it means more revenue for your finance partner. So, they will gladly invest in your salespeople and continue to train them.
3. Promote Financing Options Across All Areas of Your Business
To be effective at helping consumers access the dollars they need to invest in a project with your company, you need to sow your financing options into each area of your business. It needs to be a part of your marketing language and your initial outreach.
People must be able to see that you offer financing upfront. It should be part of your scripting for when customers call in to set appointments, and your sales staff has to be trained to talk about your programs when they first meet with prospects.
4. Build Financing Fees Into Your Pricing Model
We know a certain percentage of our jobs will be financed, so our fees are built into all of our pricing models. You don’t want your salespeople wrestling with adding or subtracting fees depending on how a customer chooses to pay for a project. Go to market with those expenses in the cost of every job.
5. Introduce Financing as Industry’s Standard Payment Option
Set the stage early that when making large purchases many consumers choose to use financing. Educate customers about the idea that monthly payment plans are the standard in the home improvement industry.
6. Lead with Monthly Payment Plans When Presenting Price
We lead with monthly payment plans in all of our marketing. We also provide same-as-cash options and present the project's full price at the end of a sales call. We present two monthly payment options–one that's more rate-sensitive and one that's more term-sensitive. Most recently, we’ve had great success when offering monthly payment plans with longer terms.
7. Offer Customers Max Approval Amount to Increase Job Size
We’ve found that 77% of the people who finance with us also use the financing for additional work orders, or change orders. These change orders can be the result of unexpected issues on the jobsite or products homeowners choose to add to their projects.
We can increase the job scope with ease because most of our financing options are max approval programs, meaning the customer can apply for all the money they can be approved for–not just the amount of the project we’ve priced out for them. They won’t pay on what they don’t use, but it protects them if future issues arise.
Bryan Miller and John Gwaltney are senior partners at Georgia-based Outback Deck, Inc. Miller founded Outback Deck in 2010.