How selling the monthly payment wins you the job

Wouldn’t it be nice to walk into a project and know how much your customer could spend on a project before you even start putting together an estimate? Adding financing to your sales tools could provide benefits for your business including more transparency into their budget, up-sells, and larger-sized projects!

Tell me you haven’t had an experience with customers where their design tastes don’t match their budget. When you go ahead and tell them the price of the project, you see sheer panic in their eyes. What if instead of offering the overall job price, you broke it down into 36, 48, or 72 monthly payments of <insert large scary dollar amount here>? It might look like this: $30,000 outdoor space with a 48-month loan is only $625 per month. The monthly payment is way more palatable than the total cost of the job. Why would you scare potential customers away with a big project ticket when there is a better way to sell?    

It’s time to build financing into your sales process. See why. 

With financing, you are able to see how much a customer can afford and fit the project within the appropriate spending level. Financing also helps you to determine your up-sell opportunities. Instead of asking for the overall price, ask how long they plan to be in the house or what a comfortable monthly payment range would be for them. This allows you to then back into your quote with a number in mind and find opportunities to increase the overall job price with upgraded selections. “Because it’s only going to be $17 dollars more a month Mrs. Smith for that custom trim you loved.” 

To help you include financing in your sales process, check out 5 tips on how offering financing can help you increase your overall job price:

1. Determine what loan length your customer is looking for and a comfortable monthly payment range.

Think about when you are buying a car. They don’t sell you a car based on the sticker price on the window, the salesperson sells you on the monthly payment. Financing home improvement jobs is no different! By breaking down the total price into digestible monthly payments, you limit the initial sticker shock and are able to gauge how much the customer wants to spend monthly and build your estimate accordingly. 

There are also other factors to consider when pricing monthly. How long does the customer plan on being in the home? Is this their “forever home” or are they planning on moving in a few years? The answer to “time” might help you suggest loan length. As an example, if a customer told you they plan on moving in the next 5 years, you might suggest they look at 36-month loans so that they have the project paid off before they put their home up for sale.

2. Bring up financing options early in the sales process. 

By bringing up financing early on, it helps you determine how serious your potential customers are. Is this a large project they are looking to tackle all at once or could this dream remodel be broken up into smaller pieces to allow them to fund it over time? Additionally, consider asking the customer what range they believe their credit score fits into (see the graphic for a general breakdown). Do they have excellent credit and will get approved immediately or do they have fair or poor credit and might not get approved or not approved for the desired amount?

3. Not all financing options require a hard credit pull.

When people hear financing, their first thought is how even checking what they would qualify for will impact their credit score. A lot of financing partners now offer a pre-approval or soft credit pull, which has no impact on your customer’s credit score. This allows them to understand the monthly payment range and the types of loans they qualify for. Being open to doing a soft credit pull, it allows you the opportunity to close them in a future meeting. Use the soft pull as a  tool to find out how much they prequalify for in the initial meeting and decide how that amount impacts the scope of the project. (Ideally, this would lead to more upsell opportunities for you!)

4. Digital applications can be completed electronically from the comfort of the customer’s home.

Researching banks and different loan options can feel overwhelming and scary to some people. By offering a quick application process easily accessible directly from your sales platform, customers no longer have to go into the bank and fill out a ton of paperwork. Most applications are completed in less than 5 minutes with funds being deposited in 24 hours upon approval. Once you’re notified through your One Click Contractor platform that the customer has been funded, it’s time to pick up your sales process where you left off. Doesn’t get much easier than that! 

5. Control the sales process from initial contact all the way through a signed contract and payment.

Take the stress out of getting paid. Having your customers utilize financing and tracking that through the same platform that you sold the job, helps ensure the customer has the appropriate amount of funds and you are paid in a timely manner! 

If you’re interested in learning more about what financing options to add to your sales tool kit, please reach out to a member of the One Click Contractor team. They can point you in the right direction of which financing types are best suited for your business. Also, remember there are many options that connect directly to your One Click Contractor account so you are able to track your whole sales project and know when a job gets funded.