4 Easy Tips to Help You Use Financing to Boost Your Sales
Private financing is quickly becoming a standard across almost every industry you can think of. It’s not hard to see why. The ease of use, the utilities it provides, and the customer satisfaction potential makes financing a great option for vendors to offer to your end consumer.
Integrating vendor financing into your workflow in an unobtrusive, organic way can be a challenge, especially if this is the first time you and your customers are exposed to it. In this article, we’ll help you better understand the framework behind financing, and we’ll give you 4 tips on how to incorporate it into your sales pitch.
1. Understand the “Why Financing?” Question
The first and most important question to understand if you want to offer financing to your customers is the overall benefit this option provides and what your customers miss out on by deciding to go with alternative solutions.
In a nutshell, financing gives you the opportunity to offer your customers an easier method of payment. Instead of paying the entire amount upfront, your customers will be able to divide that payment into equal monthly installments.
The following reasons illustrate why monthly payments are important:
- Lessen the burden of payment especially for capital heavy products like machinery which would call for a steep upfront investment.
- Have a customized predictable monthly payment schedule. This helps your clients plan better and frees up more working capital for them.
- No interest rate changes means stable payments. A bank loan can and will alter the payments depending on the interest rates at the time.
- Little to no paperwork (in most cases).
When you put forth these advantages to your customers, they will find it much easier to rationalize the decision on what to do. You can only do this if you yourself are crystal clear on the problem you’re solving, and the net benefit your customers will receive from it.
2. Develop Holistic Marketing Strategies
Tying into our previous point, marketing strategies should be developed to help get the word out on your financing options. There are a myriad of ways you can do this. You can run social media campaigns, have branding in-store that illustrates the option, or even have it displayed prominently on your price tags.
If you’re selling equipment for example, instead of quoting the price as 10,000 dollars, you can put it in simpler terms by breaking down the cost into monthly payments of $200 or lower. This psychological shift helps customers rationalize the purchase and reduces the barrier between hesitating and going along with it.
Marketing experts use strategies like this all the time and there’s no reason why you’re financing efforts should be any different. Get creative with it. Come up with promotions, special deals on payment options, and unique ways of selling this idea. The chances are very high that your competitors won’t be doing the same and a strong marketing strategy could make a huge difference in your sales and customer satisfaction.
3. Train Your Team
Business owners and managers tend to forget sometimes that even though they might fully understand their products and services, it is ultimately their staff that has to network with customers on a day-to-day basis. For this reason, imparting financing knowledge to your team members is of paramount importance.
Educating your staff will help highlight financing at the point of sale. The customer will be given information about financing as an option from the get-go and will therefore go into the next phase of the sale with the knowledge that this option is affordable for them.
Be sure to train your team to highlight some important aspects when an interested customer inquires more about the option:
- The customer will be able to start using the product instantly with no down payment necessary.
- No security is required in the form of assets or liabilities.
- Very minimal paperwork.
- Outline the basic requirements.
- Common questions and concerns.
Having well-prepared members of staff helps in more ways than one. It ensures that sales aren’t slipping from between your fingers due to misinformation and helps bolster your business’s professional credibility if everyone involved knows what they’re talking about.
4. Simplify the Sign-Up Process
You’ve done the hard work. Your customers know what the financing option entails and are ready to take the next step. A lot of companies start dropping the ball at this point. You stressed the ease with which financing can be obtained and the sign-up process should reflect these claims.
Having a fuss-free sign-up process minimizes customer frustration and lessens the chance of them abandoning their application altogether. Streamline the data collection process and have systems in place to account for any roadblocks. It’s also a good idea to offer as many sign up options as possible to make the customer experience even better. All modern financing options should have online applications as well as physical paperwork if required and you should let the customer choose whatever option they find most convenient.
You may have noticed that all the tips we’ve mentioned play off each other very well and are complementary. That’s because they cannot exist without one another. To create the best possible financing experience for your customers, you have to ensure that everything we’ve mentioned in this article is optimized and taken care of.
Taking the time to make these changes or finetuning your existing workflow will make a hugely positive difference in both your overall sales and customer satisfaction potential.
If you’re interested in learning more about financing for your business or your customers, be sure to contact Dimension Funding to get a head start on your approval process.
