Congratulations on adding a powerful sales tool to your business!
You’ve taken an important step by activating your Hearth subscription, and you’re almost ready to offer financing to your customers.
So what’s next?
It’s time to learn how to use your new tool. Hundreds of contractors are closing more sales by offering their customers financing, and we are confident you can join them.
In this post, you’ll learn the ins and outs of 4 proven strategies for offering financing to your customers. Our contractors sell job after job with these strategies, and if you take the time to learn them, you will too.
Let’s get started.
The Pre-Sale Time Saver
Key Takeaway: Avoid wasting time on impossible-to-win projects by having your customers pre-qualify for financing ahead of time.
What’s the only thing more frustrating than having a deal fall through? Wasting your time on a deal your customer couldn’t afford in the first place.
You can use Hearth to cut back on wasteful bids. Here’s how:
Before you meet with a customer, send them your loan request page to see if they pre-qualify. If the customer gets loan options, you know the size of project they can afford. And if your customer is rejected and doesn’t have cash, you can avoid wasting time on an estimate.
Your customer will love this process, too. Checking loan options has never been easier — in under two minutes, your customer can see personalized options from up to 13 lending partners without affecting their credit score.
The Bid Booster
Key Takeaway: Stop losing jobs by only quoting the full price. Add potential monthly payments to your bid to help customers pay you now, and then repay a loan over several years.
Too high, too low, or just right? Presenting the perfect bid is tough. Go too high, and your customer may walk away. Go too low, and your customer may doubt your quality. Luckily, using Hearth can help you quote the right price without losing a customer.
Stop losing sales by only quoting the full price. Before presenting your bid, use Hearth’s monthly payment calculator in your dashboard to estimate a potential monthly payment for your customer. Add the result to your bid to give your customer another payment option, beyond having to take a big hit upfront.
For example, instead of only quoting a project as $20,000 upfront, you can give your customer the option of paying you now, but paying back a loan monthly. Following the bid, have your customer request a loan using your Hearth app to secure their financing.
The Deal Closer
Key Takeaway: Close your customers in their living room by offering them financing.
Bringing up the financials isn’t always easy, and sometimes it’s nice to get to know your customer and their home before steering the conversation towards money. Contractors have used Hearth as a tool to close the deal when they’re at the kitchen table.
After you give your bid, open the Hearth mobile app on your phone or tablet and have your customer start a loan request. In under a minute, your customer can view their loan options without hurting their credit score. Frame your final bid around the monthly payments presented in the app — this strategy could be the difference between your next deal and your next loss.
The Post-Sale Winner
Key Takeaway: Close a wavering customer by sending them the loan request page after you leave.
Customers may feel uncomfortable requesting financing in front of you. Another strategy we’ve seen work for contractors is sending a customer the link to their loan request page after you leave the home.
After your customer checks their loan eligibility, you can view their status in the Customer Details section of your dashboard. Your customer might be debating if they can commit to paying for the project — and seeing options to pay over time could be the deciding factor. This post-sale technique requires less work from your end and allows homeowners to evaluate all of their financing options.
Hearth’s financing is helping hundreds of businesses better serve customers and grow more sales, and you can use these 4 strategies to bring this success to your business. Start your financing journey today by having a customer check their loan eligibility — and get ready for the sales to start rolling in.
