With today’s insecure economic climate, many small business owners who want new machinery and other tools for their operations may struggle to obtain sufficient funding from equipment vendors.
Equipment financing is one option for you, as an equipment seller, to increase your client base. In a nutshell, it enables individuals to enroll in a payment plan rather than pay the full cost of the equipment upfront.
But how do you offer in-house financing to your customers? Here are the steps to helping your customers choose this option.
What Are the Steps on How to Offer In-House Financing to My Customers?
Offer Customers Third-Party Financing
If you plan to offer financing options to your customers, it might be best to hand over the process to a third party. Reviewing requests and collecting the payments yourself can take up your staff’s time. You might even need to hire new employees for the job, which cuts into profits.
Suppose you want to focus entirely on your business. In that case, a third-party finance source like Clicklease can handle the financing process from start to finish, including application review and managing payments.
Advertise Your Financing Options
Once you’ve decided to move forward with a third-party financing company, promote your financing offer at your equipment business so that potential buyers are aware of the option. You could mention it online through your social media accounts or website or in traditional mediums like newspaper ads.
Display Options During the Purchasing Process
How you let customers apply for financing is determined by whether you operate a brick-and-mortar or an e-commerce equipment business. For instance, if the transaction is in person, financing alternatives will be accessible at the Point of Sale or POS System. For online purchases, when clients reach the checkout page, they should apply for financing and examine their available options. Either way, Clicklease applications take only a few minutes to complete and get a fast response with little to no paperwork. And applying will have no adverse effect on their credit.
Close the Sale and Start Accepting Payments
As the vendor, the financing process starts with you. Aim to close the sale by highlighting the benefits of financing to customers who might need it. Once the customer signs the lease agreement, Clicklease takes over. We will pay you the full invoice amount and take on the responsibility of collecting payment and offering customer service support for the equipment. This makes the post-sale service hassle-free for you.
How Does Offering Financing Impact Businesses?
Offering equipment financing to your customers helps both of your businesses make more profit. Buyers can obtain the tools and machines they need to improve their company’s products and services, which helps them gain more customers. Meanwhile, your business can attract other buyers who couldn’t buy equipment from vendors that lacked financing options, allowing you to sell more of your products.
Considerations When Offering Financing
Before you start offering financing options, you may want to consider a few matters first, such as:
How Much Financing Can You Offer the Customer?
As the vendor, you'll have about six different financing options to choose from. You’ll need to assess the various approval amounts offered by each partner and choose the ones that best meet your customer's needs. How much financing our partners offer might be determined by the customer’s credit score, their type of business, how long they’ve been in operation, among other factors. Consider diversifying your funding options to appeal to a broader range of customers and financial circumstances.
Learn More about Clicklease’s Financing Today!
Though it can certainly help your customers get the equipment they need, providing in-house financing options can add more work for your equipment business than you can currently handle. However, a provider like Clicklease can handle that service and enable you to focus more on your main operations while still receiving payments.
To learn more about what we can offer to you, visit our equipment seller page.
