Monthly payment options are continuing to become utilized by all our favorite companies like Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and so should you! This blog is a re-cap of a webinar led by Taylor McDonough, Vendor Relationship Manager with Connected Technologies Group at GreatAmerica Financial Services. If you missed the webinar, we have you covered:
The ‘why’ behind offering financing to customers
If you provided more ways for customers to buy from you, would you close more deals? The answer to this question is likely yes.
Let’s start by looking at some common examples of this. Stationary bikes became popular during the pandemic when more people wanted to bring the gym to their homes. This was a great option for people as quarantine continued, but the sticker price of $1,500-$2,000 is a large one-time investment for many people. For this reason, some stationary bike companies created a monthly payment option of $39 per month.
By offering this flexible payment option to their customers the sticker shock in their customer’s mind is lessened. With a large sticker price, customers are likely to sit and weigh their options and if it isn’t a completely necessary purchase, they may talk themselves out of it or wait longer to make the purchase. But, $39 per month is comparable to a gym membership and helps customers justify this purchase.
By providing your customers flexible finance options, you’re giving them more buying power. Offering financing to customers also helps alleviate the never-ending sales cycle. Instead of chasing down clients to upgrade and getting objections, offer a better payment option making the upgrading process go smoothly and giving you time back to bring in new sales.
Technology financing creates predictability
Offering a single, all encompassed, monthly payment to your customers helps to make sales and creates predictability. Predictable refresh cycles come along with monthly payments, and anytime refreshes occur it slightly bumps their monthly payment instead of another large cash payment. This creates an environment that makes refreshes much easier to envision within their monthly budget.
Monthly payments also help you predict your sales. You will likely align the lease term with the usable life of the technology. So, when the equipment is ready to be refreshed, the lease agreement comes to an end which encourages the customer to make a decision. As a result, this sets you up for an ideal refresh conversation a few years down the road.
How do the best sellers implement flexible payment options?
Now that we have talked about why offering financing to customers is beneficial to both you and your customers, let’s talk about how to effectively implement these flexible payment options.
Plant the seed early on in conversations
Instead of waiting until you present the quote to tell them they have payment options, do it right away. If you wait, the client has likely already figured out how they are going to pay or they wish you would have let them know sooner so they would have had time to consider that option. To open this conversation right away, here are four questions you can ask:
- Would you benefit from paying for this investment overtime versus all upfront?
- How do you consume your office technology equipment today?
- Do you have any strategic initiatives this year that will require capital?
- Do you have any budget challenges that can be saved with a flexible payment schedule?
Planting the seed can happen during new customer onboarding or discovery conversations. It may also be beneficial in an upgrade or refresh event, quarterly business reviews, and software license renewal.
Don’t assume you know how the customer prefers to pay
Many sales representatives will say they didn’t offer a monthly payment option because they already knew how their client wanted to pay. They may assume that because a client has the cash, they don’t need financing, but you never know how a client prefers to leverage their cash until you ask.
Many wealthy organizations understand that it’s in their best financial interest to own appreciating assets and finance depreciating assets like technology. This also helps leave their cash and credit lines open for other important expenditures.
Map out your payment plan
GreatAmerica will help you to map out an individualized payment plan to your customers. This payment plan considers things like equipment lifecycle, end of life cycle, support term, pass through, and consumption preference. We offer guides to help customers with these payment plans to make sure it is perfect for both you and your customer.
You have a customer in mind… What are the next steps?
If you are interested in how to implement monthly payments, here are the steps:
- Initial conversation – This can be something as simple as asking, “would you benefit from paying for this investment over time?”
- Customize your payment – This is your opportunity to customize things like refresh cycles, and consumption preference. We know that one size does not fit all customers, which makes customization incredibly important.
- Quote and present payment options – Using integrations like QuoteWerks and ConnectWise Sell to easily add monthly options to your quote or you can also use our Info-Zone.com online calculator to easily quote an online payment.
- Get approved – Using publicly available information like name, address, and phone number, we usually make an approval decision in an hour or less.
- Signing day – Finance documents are ready upon approval. It’s a simple one- to two-page document that can be sent via PDF or DocuSign.
- Deliver & get paid – You are paid in full just like a cash sale.
Add one question to your discovery
If you only take one thing away from this blog and webinar, it should be to add at least one question to your discovery:
“Would you benefit in paying for this investment over time versus all up front?”
And if your customer says yes, call GreatAmerica today!
