Is your consumer financing program Costing you money or Making you money?

As a Home Improvement -Trade Service business it's more important than ever to know the flow of your businesses cash. Example, where is the money coming in from and where exactly is the money going out to and why. Its also vital to find the possible holes in your business where you may be losing key opportunities. This is something that is typically overlooked.

In today's society, consumer financing options are a MUST for your customers and these are typically where we can find specific holes of lost revenues along with lost up-sell opportunities. That is why I ask. Do you know if your consumer financing program is costing you money or making you money, and is it a hole in your business?

What I mean by the question of "is its costing you money or making you money", is not simply what the financing actually costs you to run a special promotion. I am talking about the ease of use and the ability for your service technicians to sell it out in the field. I am talking about the ability to approve the majority of the customers that apply. I am talking about what is your average approval rate or lack there of costing you. I am talking about, is it attractive and easy for the customer to apply once and get a funding offers without applying 3 or 4 different times with different lenders adding multiple inquiries to their credit report further lowing their scores causing you to lose customers.

Let's face it, having to apply 3 or 4 times with multiple lenders is not only a pain in that you know what, but it can be a very awkward conversation between the technician or sales person and the customer. This can typically result in a lost customer forever if no approval. So what is your LTVOC -Life Time Value Of  A Client look like? If you are missing those customers, that could be an incredible amount of money missing from your bottom line. Yikes..

Remember if the technicians find the financing hard to use, they simply will find a way not to use it. If customers find it tedious applying 3 or 4 times racking up credit inquiries on their credit report, they will get frustrated and not want to apply again or do business with you. So again is your financing program costing you or making you money?

Ask yourself, out of 10 new applicants, how many do you get approved and most importantly funded? Is it 1, 2 or maybe 3 out of 10? Have you ever calculated the lost revenues on those 6, 7 or 8 applicants that you were not able to finance? What were the job totals for that you were not able to close? I imagine it could be pretty significant.

This is exactly why we at Obsidian Business Advisors have taken drastic measures to provide our clients a solution to enhance revenues and profitability. We do this through a unique consumer financing platform that addresses all of these issues, concerns and much more while implementing some of our additional financial services and their benefits.

If you are currently using one of the major consumer financing lenders such as Citi, Wells, Syncrony, Greensky, then you are most likely missing some very key opportunities with customers that not only need your help, who may not be able to get it anywhere else. These may be customers who are typically declined due to credit blemishes and not having perfect credit of a 680 fico score or higher. Your business can help them giving you the sharpest edge over your competition. Think about that for a moment....

A subprime customer who is able to get approved with a 0% APR promotion up to 24 months and have a rate no different that the big lenders provide. Now that is powerful. Plus all the customers who are Prime and Near Prime not get rates at 29.99% like the big guys do, in fact they get rates at 7.99% and 13.99% APR. after their promotional period.

What would your revenues and profits look like if you could finance 4 or 5 more of those lost applicants? What if you could do that and not pay the merchant discount fee? Current lenders are reducing your margins charging discounts as high as 18%, however there is a way with Obsidian that you can keep your margins the same or even higher than they are now. Again what would that look like for your cash flow, revenues and profits? 

Obsidian has put together a platform that helps Home Improvement-Trade Service businesses to not only finance the vast majority of your customers and all credit types under one platform, but help you drastically improve your approval -funding ratio by offering a one of a kind competitive edge consumer financing program for ALL CREDIT TYPES (including no credit check) improving your revenues and eliminating any holes you may have with your current customer financing options.

Our national program delivers 100% NO RISK (Non-Recourse to our clients) to the business owner, 0% APR promotions up to 36 months, financing options that approve all the way down to a no credit check and a program that has some of the lowest merchant discount fees and customer interest rates in the industry. Funding options currently from $1,000 up to $25,000. A program that is designed to MAKE YOU MONEY and not cost you money.

This program allows you to finance not just the A paper prime folks, but those that are near prime and subprime. To top it off there is a no credit check options for great customers who want and need your products or services but had something happen a year or two ago that damaged their credit. Remember bad things unfortunately do happen to good people.

If you are a trade service or home improvement business owner and you have any interest in learning more, please email at [email protected] so I can get you over more details. 

Here is to your success and to fixing those holes.

Joshwa Fuchs-President

Obsidian Business Advisors