Joel Cannon is Senior Vice President, Consumer Home Improvement Lending Sales & Marketing, EnerBank USA.

How offering payment options will boost sales and increase job sizes.
We’ve all been there. After a few days of back and forth, you and your team have assessed your customer’s needs, the size of the job, and the cost of the equipment needed to complete the project. Coupled with years of professional experience to accurately arrive at an honest assessment of both the time and cost required for the job, you hand the customer the proposed bid, just to learn that your price and expertise are prohibitive to the customer’s financial means.
From here, you usually have two options: offer a heavy discount to keep the job that will bring in razor-thin margins, or stick to your price and possibly lose the opportunity altogether. You’ve worked hard to get to this point, and losing the job or doing another small project isn’t going to help ramp up the growth trajectory you’ve outlined for your company.
So, as a smart HVAC professional who wants to continue to grow your business, what options do you have to successfully guarantee that another job doesn’t just mean busy work, but also produces bigger profits for your company? What if you could empower the customer to not just fix the problem, but to enhance their home, giving them what they truly want? What if that meant more business for you? The answer? Offering payment options 100% of the time to every customer.
When you work with an exclusive home improvement lender, you can find a happy medium that will provide opportunities that are sure to heat up your profits while delivering cool results that go beyond any homeowner’s expectations. Homeowners who have a choice of payment option spend 44% more on their home improvement projects. And, more than one-third of homeowners regret not spending more on their project to get the results they truly wanted.
Despite the all-too-common perception that most customers pay cash for their HVAC projects, homeowners truly value choice and flexibility when it comes to paying for the repair or upgrade of their ventilation systems. When you put the power of choice in the homeowner’s hands, they are not only empowered to hire you for the job but to allow them to turn their dream into a reality, which means more business for you.
Research shows that when you offer a choice of payment options, you can nearly double your close rate. For example: assuming a 25% baseline, you can increase your close rate to 44% when offering a Same-As-Cash loan and a low monthly payment loan. Successfully completing the job is no longer about ‘should’ you do it, but ‘when’ to do it.
“Offering payment options is part of our normal sales routine. I strongly encourage implementing payment options into your sales routine…it will, without a doubt, increase your average job size. You’ll see greater satisfaction from your customers, and overall, it’ll better your business,” said Chris Boatright from CertaPro.
Empowering your customers with a choice of payment options also helps eliminate discounting because when your customer is paying cash or providing their own financing, you may feel you need to offer a discount to close a deal, eating into your margins. Or, your customer may decide to choose a smaller project size or lower quality products. As you power up your customer’s payment choices, more of your customers will say yes to your first estimate when you offer payment options.
“My sales process begins with talking about financing the first five minutes I’m in the home. I offer payment options to 100% of my customers 100% of the time. When I offer the Same-As-Cash option, their eyes light up, and I know I’m going to get the job,” said Karen Guilhuly from DiGiorgi Roofing. She continues, “I have one of the highest closing ratios in the company and this has increased my income substantially.”
Your business decisions don’t have to be just hot or cold. As you melt the myth that customers only pay with cash and offer them the flexibility of payment options, your profits can heat up, your average job size can increase, and you can grow your business above and beyond your own efforts.