February 1/8; Volume 30/Number 16
By Nadia Ramlakhan
From attractive offers on social media and the web to strategically mentioning available options during the sales process, there are numerous ways to entice consumers with financing programs.
FCNews asked dealers for their top tips on how to utilize financing to grow sales.
Qualify your customer
First see if the customer looks like he will qualify so I don’t take advantage of him—that is the main thing. A lot of customers come in and you can tell just by looking at them that they aren’t going to be qualified at all and you don’t want to put someone in a position where they are killing themselves with debt.
—Larry Lauger
Lauger Carpet One Floor & Home
Findlay, Ohio
Often in the process
Offer it more than once. Bring it up at the origin of the discussion when you start working with your customers, and bring it up another time during your conversation. Sometimes telling something to someone a couple times will make it better understood and remembered in their minds.
—Mark Hayden
Carpet One Floor & Home
Owensboro, Ky.
Advertise online
It’s worth [mentioning that you offer financing] on your website—that determines whether they come into the store or not. We like to let customers know it is available if that’s what they want and that’s one of the main things they are looking for.
—Lola Ledebur
Carpetime
Grand Junction, Colo.
Special offers
We offer 12 months, no-interest financing all the time, and on occasion when Synchrony has a better promotion we offer 18 to 24 months; we make sure to put it in our ads. We have a special starting Feb. 10 promoting 18-month financing; it costs us 5% but we figure it is worth it.
—Jack Doolittle
Doolittle’s Carpet and Paints
Fairmont, Minn.
Early bird gets the worm
Let the customer know that it is available early on because then you can probably get a bigger purchase. If something is out of their budget they might say, “Hey, I can’t afford this,” or “It’s out of the way,” but if you let them know financing options are available from the start they know it’s within their reach.
—Evan Blanchfield
Campbell’s Carpet
Port Washington, N.Y.