Top 3 "Financing Fails" Costing You Sales

Stop making these three critical mistakes when you're offering financing to your homeowners. What you're about to learn is how to turn these three critical mistakes into three powerhouse sales practices to help you win more deals by offering financing the right way. This video will apply to you whether you're in storm damage, sales or retail sales, whether you're an owner, manager of a company, leading a team, or if you're an individual sales rep. One quick note, financing has been around for a while. Some people are doing it really well, other people are doing it okay. And some people just keep it in their back pocket saying we can offer that. But what you're going to learn is how to use it effectively to drive more deals. And yes, this can be a true differentiator to help you win more business and provide even more value to the homeowners you serve. My name is Adam Bensman. I'm glad to have you here or welcome back. Can't wait for this one. Let's get started. Roofing sales is personal development in disguise and the reward for growth is life changing. I hope my content helps you create a richer life and bank account. Chris dude, thank you for joining me. I know like you are first of all you're blowing up and none of this is new. You've been in the finance world for longer than I think. I've been alive practically.

Now. You've officially just introduced me as an og.

I know, not an og. And like some people be like man, you just, that was a low blow to start off. It's like, oh hell no, I love it, it's great. But no, seriously, what year did you get into this, into the financial.

So it's funny because I always, my wife is the CEO of the company and she picks on me with like telling people my story because I think it's important that people know. So 1987, in high school I was doing custom homes. 91, I was in roofing in Florida doing tie beams and pods. 93 is when I got into financing, doing construction, permanent wholesale mortgage loans in the construction of permanent world. So I think the official start date, Adam is 1993.

Okay, so 87 was when I was born. So when you got into custom homes that popped out of the womb. Handful of years later you're doing this. So you are one of the most well known folks in the financing world. By the way, for those that think I like dissed Chris, I friggin love this guy. I love it.

It's great man.

My, my point is to emphasize the level of experience. You have worked with some major organizations and household names, which I'll let you share. And today, what we're going to break down is the three biggest mistakes that salespeople are making in the home. So tactical strategies, and then we're going to share the fixes. So you can, you can say, hey, this is. And by the way, this is for owners, leaders of teams, and salespeople alike. You all grab something from here. So, Chris, can you just give us the crash course of your incredible experience in this business? So anyone who is crawling out from under a rock and may not know who you are yet says, hey, this is a guy that maybe I should listen to.

Yeah. First and foremost, I'm completely agnostic. Like, yes, we have a company. It's called Improvise. Been helping a lot of your members, by the way. And it's always fun because they'll call and be and they'll very proudly say, yeah, I'm with Adam's group.

You know what I mean?

Like, we'll always kind of know. I worked, let's see, I retired from service finance, right? So service finance is a great competitor of ours. Great lender, great programs, managed the kind of the Owens Corning, which I know you did, ocu, Owens Corning program. Lennox Rai, Home Depot, Beacon. Beacon. Huge, dude, this was real, like, Beacon was a real fun project for me. I think Adam, in the beginning be Beacon was probably at about 2.7 million a month. And then after I started training and helping that team out, we got him up to 37 million a month nationally, of course, so fell in love with the roofing industry because of, you know, because of the OC and this and that. So I, I retired and I and I built Improvify. We're just so like your group, man. We're just so different. We really care about. We care about the consumer through the contractor, if that makes any sense.

Yeah.

Last year on stage, I talked about making financing Amazon easy. And I got up on stage and I think I was with like, Chuck. And I said, whomever cares about the consumer the most will always win, whether you sell or not sell. And they were like, what do you mean, man? We're here for the sale. I said, no, you're not. You're there for the relationship because not everyone's ready to buy. However, if you've done your 12 step program, like how you're training them and you're being authentic and you're being real and you're trying to help that person whether they're buying Right now or not. Doesn't matter whom they refer you to because of your authenticity, really. And they were like, oh, what a great approach. So if you don't manage the sale, like, I'm going to go in and sell this person. Sell, sell, sell. Close, close. No there. To develop a relationship. See if you can solve for the freaking problem and help Mo.

Yeah, this is.

Cares about the consumer the most. Always wins whether you sell or whether you don't sell, dude.

So well said. And I'm going to flip to a quote from Claude Hopkins. It says, every effort to sell creates a corresponding resistance. So so many of us, we, we learn when we're new, you know, this is how you sell, sell, sell. And selling comes across as like an act of aggression to win one over by way of force and mind tricks. And anyway, and then he, he goes on further. This is actually an excerpt of a presentation that I gave for rsra. It says, another quote from Claude Hopkins. He says, we are all on our guard when somebody apparently is trying to get our money away. So what we're going to talk about today is a. Is a great transition to our topic of the three biggest mistakes that salespeople are making in the home when it comes to selling that. That is creating this resistance in relationship to financing. So, Chris, let's hit each of these. The number one mistake and then the fix. So whether you're in sales, owning a company, or leading a team, you can take this and implement it and get your team closing more deals, offering financing, but doing so in a way that, as you said, provides more value, protects the homeowner, and makes it, as you say, which I love. Making it Amazon easy. So what would you say is mistake number one?

Number one, I would just go, and this is really off the cuff. This is fun. I would say, not offering it. Yeah. So there's plenty of contractors out there that just don't offer financing. And that's what. It's odd, right? I get in these phone calls and my team gets on the phone calls and like, hey, we're looking into financing. And I go, how long you been in business? The guy's like, 40 years. I go, you're not offering financing. Okay, cool. So let's ask you the number one question. Do you take credit cards? And they're like, well, of course. I said, ah, good. So you are offering financing. And they go, no. I go, yes, you're just forcing the customer to pay 38 at the end of the month. Oh, and then the light goes off. Right. So number one, not offering financing at all is stopping contractors from giving affordability payment options, attracting more people that actually need affordable solutions. And look at man.

Yeah.

And this economy is crazy. People don't have any money right now.

So. So no. And I know that this may jump into number two when we were getting ready for this recording, but I was recently watching, I believe it was ice coffee hour on YouTube and there was a gentleman. I'm going to butcher his last name, Ed Bullion. Or Bullion. Anyway, the dude sells supercars and if you're in the supercar world, you know him. I'm not into the supercar world.

Super. Just regular pickup truck world.

Yeah, well, I'm into off road world. But anywho, he has sold supercars like for most of his life. And what's really interesting, he says majority of people are financing things. So if you think like, oh, I don't need to offer financing, like people that either are wealthy or want to appear wealthy, which is one of the other reasons people buy supercars, are offering financing. So if people want it for a supercar, they're going to want it for their home. So let's get into mistake number two. You know what? To wrap up number one, the key takeaway is that you should offer financing because if the homeowner visits with, let's call it three people and only one of them offers financing, all prices are identical. It's a $20,000 roof. One person offers it for financing, it's $212 a month. Who wins the sale?

Perception as well. Before we go to two perception by creating your clients, your contractors, a consumer credit center in the sales presentation at the end of it, when you're presenting a 12 month same as cash or a monthly payment option rather than a big price, even if they don't take it when you're offering it, they're going to remember that you did. Compared to the other seven guys coming in behind you that don't. A consumer credit center, a lot of it is just simply third party validation and it's storytelling to believe that perception is that you have a consumer credit center. Wow, you're better than the other guys. So that's. We're done with not offering it, right? Let's go to the next one.

Yeah. So mistake number two, that you see happening in the home from salespeople, boots on the ground. What would you say that is?

Prejudging. And you just said it. We prejudge. We assume that people that buy supercars bought it with cash. No, people that have the range Rover and the Mercedes and the Porsche and the driveway are just broke on a higher level. They're just broke on a higher level. And I say broke. I'm joking.

Yeah, I know what you mean. It's not everybody, but it's a lot of people.

Most people that have things have leveraged OPM other people's money to get those things. So by driving up in front of the driveway and going, oh, this one is going to be a cash deal. Look at all the expenses of things they have. This is a layup. I'm not going to offer it. We're prejudging the sale prior to going through the 12 steps. Never pre judge.

No, you know, Chris, I never. I got to share this story with you. I don't know if I've shared this one before. I'll never forget, we had this customer of ours and this was back when the iPad first came out, which was about the same timing as the Tesla coming out, because the iPad Pro I believe. And this was a massive, massive claim that we had underway. And the gentleman, he ended up calling to cancel it and he, he, I forget what it was, he was canceling the agreement. I forget all the details of it. But we were chasing him down because we were like so deep into this, into this claim. He ended up getting like 90 some percent of the claim value up front. He, we get the cancellation email and it says, sent from my new iPad Pro because you know, it like defaulted to that. And then there's a. We, we drove by his house and we see he has a brand new Tesla. Okay, yeah, brand new Tesla, brand new iPad. We're chasing him down. Two months later, foreclosure sign, sitting in front of his house.

Broke on a higher level, brother. All perception. It's all perception. Yeah. You know, and I've got a story to tie in real quickly now. You can chop this up. You like contractor calls. He's like, chris, I made the biggest mistake ever. I said, oh geez, did you get divorced? He said, no, no, no, I lost the sale. I said, well, what happened? He goes, I didn't offer the 12 month, same as cash. I go, why not, you big dummy? He goes, I thought they were going to pay cash. They said, who'd you lose the deal to? Competitor that offered 12 month savings cash. Adam, here's the worst part. The competitor was $2,500 more. So for those of you that are watching and listening and you think that these, the lenders charge like money for the money, it's called the dealer fee. On some of these loans.

Yeah.

If you think that's going to ruin your sale, it's not. He lost the job to somebody that was 25. It was a retail room. 2,500 more than offered. 12 months savings, cash. That guy will never make that mistake again. He didn't offer it because he simply prejudged the customers, period.

And I gotta admit fault here as well. This is something I've been, my views have changed on things. I've evolved and grown and, and I'm not afraid to admit when I'm wrong. And here's one thing I was wrong about. I used to say that you should only you shouldn't offer financing for fear of insulting people. And you wait until it's the right time and you feel them out. And I look back now and I'm like, how freaking stupid. Because that is the, that is the direct example of prejudging. It's like, oh, they have a nice car, they've got the Mercedes in the driveway, they're living in a million dollar home. Like that doesn't mean Jack diddly. And you also don't know one where people are at. Two, there are a lot of wealthy people that love using other people's money and especially yeah OPM that you know, for example, you get someone that wants to write off their 6,000 pound vehicle at the end of the year and you want to go out and buy a big fancy diesel truck that's going to cost you 110 grand. You can finance it and then deduct. I forget what to what the deduction is. I know it's not 100% right now, it's tiered down but you can deduct 80% of that but finance it. So you're coming out of pocket for one payment and you just took a tax loss. So there, there's people process money so differently and it's so important. And again I just want to admit fault that I used to be the person that believed you shouldn't offer it. Now I believe you should offer it with everyone.

So I guess the fix, Amazon's letting you do four equal payments on anything on the checkout now.

Yeah, I just talked to someone who was earning multi six figures and they're like oh yeah. And then I'm shopping and it was like for beauty products and stuff like that. And they were like yeah, I just use a firm. And I was like you're making a few hundred grand a year, why the heck are you using a firm? But anyway, my point is like People do it because they can also rationalize a purchase because it's cheaper, which is.

One of the reasons it's a lot easier than one. The buy now, pay later industry is massive. Yeah, guys and girls, listening to this message, your consumers are waiting for it. They're getting it at Ashley Furniture, they're getting at the auto dealership. They got it for their mortgage, they got it for their furniture, they got it for everything. They're waiting for you to say, buy your roof now, pay later. So use the language that they're used to seeing all over the place that they're being marketed to that when they're buying and when they're checking out in their cart. Buy now, pay later. It's something you can now put in your presentations without hurting someone's feelings. Yeah.

So when it comes to pre judging, I think the fix, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is offer it to everybody. It's that simple. And if you start looking always and.

Often early, always and often, you should be doing in your marketing, you should be doing it front desk. Becky should be saying, hey, it comes out at 3. Ask them about the special promotion. What promotion? He'll go over it with you when he gets there.

Exactly the you, which I know you. Thank you by the way for building that. Training for our Surrey members on financing has been really helpful the the other times tactically on your website appointment reminder emails. P.S. be sure to ask us about our affordable financing options or if you're doing a seasonal promotion. Our. Our. Our 0% same as cash offer that ends next month or this month or this date. Correct. And your inside sales team. So in my training I say, hey everyone that fields in the training where I teach, it's called the inside phone sales strategy to handle inbound leads for office staff or inside salespeople to qualify the lead and say, are you interested in discussing our affordable financing options? This way. It's in all those touch points and it's another way instead of saying, by the way, we offer it. Yeah, you're just saying, hey, do you want to chat about it? And then if they say yes, be like, great, now the salesperson has the table set for them when they show up.

Love it. Soft credit poll, instant approval, QR code. Look, you have to take it, but here's what the options are. Love it.

Exactly. Which is why, and last pro tip, if my memory is right, in your training, you have a QR code that the salesperson will place on the table. So while they're doing their inspection, the Homeowner can review all of that information to be further.

That's both on the secured and the unsecured side now. Yeah. So they can, you know, if you've got a savvy consumer that's got equity in their home, they may be very interested in seeing what a, I don't know, just bought this house, what a secured loan would be for 30 years with no prepay. Because I got six different trade guys coming in. Yeah. So that's what we really solve for is again finding out what the particular need is. Give them finance options and let them make the buying decision. They're going to pay you. How do they want to pay you? Is really trying to get at.

Yeah, Last thing on this. And I know we're driving this point home hard, but it is so important because I believe, Chris, I don't know if you saw this. I made a video saying the number one sales skill that you need in 2025, and that is the ability to realize that you're no longer in the roofing business, you're in the finance business. And savvy salespeople will find a very creative way to solve a financial problem using a roof on the insurance side, pocketing the cash financing it. But it's how they use that cash, that's the short sighted place. Hey, I got 15 grand from the insurance. You know which one of these situations may ring true for you? Because you don't want to say, do you have debt? You can just say, hey, which one of these situations might ring true for you? I have credit card debt. Right. I'm expecting a tax refund. And we go down the list, they're like, oh, that one. So if they have credit card debt, that's $300 a month at 28% APR or 32% APR, and you could advise them to say, hey, you got that 15 grand? Or go wash that out and then let's finance your roof. And even if the roof is 300amonth and they were paying 400amonth, you just saved them $100 a month and turned an unhappy event into a fortunate one. And anyway, so my point is that it's good to give people the options of how to pay for something where now it makes it an easier decision. And I just saw this. I was on Reddit this morning and someone posted like, I don't even remember which Reddit it was, but it was someone posted like a screenshot of the rate sheet they got when trying to buy some car, a car. And it was like three different Lease options. Three different financing options. Because those people, many people are looking for, like, how much do I have to put down and what's the monthly payment? And how do I juggle this? And if the, if one dealer offered that and the other dealer didn't, which dealer wins the business? The dealer that just found a way to make it easier for them to buy.

Yep. Love it.

So, so good.

This is, this is so good.

I, I, I. Number three. Number three mistake that you see salespeople making in the home.

And this goes in. Let me, let me bend this. I call it selling from your own back pocket or selling from your back pocket and, or backslash. Lack of confidence. Right. So there's two different ways that you can present a financing solution. Mr. Smith, congratulations. This is amazing. On your approval. High five. Wow. Your payment's only 249amonth, right? That's one. That's confidence. I'm celebrating. Here's another one. Me slouch. Mr. Smith, this is, this is pretty good. But Your payment's like 249 bucks a month. So selling from your back pocket. Is the sales pro going, holy cow, $249 is a lot? A sales pro with peacock feathers congratulates the consumer on his approval and says, this is Fantastic. It's not $25,000. It's only $240, $249 a month with no prepayment penalty. Let's go. Don't sell from your back pocket, guys. If you think it's expensive and they smell it, your consumers are going to think it's expensive.

Yeah, man, I just did. I did a video on that. Talking money. Because it's, it's all relative, you know, Imagine you talk to someone who's making $45,000 a year and you say, hey, you know, to max out your 401k, you need an extra $4,000. And they're like, four. That's 10% of my income. You know. Meanwhile, you talk to someone who's earning a couple hundred thousand dollars or half a million or a million dollars. You're like, it's $4,000. They're like, that's a half a day's work. Whatever, man. Like, here it is. So it's all relative. And the. I had a powerful lesson on this. We got a lead. I was a retail lead for a house in a small suburb in rural Wisconsin. I am not exaggerating when I say that the home at this time may have been worth between 160 to $180,000. Okay, we go out there. The homeowner wanted a stone coated steel roof. That stone coated steel roof cost like 25% of the value of the house. Yeah, it was crazy. And I don't remember the exact numbers at this point. And for those who have been tuning in, who are getting your calculator out, you can correct my idiot math mistake in the bottom. The point is, if the salesperson would have sold out of their own pocket, they would have been like, here's the bare bones roof that you need. That was one of the best customers we ever had because they were happy as hell with the project. They were so proud of it. So what the other thing that I'm curious if you feel the same way, Chris, that selling out of your own pocket means trying to make financial decisions for your customer in the same way that you would make them for yourself based on your financial situation.

100%. If you feel like something is expensive and you portray that your customers are going to smell it and feel the same way. Yeah, they just are. It's just human nature. But if you lift your. And this is so this is like sales 101. Body posture, confidence, tonality, inflection. Like you. The solution and then getting approved is a high five. The rate, 17, nine. Well, your credit score is 600. Of course. The rate, seven, nine, nine.

Yeah, I got you approved.

You are approved. The other option is we don't do this. You borrow money from mom and dad. We sell something. Your. Your truck. We sell that to pay for it. But man, you got approved. Congratulations. Now on the flip side, the guy that's got a 780 FICO and he gets an 8.49% for 20 years, it's the same thing. Congratulations, Mr. Smith. It's only 99 bucks a month. Or would you prefer 12 months? Same as cash with no prepayment penalty. Either one of these options are great, but man, congratulations. Oh, would you like to see? Good, Better. Best. Best. Better. Good. Right? So the approval allows you to do a lot within the sale to celebrate the fact they got approved. But don't ever go in there and slouch and feel like, man, oh my gosh. I thought that they were going to get approved at 849. They got approved at 1899. The payment is at 99 bucks a month. The payment's 249. How am I going to present this payment? They don't have the cash anyway to buy it. So you just gave it to them for 249amonth and they need it, who cares? So anyway, yeah, I love it. We do this all day, man. We could do this.

We could. I wanted to add one final thing to this. It's funny because the times I do these videos on upselling and upgrades, they flop and it blows my mind. It's like literally the easiest way to maximize value for the homeowner and value for the company hand in hand. And when you get your first yes, I want the roof. It's 249amonth. Fantastic. Would you like to upgrade to a Class 4 shingle? Would you like to upgrade your attic ventilation? Would you like to upgrade your underlayment to an extended warranty to all of these things? And again, they can be adders if you do other trades. Like people that made the decision on 249amonth. If it's a x thousand dollar upgrade, it's only a few dollars more per month. And it is so much easier to say yes than oh, I want to spend an extra four or five thousand dollars on this thing. It's like, hey, it's just an extra, you know, it's 249. It'd be 263 to add this in. Would it be worth it to you for an extra few bucks a month to have a Class 4 shingle which could probably save you on your insurance premiums. And you're not going to have to call me again next time there's a severe storm. And again, that's like the magic lever of financing that is only being used by what I would consider savvy, forward thinking roofers.

And to add to that, you know, the roof maintenance program, if you're selling.

That.

And to get granular, our system, the portal will allow you to sell max approval, I. E. It's a $25,000 sale, they're going to get approved of $50,000 which allows you to even have that upsell cross sell capabilities. And then you just do your little slider and take it from 25 to 27 to show them what the monthly payment differentials. And as Adam just said, it's a couple bucks a month. So yeah.

Love it man.

Good stuff.

Awesome. Chris, people that may want to work with you, tell us a little bit about what you do and how to find.

We don't just work with anybody.

Good.

My team gets on a phone call and talks to your team to make sure that number one, we're a good fit. We're very different than just a lender. We will do a consultation. We want to know what your business is we want to know what you're you doing. Insurance you do in storm. What are you selling? What are your asset class, what's your average ticket, how many sales reps you have? We got to dive deep because we want to make sure, number one, that our program works for you and number two, that we're a good fit. Number three, that we're going to be able to actually help you make more money and sell more stuff. Right, Roi? So it's imperative that we just get on a phone call, get on a zoom, learn about your business, and we'll share what we do as well. And at the end of the conversation, if we're a good fit, we're gonna do business together. It's really that simple.

So pretty easy. Awesome. Best way for folks to contact you.

Geez. On the social or go to improveify.com. there's like a little form on there.

Cool. Awesome. And you can find Christopher Scoville on Facebook. He's active. Chris, thanks for joining me. If you like this video and you want to learn more about the philosophy of financing, jump into this next video. It's about the number one sales skill that you need in2025. We'll see you soon. Chris. Thank you again. We'll see you, Adam.

Appreciate you, brother.