Joe F, the president and owner of S and J Plumbing, had been in business for four years. The company had grown at a healthy rate, and had developed a strong reputation in the Arlington Heights, IL area. However, there's a lot of competition in his area, and he was looking for more ways to earn business without lowering his prices or increasing his marketing costs. Financing seemed like one good way to do that, so he started looking into his options.

Getting started

Joe looked into a handful of options before deciding to use Wisetack. “Relative to the others,” he told us, “Wisetack definitely seemed the easiest to facilitate”. It was integrated directly with the field service software his company used, and he liked that it was fast and simple.

He also liked that the payout seemed faster than some of the other options, and the fees seemed more straightforward. “With some of the others, there were fees up to 22%!"

Impact

In his view, there was an entire category of customers that he was losing without even realizing it. “For some customers, that’s the first thing they look for before even giving you a call,” he added.

Joe is right. Data indicates that 75% of homeowners check to see if a business offers financing before scheduling a service. 

“Even if we were better than the other companies, we were missing out on customers because we didn’t have financing. It was clear that offering this put us in the same race.”

Seeing these new customers who gravitated towards the pay-over-time option influenced Joe’s decision to even include a page about Wisetack on his website.‍

TIP: check out our free marketing toolkit if you want examples you can use on your website.

Advice for others

We asked Joe what advice he would offer to others getting started with financing. His first tip is to be sure to advertise that you offer it.

“You have to advertise that you offer financing because if you don’t, people don’t know, and they might be uncomfortable asking.”

On top of that, Joe found success using the “as low as” monthly payment on invoices. For example, being able to say that a $5,000 job could be as low as $160 per month, made it much more likely that the customer would say yes.

Finally, it was helpful to make sure his whole team was on the same page. “Everyone got trained on it, including the apprentices and the person in the office. They knew what to say to customers.”

Conclusion

Looking back on his experience, Joe said:

“It’s silly to think you can compete with other companies who offer financing if you don’t.” 

We asked him if there was anything he wishes he’d done differently? He answered: “I only wish I'd started sooner.”