Sales Success: Unlocking Potential Through Financing with Justin Hatcher

Top-performing home improvement companies finance 65-70% of their jobs because they weave financing into the entire funnel, from marketing messages like 'no payments until' down through the sales presentation, rather than tacking it on after presenting price.

You can make every payment method cost-neutral by blending your financing, credit-card, and check costs into a single small price increase; Justin's teams averaged roughly 4.5 points of cost and simply took a 5% price bump so the project is the same price no matter how the customer pays.

Offering a payment option lifts the average ticket dramatically, about 25% in home improvement and closer to 200% in home service, because customers are already conditioned as consumers to pay over time (even a $50 Amazon purchase offers payments).

Financing follows a simple four-step process: bring it up in marketing, mention it early using the customer's own lead source ('grab that Valpak ad with 12 months no interest'), ask which payment 'bucket' they'll fall into before the walkthrough, and present financing to everyone (legally required to avoid discrimination).

Private equity understands P&Ls but often fails at home improvement because it can't weave in culture and reacts to a single bad month by cutting people; the best PE partners keep the founder engaged, respect internal net promoter score, and fund deals with cash rather than heavy debt that forces short-term decisions.

One and Fund's 'One Look' platform runs a single soft credit pull and routes each customer straight to the lender most likely to approve them, making a 600 FICO feel like an 850 buyer, avoiding a cascade of decline letters, and lifting finance-deal conversion by about 12%.

Software won't fix a broken process; tools like a multi-lender platform or a call-recording CRM only multiply results if the team commits to the process, coaches from the data, and shifts its mindset, otherwise the technology just helps at the margins.

The single biggest sales mindset to teach reps is to stay out of their own 'head trash'; just because you personally wouldn't finance a project doesn't mean you should talk the customer out of it, your job is to guide the decision, not project your own preferences.