How to Operate a Successful Customer Financing Program
A customer financing program can be a game-changer when it comes to growing your business. Consider that a customer financing program gives the customers more buying power. Therefore, if you offer customer financing, you are providing the customer the ability to afford the items they need right now, so they can pay at a later date. So, how can you run a successful customer financing service? In this post, we look at important tips to help you start and run a successful customer financing program. therefore, if you are looking to start a customer financing program as a strategy for promoting your business, here are important tips you need to consider.
1. Develop a Clear Strategy
One of the top secrets to a successful customer financing service is to make sure you come up with a clear strategy. Just like other decisions in business, starting customer financing will have some challenges and opportunities. It is upon the business owner to come up with a clear strategy to counter the challenges and take advantage of all opportunities
2. Focus on Creditworthy Customers
If you are offering customer financing, the biggest threat is providing financing to customers who do not honor commitments to repay. To avoid this challenge, you need a way of evaluating creditworthiness. Therefore, you may work with credit bureaus or other lenders to find out the ability of the customers to repay.
Modern technologies use artificial intelligence to predict customers, creditworthy customers. Thus, through advanced technology, lenders and customer financing companies are able to predict creditworthiness. The software can identify more borrowers compared to traditional approaches.
3. Revive Previously Rejected Applicants
Rejecting the customer financing request is expensive. This is especially where 30% of the no-fills and rejections may be potential creditworthy customers. Therefore, with advanced systems in place, the customer financing companies can uncover the often overlooked data points helping them to identify the credit-worthy borrowers. By reviving the previously rejected applicants, a business can double their sales. Retarget such customers through various marketing campaigns including cold calling.
4. Ensure a Tight Identity Confirmation Mechanism
Another important aspect of improving customer financing options is having an identity confirmation mechanism that cannot be compromised. Therefore, you could employ multiple check systems to ascertain that you are dealing with authentic persons. This is part of ensuring you are not losing your hard-earned money through fraud. Bear in mind that fraud is a serious issue, especially for those offering online customer financing options. With a well-thought identity confirmation approach, you cannot offer customer financing to impersonators. This minimizes the risk of losing your money to online fraudsters pretending to be genuine customers.
5. Ensure Proper Repayments Reconciliation
Another important approach to ensuring the success of customer financing services is proper reconciliation procedures. An advisable approach is automating the repayments reconciliation process. Unfortunately, many repayments reconciliations occur manually. It is hard to reconcile thousands of transactions without making errors. Therefore, to avoid erroneous entries when conducting reconciliations, consider an automated system.
6. Implement a Proper Marketing Plan
An important aspect you ought to consider when developing your customer financing program is a marketing plan. How will the target customers know you are offering customer financing? Different marketing approaches have proven to be useful for customer financing programs. A good example is offering deferred payments or reduced interest rates to your customers.
7. Highlight Customer Financing at the Point of Sale
Promoting financing options requires creativity. A common approach is highlighting financing at the point of sale. Therefore, as customers walk into your retail store, they are aware of the customer financing options available. if you are selling through an E-Commerce platform, consider advertising customer financing options on the homepage and various landing pages. When buyers visit your homepage, they are notified of the available customer financing programs, so they can shop with confidence.
Conclusion
Customer financing is a strategic approach when it comes to attracting and retaining customers. However, how you implement the customer-financing program is what matters. Make sure you are practicing the tips we have highlighted in this post. That way, you can attract more customers to your shop.