Financing, without making it weird
Financing is genuinely useful and reps handle it badly, almost always by offering it too early. Presented alongside the price, unprompted, it carries an implication the rep did not intend: that you have looked at this house and this person and concluded they cannot afford the number. Customers hear that clearly even when nothing is said. The same offer, made after they have raised money themselves, is a solution to a problem they stated, and it lands completely differently. The words barely change. The order changes everything.
Why the timing carries a message
Think about the sequence from their side. A stranger has walked round their home, looked at their possessions and their neighbourhood, given them a number, and immediately mentioned monthly payments. Whatever was intended, the implication available is that a judgement was made. It is a small indignity and it happens in the customer's own house, which is where these things land hardest.
There is a second cost, which is that leading with a monthly figure moves the conversation off the total, and customers know this is a technique. Anyone who has bought a car recognises the shift from a price to a payment, and recognising a technique is corrosive at precisely the moment you need to be trusted.
Wait until money is raised and the meaning inverts. They have told you the constraint, and you have a way to address it. That is a rep being useful about a problem the customer named, and there is nothing to resent in it.
Doing it well
- Let them raise money first
- Almost always they will, in the silence after the number if you leave it. If they never raise it, they do not need finance and mentioning it adds nothing.
- Give the total and the monthly together, always
- A monthly figure alone hides the real cost and it is the single practice that makes finance feel like a trick. "Nine and a half, or about a hundred and ninety a month over five years, which comes to eleven and a half in total" is honest and takes one extra clause.
- Say what it costs to borrow, plainly
- The interest, in money, not just a rate. Customers who discover the true total later feel misled even when the paperwork was correct, and they are right to.
- Offer it as one option among several
- Alongside phasing the work, doing the urgent part now, or waiting until spring. Finance as the only answer to affordability is a sales instrument. Finance as one of four is advice.
- Be willing to say it is not worth it
- For a small job, or a high rate, or someone who could reasonably wait three months and pay cash, the honest answer is to say so. This is the same move as module 3.3 and it buys the same thing.
What it sounds like
Two ways of introducing finance on the same nine-and-a-half-thousand quote.
What to notice. Rep A meant well and got a flat refusal, plus a small dent in the relationship from the phrase "more manageable for most people". Rep B waited, was asked a real question, gave three routes including one that involves no borrowing and one that involves not buying yet, and volunteered the two thousand pounds the credit costs. The customer's response is the sentence every rep wants and almost nobody gets by pitching.
The mistake: selling the payment instead of the job
The monthly figure is a much easier number to say yes to and reps drift toward leading with it. Once the conversation is about a hundred and ninety a month, the total disappears, and with it the customer's ability to judge whether the work is worth the money.
It is effective in the short term and it produces a specific kind of customer: one who signed for a payment, discovers the total later, and feels handled. That is the customer who cancels in the cooling-off period, disputes the finance agreement, or leaves the review that costs you ten future jobs. In several markets it is also a regulated practice, and in all of them it is the thing consumer-protection bodies look for.
The quieter version is the rate that is not mentioned. Zero-percent offers usually have a term limit and a rate afterwards, and a rep who leaves that out has not lied and has still set up a bad surprise. Say the whole thing, out loud, once.
The opposite mistake exists and is rarer: refusing to raise finance at all out of squeamishness, with a customer who genuinely needs the work and could comfortably service a payment. Withholding a useful option is not integrity.
If finance comes up
- Did they raise money before I raised finance?
- Did I give the total alongside the monthly figure?
- Did I say what the borrowing costs in money, not just as a rate?
- Did I give options that do not involve borrowing?
- If there is a promotional rate, did I say what happens when it ends?
- Would I be comfortable if this customer read the agreement back to me in a year?
- Is finance genuinely the right answer here, or would waiting be better for them?
Read next
- When it is not as bad as they think The same move: being willing to recommend the option that earns you less.
Our finance conversion is a KPI. Does waiting not hurt it?
It changes when the offer is made, not whether. In our reading the customers who take finance after raising money themselves are also the ones who keep the agreement, and cancellations and disputes are a real cost that a conversion number does not capture. If a business is measuring only the take-up rate it will optimise toward exactly the practice that generates complaints.
What if they clearly cannot afford it and will not say so?
Give options rather than a diagnosis. Laying out phasing, a smaller scope, and waiting until spring lets someone choose the affordable route without having to announce that money is tight in their own kitchen, which is the thing they are avoiding. Never say a version of "if the cost is a problem".
Is quoting a monthly figure always bad?
No, quoting it alone is. Monthly plus total plus what the credit costs is genuinely helpful, because affordability really is a monthly question for most households. The dishonesty is in the omission, not in the number.