How often do your service technicians offer financing options to customers? Is it your company’s policy to lead with financing and offer it on every call? Or do your techs and CSRs rarely offer financing, or only sometimes when customers request it?
Rogers Heating & Cooling in South Boston, Virginia, made the choice to lead with financing by using ServiceTitan integrated financing, which makes it easy for techs to present multiple options and close more sales. Vice President Alyssa Rogers says her team believes in “no customer left behind,” which means every customer deserves a comfortable home to live in and offering financing options can help.
“Many people don't have a lot of money in their savings account, or disposable income. We found that early on,” Rogers explains. “So we said, ‘How can we make sure we capitalize on every call and make sure we don't leave any customer behind?’ Just because they don't have money in their bank account doesn't mean they can't get approved for financing or be comfortable making a monthly payment.”
Succeeding with customer financing requires training techs to be comfortable with making sales presentations. They also need to fully understand why offering financing benefits the customer, the company, and the techs, says Jared Berke, ServiceTitan Senior Director of FinTech Sales.
“If they're not offering financing, they're doing a disservice to our customers,” Berke says. “People want to be comfortable. People want to have their home in the best shape they can.”
In a recent webinar, Berke discusses the state of financing in the current economy, with more consumers hesitant to spend money on big-ticket installations. Rogers and Sales Manager Justin Lloyd, also of Rogers Heating & Cooling, share financing best practices, and ServiceTitan Senior Product Manager Logan Landis gives a sneak peek at innovations designed to embolden ServiceTitan’s financing capabilities.
State of Financing in Today’s Economy
For homeowners, Berke says, the economic climate has changed drastically over the past three years. Faced with higher prices for basic necessities like food and gas, along with rising interest rates and higher housing costs, consumers are maxing out their credit cards just to get by.
“What sticks out the most is that 50% of consumers have under $1,000 in their savings or checking account at any given time,” Berke says. “That usually exists in your younger years when you don't own a home. We're now in this new world, where you could very well own a home and that could still be your situation.”
With cash- and credit-strapped consumers choosing lower-cost repairs over big-ticket replacements to extend the life of their home systems, service companies that offer affordable financing options become much more appealing.
“The number of jobs isn't changing. People still own homes, things still break, but a lot of people are opting for the repair instead of the replacement,” Berke says. “Financing will become very important, whether it’s choosing a good-better-best out of a repair-only opportunity, or helping to convert some of those repair jobs back to replacements.”
Financing Best Practices at Rogers Heating & Cooling
Alyssa Rogers and her husband, Joey, took over the family business from his dad in 2018, and Lloyd joined the company in 2021 as its first comfort advisor before advancing to sales manager. At the time of the takeover, Rogers Heating & Cooling offered no customer financing, but that all changed within a few months.
“We reached out to a bunch of different financing companies and got started, and the first place we started was with our vendors. ‘Who do you recommend? How can we get started with this?’” Rogers says. “We started offering financing options, and our business kept growing, and the amount of sales conversions kept growing, because we were able to offer that and make sure people felt comfortable when we left.”
And what started as a very manual process, which required financing customers to jump through multiple steps to get approved, is much more simplified now with the automated features available with ServiceTitan integrated financing and the mobile app.
Offering financing helps customers who don’t have savings for emergency repairs or those who prefer to make lower monthly payments, rather than paying in full all at once, Lloyd says.
“Sometimes with companies, you think not everybody's going to be our customer. I don't want it to be that way. I want everybody to be customers,” Lloyd says. “So we're always trying to find ways to make it easier, more convenient, and just way less of a headache for our customers, and financing lets us do that.”
“The whole team is united in this thought of leaving no customer behind,” he adds.
Berke loves that approach, rather than companies trying “to sell financing” to customers.
“That mantra is a really good way to look at it, as opposed to how do we increase close rates or increase sales?” Berke says. “It's like, ‘No, how do we help customers and make sure everybody's comfortable?’”
Challenges of Getting Started with Financing
Once you identify which financing partners you want to work with and train your technicians to lead with financing on every call, some challenges may arise, such as:
Confusing merchant fees
Lack of control and insight over the financing plans
Inconsistent behavior from technicians when offering financing
Merchant fees
With merchant fees, for instance, some financing plans try to charge a dealer fee of up to 20%, which hurts your bottom line.
“Don’t let that scare you. You don't have to offer all of those options,” Rogers says. “For the ones that have those really high dealer fees, we either don't offer them at all or save them for promo periods.”
“Have you been able to find a single partner that's giving you all of the plan options you're looking for? Or are you guys having to pick and choose different partners for different plans or seasons?” Berke asks.
Many financing plans are presented in a similar fashion, Lloyd says, but they may require different aspects. Some might require the applicant to own the home, for instance, or require the customer to only apply digitally through email.
“It's not so much the plans,” Lloyd says. “Merchant fees are certainly a huge part of it, but really it's what can they provide to the customer? What advantage is there to go with this plan?
“It's just not limiting ourselves to one dedicated partner that may not offer everything our customers need,” Lloyd explains.
Lack of control and insight
Rogers Heating & Cooling technicians typically follow a flow chart that tells them which plan works best for a particular type of customer. But with multiple financing partners in play, how do you train your technicians to understand how to choose the right financing plan for a customer?
Lloyd says Rogers employs enthusiastic techs and comfort advisors who want to serve and take care of customers, and part of serving them is giving customers options. Then, it’s simply a matter of sitting down with the team to explain each plan’s benefits.
“If you explain to the team, here's the benefits, here's how it helps the company, here's how it's going to help you to close more deals, here's how it's going to make sure that sweet elderly lady's not going to have to go through the summer with no air conditioning,” Lloyd says. “I think you'll find the team's not as resistant to it as you might've thought, because we live in a world where we make monthly payments on everything…a world that's way more accepting of financing than even four or five years ago.”
Inconsistent behavior
Some technicians may seem resistant to offering financing to customers because they think it’s too hard, or scary, and they’re uncomfortable with the topic.
“A lot of our technicians don't want to be salespeople,” Berke says. “How do we make that not scary, easy for them, and empower consistent behavior?”
“It's incentivizing, right?” Lloyd says. “Do you like earning more money? Because that's ultimately a great incentive for most folks.”
But it’s also about hiring enthusiastic techs and comfort advisors who want to learn, grow, and increase their income, he adds.
“Getting into the selling aspect, you are in control of your own destiny,” Lloyd explains. “You can make a great living for you and your family just by taking these few extra steps on each service call.”
Rather than viewing “sell” as a bad 4-letter word, Berke says, techs need to view financing as “the more you help your customer or the homeowner, the more everybody wins.”
Lloyd agrees, and says it’s more about educating the customer on available financing options as opposed to making a sales pitch.
“Look at the positives of the service you're going to provide to the customer, how you're going to impact and change their life. And also you're going to make yourself a decent living, a decent chunk of change with that transaction,” Lloyd says. “So everybody wins. Sales does not equal sleazy.”
How Did You Get Your Team to Change?
The first step, Rogers says, is to make the process of offering financing to customers easy for your sales and service techs. If it’s difficult or involves too many steps, they probably won’t do it.
“If you make it simple and integrated with your software — shout out to ServiceTitan! — it's right at their fingertips. And it's so much easier,” Rogers says. “Also, Justin has trained them to ask customers, ‘Do you want to pay with your money or ours today?’ Then they know to go through that process.
“Offering financing has become part of our culture,” she adds.
It’s also a matter of understanding the customer’s perspective, Lloyd says. Making a $179 monthly payment is a lot easier to swallow than a $10,000 bill due right now.
“Just a couple weeks ago, I ran a call and I was just blown away at how seamless it was with ServiceTitan,” Lloyd says. “Once I found out the customer wanted to finance, it was just a few clicks of a button and a little bit of information, and we're approved and ready to go.”
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Whereas Lloyd relied on time-consuming phone calls to get customers financed before the ServiceTitan integration, he says many financing companies today offer their own mobile apps for smartphones or tablets that are simple and easy to use. And when it comes to estimating jobs, he says Rogers has always tried to present multiple options to customers.
“There is a direct correlation between the number of options presented versus close ratio,” Lloyd says. “So we always, even when it takes more time, we always try to at least give them three options.”
Offering financing and presenting multiple options helps customers get to the end point, which is comfort, Berke says.
What does financing look like for your business now?
“We have what may sound like a lot of options, but we are very strategic on what options we’re presenting,” Rogers says. “That's been a huge effort for Justin and myself to really go through and keep an eye on what the dealer fees are, what the best promotions are, any buy-downs with our current vendors, and getting strategic in what we can offer to help us in our bottom line, but also help the customer get approved.
“We've streamlined and simplified a lot of it in our offerings,” she adds.
There are always new financing partners coming out with different offerings, Lloyd says, so it’s best to diligently check plans for better interest rates, merchant fees, etc., to find the best deals.
Historically, ServiceTitan required one vendor per business unit, Berke says, but recent upgrades now allow multiple integrated partners per business unit. Now that Rogers uses ServiceTitan integrated financing, how do technicians know to make the right choice?
Again, Lloyd says, choosing the best plan for a customer often comes down to meeting the financing partner’s requirements. But Rogers’ techs typically recommend two or three integrated financing partners, then walk customers through a seamless process.
“If they're able to use that to their advantage, help the customer out, and provide them with stress-free financing, they're happy to go out there and give it a shot,” Lloyd says.
What is ServiceTitan integrated financing?
ServiceTitan's integrated financing module allows sales and service techs to build estimates with multiple options, easily present those estimates on a mobile tablet, and lead with financing — all from one platform.
“You can toggle between whether you want to show the ‘full’ price first or the ‘as low as’ price first. Of course, you can always go between both, but we recommend leading with the ‘as low as’ price so you don't give customers sticker shock,” Berke says.
“Starting there is where we see the largest opportunity for these things to change — close rates increasing, average ticket increasing, and multiple estimates are really a part of how we drive up revenue, in general,” he adds. “And the more financing is playing a part in all of that, the higher we see these things go.”
ServiceTitan customers can utilize integrated financing at no additional cost with the software company’s integrated partners, which include GreenSky, GoodLeap, Service Finance,Turns Financing, Financeit (Canada), and soon-to-be-added Wells Fargo.
The integrated financing module also gives business owners better insight and reporting to know whether working with certain financial partners is worth the return on investment.
“You deserve to understand if the plans you're selecting are working and if your technicians are offering financing the way that you want them to,” Berke says.
In April, Rogers used ServiceTitan integrated financing data to determine the company had enough leads but needed to close more sales. She says the data suggested techs were visiting a lot of homes, but not closing as many deals. Then, she took a look at how many options technicians were presenting, and found a direct correlation between fewer options and lower close rates.
After coaching the techs to present two or three options on every call, the company increased its close rates by 20% in one month.
“It's a direct correlation with the options you're presenting to customers because one size does not fit all,” Lloyd explains.
The data clearly showed techs with higher total sales presented an average of 2.4 options on every opportunity, whereas techs with lower sales presented an average of less than one.
“Literally within a few weeks, everything turned around,” Lloyd says. “It was incredible to witness, and it created a great surge of momentum. After giving them the tools and the information they needed, they went out there and killed it. I mean, they did phenomenal last month.”
Ultimately, the company earns 37% of its revenue by offering customers financing, Rogers says.
“Think about how much money you're leaving on the table by just not offering it,” Rogers says. “You need to find customers a solution, because they're going to find it elsewhere if you don't offer it.”
What’s next for ServiceTitan integrated financing?
Two new features coming soon to ServiceTitan’s integrated financing functionality include:
Financing Dashboard
Plan Optimizer
Landis shares a sneak preview of both.
Financing Dashboard
“What we've heard from our customers is that it's tough to get access to financing data,” Landis says. “You have to go into your partner portals, download it from there, put it in Excel, and format it. And if you're using multiple partners, it's even more annoying. You have to do it multiple times.”
With ServiceTitan integrated financing, you can find all the data you need in one place with a user-friendly Financing Dashboard and a variety of filters, such as:
Date
Partner
Business Unit
Job Type
Technician
When taking a high-level overview of revenue and different key metrics, you’ll see a sales funnel in the top right of the screenshot below.
“In this sales funnel, you'll be able to see where there are areas of opportunity,” Landis says. “Are technicians creating multiple estimates, are they presenting, are they showing financing? And you'll be able to clearly see that here in the dashboard, then have that conversation with the technicians or look at those specific areas of the business and see where you can improve.
“Hopefully, with this dashboard, you can make some strong data-driven decisions that improve your business and financing strategy,” he adds. “And this is just the first phase. We want to continue to build this out with more data, more insights, and more drill-downs.”
Plan Optimizer
Building a strong financing strategy is tough for many service companies, Landis says, and they need to balance the cost of financing with the benefits.
“We know you have to look across rate sheets from every partner, assess the merchant fees, decide how much you want to subsidize for your customers, then look at the different plans,” Landis says. “Do you want install payments? Do you want deferred? Do you want 0%? And then how do I protect my margins?
“That's what we're trying to solve with Plan Optimizer, a Titan Intelligence-driven feature,” he adds.
Plan Optimizer leverages ServiceTitan's proprietary data — including historical plan performance, the cost of the job, consumer preferences, and your current business performance — then recommends plans to maximize conversions and protect profit margins.
“We’ve really focused on the technician and homeowner experience over the last six or seven years. Now we're getting the opportunity to bring that data and insights into the office and the full high-level, end-to-end data view,” Landis says.
>>Need help with setting up ServiceTitan integrated financing? Watch this webinar to get started or reach out for assistance from the new FinTech Utilization team.
