If you are a manufacturer, vendor or even a software developer — job one is increasing sales. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to do this while also improving customer retention and enhancing your competitive position in the market?

The ability to offer your customers and prospects financing for the purchases they make from you, at competitive rates, can help you meet many of your most important business goals.

Growing Your Business with Vendor Finance

A well-structured vendor finance program with a strong, experienced partner is a great way to grow your business. Financing is a powerful sales tool, which, when used correctly, can take your business to the next level. 

In addition to the benefits already noted, the key to realizing these benefits is finding a financial partner who can help you make equipment financing a fundamental part of your sales strategy.

Using financing as a core sales strategy can help you sell more of your product to more people and keep your customers longer. You can close deals faster, include more product in the sale and get paid faster.

Vendor finance has the potential to improve margins, increase the size of your sales and speed up the closing cycle.

Vendor finance programs also deliver significant benefits to your customers. They can get financing more quickly at competitive rates, and easily upgrade equipment — all while keeping costs within their set budget. They may also be able to take advantage of tax depreciation benefits.

Vendor finance products are exceptionally flexible. They can be structured on or off balance sheet, can be fixed or floating rate, and can have terms that match the useful life of the equipment.

Tracking Results 

Once you initiate a vendor finance program, how will you know if it is actually providing a competitive edge — not just a promise? The right financial partner can provide detailed information to help you analyze and manage your sales more effectively. For example, leveraging an online tracking and electronic application tool provided by its bank, a major software company was able to pinpoint one region where leasing increased margins by 13% compared to cash payments. In another region, the increase was only 5%. Using this information, they were able to identify best practices and improve performance across the board.

Online tools can also provide a quote in seconds, give you 24/7 access to your information and deliver performance reporting on leases along with many other functions. Even companies that have enough cash on hand to finance sales themselves often find that they would prefer to focus on their core competencies and leave credit analysis and collections to the experts.

Ready to Help 

Rather than letting your customers and prospects fend for themselves in financing their purchases, consider leveraging a vendor finance program to increase sales and cement profitable relationships. For more information, contact your Relationship Manager or visit pnc.com/ef.