Top 5 Ways to Maximize Sales with Payment Plans: Part 2

Do your customers understand how today’s purchasing decision shapes future savings and support?

When you shift the conversation from convoluted payment plans to long-term value, customers feel more at ease moving forward. Highlight how bundling upgrades, repairs, and maintenance—especially with flexible financing—sets them up for fewer surprises and smarter spending down the road.

In this week’s episode of Cracking the Code, Drew Cameron shares how to lead with financing strategies that highlight value, ease decision-making, and position you as the trusted expert. Learn how to turn short-term choices into long-term wins—for your customers and your bottom line.

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Audio Transcription (in beta, please be wary of typos)

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:10:14

Today we wrap up the top five ways to maximize sales. We plan it. Plan.

00:00:10:17 – 00:00:33:02

Last week, Drew Kammerer began the conversation around top five ways to maximize your sales using payment plan. Well, this week he’s going to finish up that conversation. If you didn’t see last week’s show, go back and take a quick look and make more sense. In the meantime, here’s Drew Cameron. We also are working to our pricing change. Now we can do so on the server side of our business as well as well as the installation side of our business.

00:00:33:05 – 00:00:58:09

But the one thing you have to realize customers don’t object the price. They never object for us. They might be risk averse, but they’re never price sensitive. And so if you think that you’re buying on price, it’s not that you’re buying on price to buying based on perceived value or perceived perceived affordability as well as perceived risk. And so leverage financing payment plans allow you to avoid that because once you’ve established a you proceed.

00:00:58:11 – 00:01:18:28

You create the perceived affordability with leverage that makes your job a little bit easier. It takes what you make valuable and makes it affordable, but also makes it make economic sense, right? Because again, if they were basically looking at, you know, us from 100 or 200 or $300 a month, which is somebody else for probably just a little bit less per month.

00:01:19:00 – 00:01:38:01

Okay. Now it makes a little bit sense, but when you’re 3 or $4000 different that more, that makes it still a little bit more difficult than when it’s just a couple dollars a month. It’s again going to be easier for you to overcome that objection. But we work in our shoes. And so how do we do that? Repair pricing should lead with small monthly payments.

00:01:38:01 – 00:02:05:14

So when you’re working with your flat rate provider, that rate software provider makes sure that they have payment options baked into the software for you. So the payment options for bundled repairs as well, and not just the band aid checks, but bundled repairs. We teach you how to do that in our technician communication classes about bundled repairs by offering options to customer, as well as enhancing options such as air quality options and ways to improve efficiency of ways to improve and enhance the comfort.

00:02:05:17 – 00:02:29:20

Yeah, so it’s not just the repairs to the other things that can be sold on top of that, because you can finance even your maintenance agreement, if you will, and then you include maintenance and extended warranty at a discount with the parent. But so I like to create, you know, payment options with the my service department where I can not only do student repairs, but if we put it on for financing played a role in the monthly.

00:02:29:22 – 00:02:52:17

I mean, the annual need a student as well as an extended warranty. I usually do a minimum of five years on the repairs. And you know, they may or will act a lifetime, but I’m only going to do that if I basically do the maintenance and there’s no interruption of that nature maintenance. And I can roll that into a benefit and show a customer how they can get back in business and be protected from future issues.

00:02:52:19 – 00:03:18:18

I’m going to come to the considered assessing replacement, replacement with a payment plan when the repairs go above $1,000. Most people in your situation balances. And when, repairs exceed $1,000 special machine looking replacement. And we basically get, you know, get you into a payment plan for probably just like, $100 a month. Well, below that, that’s the traditional comparison.

00:03:18:21 – 00:03:34:16

You also want to work it into your, installation position. Right? That’s where you want to make sure that you cover the medium. The dealer cost what we call the discount and the overhead of your business. It is a direct cost I buried under the overhead, and I spread that across the entire book of business, whether they finance or not.

00:03:34:19 – 00:03:52:14

Okay. And I do that for each of the departments I’m doing. So if I have it in the installation department that he gets caught up in, in that department doing in-service, I carry that for in the overhead in the service department. And again, all customers pay for the cost of doing business or customers pay for my lights and utilities or customers pay for my dealer class.

00:03:52:17 – 00:04:09:24

Because, again, I don’t penalize people for taking advantage of financing and then give others cash discounts because that’s a penalty. Why would I penalize people who need to take advantage of the pain of. I’m also going to show the lowest payment possible in my price point, and then I can work up other options. I’ll show you how to do that in the last section.

00:04:09:26 – 00:04:26:21

I’m going to have a negative cash program available to my, my resources as one of my resources because during certain times of the year, they buy down that dealer cost. And so I would be a format to do that, you know, take advantage of the free money from the manufacturer. I’m also allow my salespeople to use the judgment of the program.

00:04:26:21 – 00:04:47:27

They feel the cash to be best suit the customer. I don’t like salespeople to use any of the programs, for some of them cost quite a bit of money. And for example, I know I never go above and zero for 36 because doing bonds, you’re 36 unless the manufacturer’s going down your business, you know, using a payment customer profile and it’s costing you way more money as a business doesn’t make any sense.

00:04:47:29 – 00:05:05:24

So and except for the promotional period of the manufacturer, I’m not going to penalties that penalizes payment customers. So there are no cash discount. So when a customer ask for a cash discount I said, oh no, you don’t price people. You take advantage of what makes it in what you want using affordable. So we observe that as customers, right?

00:05:05:27 – 00:05:39:02

I mean, that’s the way I go about it, because that’s just a little bit easier because the idea we’ve all gotten quite basically given the discount that the customer comes back with to take advantage of finance for something. And so with this screen does is it basically if you look at from the top left and what we call our real system in our price club all the way down to our, classic entry level system, we gamified the finance at 2.99 for 12 years, 49 for 1069 for 12, six, 999, ten six, nine, 947599 for five, I know for five.

00:05:39:05 – 00:05:55:19

And then we also do the same thing with these, six, nine, nine across the board. And these are the dealer cost right here. So you can see what it should be, the payment factor. And so you can see what the payment factor is. And here is your 3624 and 12. So these are the three plans that we worked into.

00:05:55:19 – 00:06:15:19

Our price book is one time. And we came up with different payments down here. So you can see with the tab option here 699 for 12 or you know 9 to 12. We got the price down to one, 18, 21. And by gamifying the financing. And when I give a lesson plan because he bought a lesson system right.

00:06:15:22 – 00:06:38:17

The piano per month over five years. Yes is more than a monthly payment over here. So it’s the rate and the term give you that flexibility when you gamify the finance. Okay. And in the middle of this we did the same thing 699 for ten and 699 for seven. As you can see. Right. The numbers are relative to each other.

00:06:38:19 – 00:07:02:02

Right? I mean all payments are within usually like less than, you know, they say a few dollars a day. You think about that over time and then at the bottom, like only zero, 36 versus zero zero for 12, zero for 12 and 7 or $8 a month and zero for 36 is $40 a month. I’m I’m not lying to the customer, not trying to hide anything.

00:07:02:02 – 00:07:27:14

I’m letting them know I can offer you a better program, and you buy a better system because our mission Egift, which we’re part of, basically says we are promoting energy efficiency and conservation of resources into the marketplace. That is the mission of WGU and Contract University. And so when you can see these, we have $14,000 systems all the way down to, $8,000 systems.

00:07:27:17 – 00:08:05:28

It’s the payment plans that make it digestible, right? We can all talk in terms of 100 to $300 a month. Right? Then we have to use what it’s called leading language. And so leading language is just it’s what you saying, how you say it so that it becomes more appealing to the audience. So for example, you want to basically, you know, phrase and phrase utilization of payments as a common way to make most people back, getting how people see that this is what most people do when when they say a place like that wasn’t expecting or apparently wasn’t expecting you to have to have energy repair cost savings, well said.

00:08:05:28 – 00:08:27:00

That investment you’re going to discuss how it’s basically the, investment, right? This purchase investment in their largest and right meaning HTC hot water. Right. The large consumers of energy in the home. But they’re also, some of the largest purchases are going have to make for their largest investment, which is their home. And so you’re already financing that.

00:08:27:00 – 00:08:45:05

Most people finance the things they attached to it help them hold on to their cash when they really need, especially in a time like this where there’s the run of the banks, interest rates are spiraling out of control, credit approvals drying up. Right. So, you know, get why you can to some extent if you think about and and today’s inflation as well as tomorrow’s inflation.

00:08:45:07 – 00:09:09:12

But that way you know as well as I do with supply chain stuff as well as inflation rates of price getting more expensive, most people going up, usually about 30 to 45% per year over year for the last three years running. And of course, with this high, high efficiency equipment online with CO2 and the Inflation Reduction Act, again, that was the financing.

00:09:09:15 – 00:09:34:07

And they already financed the utilities right to run the systems. So why not finance the system? This is just what most people do. Hi, I’m Daryl, you shouldn’t ski. Hey, I’m Bob Larkin. Many of our contractors meet with us monthly. And you? Chances are I’ve met with us monthly. We found that members have deeper and greater needs. So we came up with next level coaching, which is we meet a lot more often.

00:09:34:09 – 00:09:55:24

And there is accountability to deal with some of the issues of money growth, finding employees and having an exit strategy to get off this roller coaster. These are the issues the contractors want answers to, and we can provide those answers at the next level. Coaching. When you join next level coaching, you’re going to find solutions that are easy to implement and logical.

00:09:55:26 – 00:10:18:03

Most importantly, we hold you accountable to specifics. We’re going to meet twice a month and have specific to do’s. And with those specific to do’s, we’re going to discuss and dive into your financials in a very granular way. You’re going to have a clear budget. We’ll be able to establish pricing. We’re going to help you create leadership programs to build your people.

00:10:18:10 – 00:10:46:16

We’re going to help you find people. You may think of differing ways to engage employees that will keep them more involved by joining next level coaching. So if you’re interested in making more money, growing your company, finding good employees, and developing them as a strategy, give Dale on our call. We’ll be happy to talk to you about next level coaching, and we’re going to see you on the next level, because you can pay off a 30 year mortgage for ten years.

00:10:46:16 – 00:11:07:28

You just can’t pay a 15 year mortgage in 30. It’s the turn and the rate that gives you the flexibility and control over your money. And most people pay off a 30 year mortgage. But in our industry, what we find is that on a ten year loan, most people hundred and 20 months, most people pay that off anywhere between 36 to 60 months.

00:11:08:04 – 00:11:23:18

On average, it’s 48 months. Like most people refinance your existing system with the mortgage when you bought the house, and most people decide to use the payment option when they go to have a place it. So this time around them, the nice thing is you’re going to take what you save, energy repair costs and kind of carry that cost.

00:11:23:23 – 00:11:42:02

Makes sense, right? And so using language in a conversational manner that leads the customer to the obvious decision just makes sense. And you don’t owe your money. And once it does make sense to spend it all means the power of your home. You maintain your home or at home. Your home is expensive. Maintaining a home is expensive. I get it right.

00:11:42:05 – 00:12:06:27

You don’t need to take all that money out of your pocket to pay for this. That’s the great thing about this. And install financing is very favorable to most people that we don’t have to go find money somewhere else. So that’s why, you know, you know, like Macy’s and Best Buy all these rooms at Depot and Costco. That’s why they all offer their own credit cards, because in-store financing, in-store credit is very appealing to people.

00:12:07:00 – 00:12:24:27

You also have to train people to use the language, right. And look at their options. And so train on using them by sharing small, incremental steps to better solutions that are more affordable. I’ll show you. I’ll show you how I do that momentarily. You know, it’s going to cost me money with your wallet. And maybe you don’t. Financing you.

00:12:24:27 – 00:12:41:06

Maybe you don’t put things on credit cards because you’re a Dave Ramsey or Suzy Orman financial disciple, right? But that doesn’t mean that the customer should think the way that you do. So let the customer spend the way they want to get what they want, and make sure that you always discuss the payment options early and often. We teach you how to do that in the sales training.

00:12:41:08 – 00:13:05:12

So I was going to talk to you about opportunity choice there. But you can also get pre-approval early in the process or even before you go to the house. Because like I said, we have that. We have option and it’s transparent, it’s easy and it only takes five minutes. And that way money as well as you have to worry about when you get to ask as the customer or as a corporate vice, you can also precondition our customers to get what they want.

00:13:05:14 – 00:13:25:01

It’s easy and affordable. We always want to make sure that we know that we want to show the customers all the ways that they can pay. Every time I’ll show you how I do that, literally, I’m going to leave with payment options versus the total investment. I’m always going to show the lowest payment option for all choices, and would include 10 or 15 year warranties, or whatever the term of the loan is going to be able to offer.

00:13:25:03 – 00:13:46:27

Or I may have to buy those for the third party. That’s fine, but I’m going to allow them to have protection over the term of the loan as well. This way they can, also buy the system that they want, and maybe they’re not even staying in the house, and maybe they can roll that off and then ask if is more sellable, more marketable, and sell for a higher price down the road.

00:13:46:27 – 00:14:05:16

Because as a high efficiency advanced technology system with an extended warranty, and again, they can just pay off that loan when they sell the house now, in the future, gets to decide what life experience they want. Peace of mind protection. So I was like, show customers all the ways they can pay. I like to draw this out on a piece of paper.

00:14:05:16 – 00:14:27:21

I don’t like to calculate it, and I until I know what system actually went towards. But but I said it has to, as I said, was many ways and you could pay. Let me tell you all the ways you can pay before you kind of, decide what you want to do. Hey, Julie. So what I do is I write this down, I write cash or check, and I show the things in the middle, right?

00:14:27:21 – 00:14:44:23

I talk about the points on the side, and it’s about right because I when I’m focusing on them, the payments. Okay. So I can actually check upon completion, you know, it’s one half percentage point, which we don’t need your money to finance a job or solvency. We don’t need the deposit. You know, hold onto your cash, take on.

00:14:44:25 – 00:15:00:10

And when you’re happy, okay? There’s no reward for doing it. Gives you the least amount of flexibility, control over your money, and you use it for cash reserves, and there’s no benefit from that. 10% of our customers do it, but 15% of our customers put it up to one of their credit cards. That way they get their points, their miles, or their cash back.

00:15:00:12 – 00:15:17:20

Remember, I’m always showing the numbers in the middle. I’m not showing the numbers at the bottom as far as the percent people that do it, talking about them and also talking about the change of the site. And so I know this and I said I just kind of rattled off and that gives you a little bit of flexibility, you know, then, you know, paying cash.

00:15:17:20 – 00:15:40:04

But you’re going to obviously be beholden to the rate on your credit card, which is probably in most cases, 16 to 28%. And it ties up your credit, and gives you it takes away some of that flexibility in controlling your credit. Well, then we have basically zero, up to 36. Now, again, I say 60, if again, I’m using the manufacturer’s program only, it’s going to result in a higher payment, you know, conceivably higher.

00:15:40:04 – 00:15:55:05

About 20% of our customers do that that way. You know, you don’t have to use all your money. You get your finances in line. You can cash out investment if you want. You know, you can go your own bank neutral loan if you want. It gives you a little bit more flexibility and control, but there’s no fee to borrow the money.

00:15:55:07 – 00:16:15:14

However, you got to make sure you pay it off by the end of the term. Otherwise, the fee to borrow the money that you know is being recycled. Fittipaldi rolls back to day one and the entire loan. That’s just what you didn’t pay it. That’s that. That’s about 20% of our economy. Where are you going to be? Like most of our customers take advantage of getting the lowest payment possible.

00:16:15:14 – 00:16:31:19

This gives you the most amount of flexibility and control over your money, and it’s going to be offset by what you save in energy repair costs. The cool thing about this is Bill and Susan is most of the people who take this, they take the term up to, in this case, up to four months digital hosting, a possible.

00:16:31:22 – 00:16:50:27

And if you pay it off a little bit sooner, you’ve effectively lower the interest rate. Technically you have. It’s effective. And the reason I say it’s effective because you’re still paying six, nine, nine just over a short term. But in essence, if you were to going to amortize that and it would actually be effective below the interest rate.

00:16:51:00 – 00:17:16:22

And what you save and repair costs offsets that fee to borrow the money, in this case, 699 on a unsecured loan in this economy is phenomenal. If you get a three $400 a month, save 60 bucks a month, right? Take that away from the 102 year, $42 a month. You’re talking about a dollar a day, just over a dollar a day to get what you want, because you’re taking money out of the utility company.

00:17:16:22 – 00:17:36:07

When I talk to you. So those are the primary ways. And then when you get really good at this, you can also say, well, if you if you want to think about it a little bit, but you can also do, what I can also do for it is I can do free for 12 months, no money down, no payments on a monthly basis, no fees over that 12 months.

00:17:36:09 – 00:17:54:16

You just got to make sure that you pay it off at the end of the 12 months license. I think you can think in terms of bridge loan, right? You know, basically, by the time that you need to go ahead and get your finances in order and then that way you can get what you want today. Stuff energy repair costs, you know, situations today beat inflation, okay.

00:17:54:16 – 00:18:13:14

Take advantage of the promotion, whatever that may happen to be in your business. And then they get what they want right. Or you can also do free for six months again with no fees for the customer. And then the balance of whatever they don’t pay down during that time frame. This way you can pay down as much as you want during the free six month period.

00:18:13:17 – 00:18:34:28

Then alone we advertise this at 69934 months HELOC with us. Right? And so again, a little bit more flexibility that year. So there’s your kind of like I say I like to show customers all the ways that they can pay. I need to know these. I need to train on these. I need to be able to rattle these off and just write them down onto a piece of paper right in from the customer.

00:18:35:01 – 00:18:52:19

Okay? You need to show them that. Don’t just rattled off it. Don’t just have it printed out in a book. Don’t have it on a computer. Don’t do it on a computer. Right? You make it transparent for the customers to see. It’s like doing your math. When you were in elementary school, you were told to show you. When you show your work to the customer, you make it transparent.

00:18:52:21 – 00:19:17:10

It’s on a piece of paper to be considered, and then the customer will let you know what direction they want to go. And again, we teach you how to do this in the sales training at E-gift as well. So last way they can do it right is leasing. And so the new way to pay million citizens to get what you want to do and over time is easiest, most affordable and economical way with one small monthly payment to make your home one less thing to worry about.

00:19:17:13 – 00:19:44:12

The cool thing for, you contractors out there that are offering, let’s say, solar agency, IQ, plumbing, electrical, smart home technology, it’s just a monitoring, indoor air quality monitoring, generator monitoring and monitoring, all that as well as, like I said, the repairs and the maintenance and the consumables can all be rolled into one small monthly data. So I would say customers have been planning on paying for your heating and cooling.

00:19:44:12 – 00:20:00:03

And I’m walking through those scenarios. Right. And I say also, how do you think about keeping your family healthy, safe and comfortable with you? Don’t have a power outage? And they said, what are you talking about? Well, these things require power. The power goes out. How are you thinking about running it? Because it’s imperative that you have to be on one system.

00:20:00:06 – 00:20:19:04

This is what most people do is they will again, solar panels or generator right into the system and make it once more month event. So for you generator companies, that’s how you go ahead and add a generator to about 30 or 40% of your system by just offering it with the system and making it the waste and the means to power the system.

00:20:19:07 – 00:20:46:27

So what you make valuable is what you make affordable and makes sense in everyday life for the people. See, the payment is before energy repair, cost savings. The payment is less than the cost of any of the repairs, probably as well as the utilities on a monthly basis. Or it’s about the same. You look at the cost of the repairs versus the cost of the payment to go ahead and get a brand new system that’s going to be comparable or less than the repairs or the utilities, the same price credit.

00:20:46:27 – 00:21:05:24

We don’t penalize people. We break it down to ridiculous. So you saw what I did. I took them, but I saved that as your cost away from the payment line down $40 a month, not out of pocket. Right. And I broke it down to the ridiculous. It’s like what, just over a dollar. So it that right. And you know, that’s probably less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

00:21:05:27 – 00:21:26:27

Your happy meal for the kids, what you spend on going out to lunch at work. So they tied into what they already pay for. They also probably can’t my repair costs. Right. Or the utility payment. But it is their utility payment, right? Where cell phone billing to cell phones are. Think of it this way. And I told you I had a device, right?

00:21:27:00 – 00:21:47:23

Smart smartphone. And you could get it, and it would give you access to the internet. You could, you know, text, email, friends to social media connections, watch a movie, listen to music, pay your bills. Yeah, everything that you can do on a smartphone, a smartphone, that’s all you is $15,000. Would you buy though? You would know most people, right?

00:21:47:25 – 00:22:03:23

But it’s what you’re doing every month, right? Because the phone itself is over a thousand bucks and the cell phone bills like a couple of hours a month to to to arrange month two cell phones on the bill. Right. That’s paying for the phone. Right. Because I can only think about 3 or 4 phones are at that time for iPhones.

00:22:03:23 – 00:22:28:18

Over that time, it’s not more frequently, more than 14,000, but it’s 14 with one cell, right? Like cell phones. I can last 40 years and see that’s what we’re doing anyway. So we’ve conditioned consumers to do that in certain other areas. Right. Furniture. That’s why appliances when people appliances and cars, mortgages we need to do it in AC as well and connect it to the customer store and personalize it.

00:22:28:23 – 00:22:48:08

And then we wrap that payment and security blanket of protection that I call peace of mind protection or power, right? With warranties and guarantees to remove all the risk. I even get my customer money back guarantee that if they don’t have you within two years, I’ll pay off. Love. This is my pay off when I give them any payments be made back, right?

00:22:48:11 – 00:23:05:26

And I’m going to bet on myself and my people every day. That’s what you need to do. Remove the risk and reverse the risk. Awesome content right there. As always, be sure to share this on Facebook. And if you’re not a member, click the button below to get a free trial. I’ll give you access to all of our amazing content.

00:23:06:03 – 00:23:35:02

Well, that’s our show for this week, folks. We’ll see you soon. And till then, bye bye for now.