Most contractors who don’t offer financing don’t avoid it because they’re against it. They avoid it because they’ve never sat down and done the math on what they’re actually losing every month.
So we did it for you.
The setup: a typical bath remodeling business
Let’s use round numbers from a real contractor we work with. This is not a unicorn business. It’s a single-truck, two-crew operation in a Midwestern metro. Your numbers will vary but the structure is the same.
- Monthly leads (in-home appointments): 40
- Close rate: 30%
- Average ticket: $18,000
- “I need to think about it” rate: 30%
- Stalled deals that come back and close: ~15%
If you’re a contractor reading this, that probably looks pretty familiar. Now let’s run the math on what’s happening in those numbers.
What you’re closing today
- 40 appointments × 30% close rate = 12 deals/month
- 12 × $18,000 = $216,000/month in closed revenue
What you’re leaving on the table
Of the 28 appointments you didn’t close, the breakdown roughly looks like this:
- ~12 deals stalled out at “we need to think about it.” That’s 30% of 40.
- ~16 deals were no-fits, lost on price, lost to a competitor, or didn’t materialize for other reasons.
The 16 “real losses” you can’t easily recover. Those are sales process problems, lead quality problems, pricing problems. The 12 stalled deals are something different. Those are almost entirely affordability stalls. The customer liked you, liked the bid, and ran out of room in their checking account.
The financing-recovery math
Across the businesses we’ve worked with, contractors who properly implement financing see roughly 40–60% of their stalled deals convert instead of dying. That’s not a typo. The deals don’t change. The bid doesn’t change. What changes is that “the kitchen table conversation” is now about $258/month instead of $18,000.
Let’s be conservative and call it 50%:
- 12 stalled deals × 50% conversion with financing = 6 additional deals/month
- 6 × $18,000 = $108,000/month of recovered revenue
- $108,000 × 12 months = $1.29M/year
That’s the number. $1.29 million a year. One contractor, one truck, two crews. Left on the floor of homeowners’ kitchens because there was no financing on the table.
“But my customers don’t need financing”
This is the most common objection we hear, and it’s almost always wrong.
The data on home improvement spending in the U.S. is consistent: the average household has under $1,000 in liquid emergency savings. Even higher-income homeowners often have most of their money in retirement accounts, home equity, or investments — not in checking. A homeowner with a $400K house and a $250K HHI can absolutely not write a $20,000 check. Most of them have to choose between financing the project or pulling from savings they’d rather not touch.
You’re not deciding whether to offer financing. The customer is deciding whether to use you, or use the contractor down the street who does offer it.
The shift from price to payment
This is the part most contractors miss until they live through it. When financing is on the table, the entire conversation reframes:
- Without financing: “It’s $22,000.” → “Let me think about it.”
- With financing: “It’s $22,000, which works out to about $262 a month at 0% APR for 84 months.” → “Can we start in two weeks?”
Same project. Same price. Different psychology. You haven’t discounted. You haven’t dropped your margins. You’ve just translated the price into a number the homeowner’s brain can actually process.
30-day implementation playbook
- Week 1: Sign up for a contractor financing platform. We use Hearth. No setup fees, takes about 20 minutes, you get a pre-qualification link your salespeople can use the same day.
- Week 2: Train your in-home sales team to lead with financing as a normal payment option. Not a rescue plan, not the last move. Just another way to pay, listed alongside check and card.
- Week 3: Run pre-qualifications during the in-home, before the price ever comes up. Customer sees their approved monthly number before they hear the project total.
- Week 4: Compare your “I need to think about it” rate to the prior month. The drop will be obvious.
The deal you don’t see in the P&L
The hardest part of running a contracting business is that the most expensive line item never shows up on a P&L. It’s the deals you almost closed. The ones the homeowner liked but couldn’t pay for. They don’t show up as losses because you never invoiced them. But they cost you marketing spend, lead cost, drive time, and bid prep — all of which are sunk the moment you walk out without a signature.
Run the math on your own numbers. Then make the call.