In a 2015 Survey of more than 700 equipment sales operations:
- 91% DID NOT describe themselves as a vendor.
- 38% weren’t exactly sure that “Vendor Finance” programs meant programs to finance their customer’s purchase of their equipment.
We have named an entire multi-billion dollar segment of the commercial finance business…vendor finance. Roughly 4 decades of helping these “vendors” that don’t call themselves vendors. Dealers, Distributors, Manufacturers, OEMs are the names they go by. “But bald man…it’s easier to say vendors and capture all of them well in a single word.” No, by not calling them the name they call themselves, you actually capture none of them very well. That’s typically what happens when you intentionally genericize any description of anything.
In the commercial finance business there is asset based lending, equipment finance, equipment leasing, equipment leasing and finance, corporate banking, commercial banking, wholesale banking, Mezzanine finance, Senior secured finance, Junior Capital providers and on and on…If we are selling something to you guys…and we are…would it be more effective to address you as “Commercial Lending” or as “Transportation Equipment Finance”? Which would connect with you, the broad catch-all classification or the one that actually describes you as you describe yourself. Good sales and marketing doesn’t allow you to make up names for people they don’t call themselves because it’s easier on you.
Connecting with people, sounding different than the competition and doing more deals starts with having the courage to be more about who you are helping than what you want to call those people for your own convenience. Please join us in the elimination of “vendor finance” from all external sales and marketing dialogue. As you end your consumption of this article almost all of you are saying…”but that’s how it’s always been done…we can’t do that.” Sheesh gang, isn’t differentiated and out of the box better than being like everyone else?
Do you have the guts to grow? If you ever wanna chat…give us a holler.