Vendor finance is how suppliers, manufacturers and resellers stop losing sales at the price conversation.
If you sell equipment to other businesses, you already know the shape of that conversation. The customer wants the machine. The specification is agreed. Then the price lands, and what was a buying decision quietly turns into a funding decision you have no control over.
Some of those customers go away to arrange finance and come back. Some go away and buy from a competitor who made it easier. Some simply do not come back at all.
What vendor finance actually is
In a vendor finance arrangement, you are able to offer your customers a funding option at the point of sale rather than leaving them to sort it out themselves.
The customer applies, the lender underwrites them, and you continue to run the sale exactly as you would normally. You are not lending anything, you are not carrying the credit risk, and you are not responsible for the customer’s repayments. What changes is that the cost stops being a reason to walk away, because the conversation moves from a single large figure to a manageable monthly one.
Our vendor finance page sets out how we work with suppliers.
Why it changes the sale
Price resistance is rarely about the value of the equipment. It is almost always about timing and cash flow. A business can see perfectly well that the machine will pay for itself. What it cannot see is where £30,000 comes from this quarter.
Once a monthly figure is on the table, three things tend to happen.
Deals close faster, because the customer is not disappearing for three weeks to talk to their bank. Order values go up, because a customer choosing between specifications on a monthly basis will often take the better machine. And fewer deals are lost outright, because the main objection has a sensible answer rather than silence.
How vendor finance works in practice
The mechanics are deliberately simple from your side:
- Decisions are usually back within two hours. Fast enough to keep a live conversation alive rather than killing the momentum of a sale.
- Payment terms suit you. Depending on the agreement, stage payments or payment before delivery can be arranged, so your cash position is protected.
- No minimum turnover requirement. You do not need to be putting a certain volume through to make the arrangement worthwhile.
- It fits suppliers, manufacturers and resellers. The structure works whether you are selling one high value machine a month or a steady run of smaller items.
- Paperwork is signed online. Our e-sign process means the final stage does not add days.
You keep ownership of the customer relationship throughout. We are arranging the funding, not taking over your sale.
Where it tends to work best
Any sector where the equipment is a considered purchase rather than an impulse one. In practice that means capital equipment with a clear return: catering and commercial kitchens, garage and workshop equipment, gym and fitness, medical and dental, printing and reprographics, manufacturing plant, security and fire systems, commercial laundry.
The common thread is that the buyer is a business, the asset earns, and the ticket price is big enough to give a finance director pause. Our what can be financed section covers the asset types.
Why the lender panel matters to you
If your customer is sent to a single lender and does not fit that lender’s criteria, the answer is no and the sale is over.
As a credit broker we take each application across a panel of over 200 lenders, as well as our own in-house facility. That means a wider range of your customers get a yes, including newer businesses that a high street bank would decline on length of trading alone. For a supplier, the practical effect is a higher conversion rate on the enquiries you pass over.
It also means a customer with a less than perfect credit history is not automatically a lost sale. The terms may differ, but there is usually an option worth putting in front of them. Our regulatory permissions can be checked on the FCA Financial Services Register.
Setting it up
There is no heavy integration involved. Most suppliers we work with simply have a route to hand an enquiry over, and we handle the application, the underwriting conversation and the documentation from there. You get told where each deal stands.
We have been doing this from our Cramlington office across more than 30,000 completed transactions, and you can read more about us or see the range of businesses we have funded in our case studies.
Worth a conversation
If cost is the objection that most often stalls your sales, offering finance at the point of sale is one of the few changes that addresses it directly without discounting.
Get in touch and we will talk through how it would work for what you sell.
Business finance only, subject to status. Complete Leasing Solutions Limited are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 683991) and are permitted to act as a credit broker.