Never Lose a Sale: How Waterfall Financing Keeps You in Control

‍Picture this: You’ve spent weeks working with a homeowner on a big kitchen remodel plan. The design is perfect, the customer is excited, and the quote is ready. They apply for your financing option – the only lender you partner with – and then boom: Declined.

In an instant, that eager customer’s face falls. They don’t have another way to pay, so the project dies on the spot. You’ve just lost a sale that was practically in your hands. It’s a gut punch many home improvement contractors know too well.

You’re not alone. In fact, most contractors rely on a single financing source and face this dilemma. The result? A staggering number of potential deals are lost due to financing roadblocks. Home improvement is a $600+ billion-a-year industry, yet only about 3% of remodeling projects are financed through contractors or retailers. That means the vast majority of homeowners either pay cash, tap home equity lines, or even put the whole project on a high-interest credit card (about 1 in 10 homeowners choose this costly route). For contractors, this signals a massive opportunity: by offering better financing solutions, you can stand out and capture sales that might otherwise slip away.

The Pitfalls of a Single-Lender Financing Setup

Relying on one “preferred” lender for customer financing may feel simple, but it’s a risky play. A single-lender setup can backfire in several ways:

• One Strike, You’re Out: If your sole lending partner declines a customer, that’s the end of the road. No plan B means a decline = a lost sale nearly every time. There’s no worse feeling than watching a ready-to-buy customer walk away because your only financing option said no.
  
  
• Limited Customer Reach: Each lender has its niche. Many single lenders favor prime borrowers with 700+ credit scores. But what about the customer with a 680 score who’s perfectly willing to pay? With just one lender, you’re turning away a whole segment of clientele. You essentially “filter out” customers with slightly lower credit, even if they have the income and desire to buy.
  
  
• All Eggs in One Basket: Depending on one financing source makes you vulnerable. If that lender tightens their credit criteria, changes their rates, or (knock on wood) exits the market, your financing program evaporates overnight. In today’s economic climate, that’s not a far-fetched scenario.
  
  
• Less Flexibility for Customers: A single lender often means a single type of offer. Maybe it’s a 9.99% APR loan for everyone, or one promotional plan. What if your customer would prefer a “12-months same-as-cash” promo or a longer-term low payment plan? With one option, there’s no flexibility to meet different customer needs – and a confused or disappointed customer might bail.
  
  
• Strained Customer Experience: When financing falls through, it puts the homeowner in a tough spot – and sometimes they blame the messenger (you). Not being able to offer an alternative can hurt your reputation. Today’s consumers expect convenience and options, and if you can’t provide them, they may go to a competitor who will.
  
  

In short, a single-lender financing model can leave you high and dry at the worst moment. And it’s likely costing you real money – the contractors who do offer robust financing options close more deals and even see bigger project sizes. One industry study found that offering financing can increase close rates by 18% and boost average project size by 30%. That’s a huge lift that you’re missing out on if you’re stuck with a one-note financing plan.

So what’s the solution? Ensure that you’re not dependent on a single lender’s decision. This is where the multi-lender approach comes in, allowing multiple lenders to compete for the customer’s business upfront.

Never Say “Declined” Again: The Multi-Lender Platform Advantage

Imagine if that earlier scenario played out differently. Instead of a dead-end decline, you have a multi-lender platform in your toolkit. Your customer fills out one application (just once!) and FinMkt’s multi-lender waterfall activates behind the scenes. But here’s the key difference: it’s not just a sequential pass-along from one lender to the next. Instead, all participating lenders evaluate the application in parallel—or in a near-simultaneous competitive structure—based on where they fit in the credit spectrum and the rules of the platform.

Each lender has an opportunity to review and respond, and the platform surfaces the best available offers in real-time. The customer might receive multiple approvals from different lenders at different terms, creating a dynamic, competitive environment. You then get to present the most compelling offer, or even give the customer options to choose from. No delays, no resubmissions, no awkward paperwork handoffs.

This true waterfall approach means more than just backup plans—it’s an ecosystem where lenders actively compete to win the customer’s business. That results in higher approval rates and better matches for your customers’ credit profiles. Multi-lender strategies like this have been shown to improve approvals by 30% or more in certain industries, which directly translates to more deals closed for you. And even when credit tightens in tough economic times, having a diverse range of lender types—from prime to near-prime and subprime—means you’re ready for whatever scenario walks through the door.

Thriving in Any Economy: Flexibility and Resilience Matter

We all know the economic ups and downs of the past few years have been wild. Interest rates have been on a rollercoaster – the Federal Reserve hiked rates aggressively to combat inflation, and consumer credit has gotten more expensive. In fact, credit cards now carry an average interest rate of about 23–24% APR (near record highs), making them a painfully expensive way to finance a big project. When wallets are tighter and borrowing costs are up, homeowners become more cautious. They’re looking for affordable financing more than ever, but paradoxically, many lenders have gotten stricter with approvals in these conditions.

What does that mean for you as a contractor? It means that having flexibility is crucial. If you’re only partnered with one lender and they’ve tightened their belt, you’ll see more declines right when your customers most need financing. That’s a recipe for lost sales in an already challenging environment. A multi-lender platform gives you resilience. Different lenders have different appetite at different times. Maybe Lender A scales back during a recession, but Lender B (specializing in near-prime) steps up because they see an opportunity. By having both in your lineup, you can continue to get customers approved even as the credit landscape shifts.

Likewise, consider promotional financing and varied loan terms. In shaky economic times, some customers really want that “no interest for 12 months” offer to make the project feasible, while others might prefer a low monthly payment spread out longer. If you only have one program, you can’t accommodate those varied needs. Flexibility wins customers – it shows you can meet them where they are. A robust multi-lender setup often means you can offer a mix of plans (because one lender might have great promo APR deals, another might focus on long-term loans, etc.). You become the contractor who can say “Yes, we have a financing plan that will work for you” instead of “Sorry, we only have this one thing, take it or leave it.”

Being resilient also protects your business. Let’s say one of your partner lenders decides to exit the home improvement market or pauses their lending for a few months (not unheard of during economic swings). If you’ve got a multi-lender platform, your financing program doesn’t come to a standstill – you simply rely more on the others, and even look to add a new lending partner to fill the gap. In FinMkt’s system, for example, merchants can dynamically adjust their lender network based on performance or market changes. You’re never handcuffed to one bank’s whims. This adaptability can be a lifesaver, ensuring you always have financing available for your customers no matter what the broader economy is doing.

Bottom line: In good times and bad, a multi-lender approach gives your business the agility to keep sales flowing. When customers have options and you have backups, everyone’s better positioned to navigate economic bumps in the road.

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FinMkt Makes It Easy: One Platform, Many Lenders, Zero Headaches

At this point, you might be thinking, “Sure, this sounds great – but juggling multiple lenders sounds like a lot of work.” That’s the beauty of a multi lender platform like FinMkt’s: we do the heavy lifting for you. We’ve designed our platform specifically for home improvement contractors, with simplicity in mind. You get the benefit of multiple lending partners without the hassle of managing separate applications or portals for each. Here’s how FinMkt simplifies the process:

• One Application, Real-Time Matching: Your customer fills out a universal application (online or in your showroom) one time. FinMkt’s system instantly and securely matches the applicant to multiple lenders in real-time. Within seconds, the customer gets a response, often with multiple offers to choose from. No waiting around for days, and no repetitive forms for each bank. It’s a one-and-done application that fans out behind the scenes to find the best approval. This real-time “lender waterfall” means approvals come back faster than you can say “kitchen remodel.”
  
  
• No Extra Paperwork or Re-runs: Remember the bad old days of having Plan B financing, where you’d have to ask the customer to fill out a whole new loan application after being declined the first time? With FinMkt, those days are over. There’s no additional paperwork for you or the customer. All the lenders in our network accept the same data from that single application. Even credit checking is efficient – typically it starts with a soft credit pull that doesn’t ding the customer’s score, and that info can be used to prequalify across lenders. In short, your customer isn’t having to jump through hoops. They won’t even notice that multiple lenders reviewed their application, because the process feels seamless and instant.
  
  
• Seamless Integration with Your Business: FinMkt’s platform plugs into your existing sales process with minimal effort. You can integrate our multi-lender solution into your website or point-of-sale system, or simply use our merchant portal – whatever works best for your operation. No heavy IT lift required. Many contractors get up and running quickly, offering financing options on their estimates and invoices in practically no time. The platform is branded for your business, too, so it feels like an extension of your company when customers apply (we’re your behind-the-scenes partner).
  
  
• Managed in One Dashboard: Instead of logging into different lender systems, you manage everything in one place. FinMkt provides a merchant dashboard where you can see all your customer applications, the offers presented, and the loans that were funded, across all lenders, in a single view. It’s an easy-to-use portal that gives you complete visibility and control. Need to adjust which lenders you work with or tweak the order of your waterfall? A few clicks, and it’s done. Our goal is to make offering financing as easy as accepting a credit card.
  
  
• Exceptional Support and Guidance: We don’t leave you to figure things out alone. FinMkt’s team provides training and live support to help you and your staff confidently use the platform. And because we work with many contractors and lenders, we can even share best practices (like which promotional offers attract customers, or how to present financing options to homeowners effectively). Think of us as an extension of your team focused on growing your sales.
  
  

By simplifying multi-lender financing, FinMkt ensures that adding more options for your customers doesn’t mean more headaches for you. Everything is streamlined. From the customer’s perspective, it feels like they applied with one finance company and got several offers in one go (which is essentially what’s happening). From your perspective, you just increased your approval rate dramatically without increasing your workload.

The Payoff: More Sales, Happier Customers, and Greater Control

When you embrace a multi-lender waterfall approach, you’re doing more than just offering financing – you’re creating a safety net for your sales and delivering a better experience for your customers. Fewer people get turned away, more projects get the green light, and you stop leaving money on the table due to something as frustrating as a loan decline. Instead of dreading that phone call from the lender with a denial, you can set expectations with confidence: “We have a range of financing options; let’s see what we can get for you.” That confidence is contagious – customers trust you more, and you in turn trust that your financing platform has your back.

In today’s competitive home improvement market, this is how you differentiate yourself. Homeowners often get multiple bids; if one contractor says, “We offer financing (and we’ll match you with the best offer from multiple lenders competing for your approval),” and another contractor says, “We don’t offer financing, you’re on your own for payment,” it’s clear which proposal looks more appealing. Even if a homeowner has some savings, knowing they have financing as a fallback can give them the confidence to choose the contractor with financing – you. It’s a selling point, and a big one at that, especially as the cost of projects has risen over the years.

And let’s not forget: offering financing isn’t just about not losing the sale – it can help increase the size of the sale. When customers have affordable monthly payment options, they often decide to tackle that bigger project or add those upgrade features. Maybe they’ll finish the basement and remodel the kitchen, because financing makes it feasible to do both. Your revenue per customer can grow thanks to the flexibility you provide. We’ve seen this time and again with contractors using FinMkt’s multi-lender platform: higher approvals, larger project tickets, and ultimately more revenue in your pocket.

Finally, you maintain control. This whole approach is about keeping you in the driver’s seat. You’re no longer at the mercy of a single bank’s decision. You decide which lending partners to include and in what order, tailoring the financing program to fit your business and customers. FinMkt simply empowers you with the technology and network to make it happen smoothly.

Never lose a sale for the wrong reasons. You work too hard generating leads and crafting great proposals to have deals derail due to financing. By embracing a multi-lender platform and waterfall financing strategy, you can ensure that when a customer says “yes” to your project, financing will not be the reason things fall apart.

At FinMkt, we built our multi-lender platform with this mission: to help merchants like you never lose a sale due to financing. We’ve got the lenders, the tech, and the know-how, all wrapped in a simple solution for your business. If this sounds like a game-changer, that’s because it is. Why not see it in action?

Ready to stop letting “declined” customers slip away? We invite you to schedule a demo with FinMkt and discover how our multi-lender waterfall can keep your sales flowing and your customers happy. It’s time to take control of your financing program – and never lose a sale that should have been yours. Let’s make “no project left behind” your new mantra!

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Sources:

National Mortgage Professional - Equity Loans Key to Remodeling

JLC - Why Most Top Contractors Offer Financing

Wholesalecentral - How Financing Options Can Increase Conversion Rates

consumerfinance.gov - Credit card interest rate margins at all-time high

Investopedia - Average Credit Card Interest Rate for March 2025: 24.20% APR‍