By: Scott Murr
President, Offsite Office Equipment Storage
Over the next few weeks I will break down key sections of a standard lease agreement.
The majority of sales professionals in the field today are not able to explain why the language is written the way it is in the lease agreements they present to their customer for signature. From my experience, I would estimate 85% of all sales professionals fall into this category. With the remaining 15%, very few have an understanding that I would rate “excellent”. Though, I can also say of that 15%, the vast majority of them are also top producers.
Why should you have a complete understanding of the lease agreement and how does that translate into more sales? Great question.
First of all, the lease agreement (CPC, Lease, or Rental) is the primary financial agreement. What is a lease exactly? To secure the use of technology, software, or office equipment on a rental basis. Ownership rests in the hands of the financial institution or leasing company, while the business has the actual use of it.
Understanding the leasing product is a key component of understanding the lease agreement.
Often customers read the back of the lease agreement and have a few questions. If you understand the document and are able to adequately answer the questions, the customer generally will continue on with signing the deal as is or with minimal changes. If you cannot answer the questions or answer poorly, what generally happens? The majority of the time the deal stalls and the customer sends the document out for legal review. Legal review almost always results in the deal being stalled for weeks, introduces extensive changes to the agreement, and can jeopardize the revenue and GP you have in your proposal…or even result in the deal going back out to bid and ultimately losing it altogether.
Read the document and if you have specific questions, post them here. I will answer them all. There are no dumb questions and the beauty of a blog is your identity remains anonymous. Also if there are sections you do understand that you need a talk track to work around, let me know.
It is critical to understand the document you present to your customer for signature, know your customer well enough to have an ideal of what they may object to, have a smooth talk track to address those issues, and do so in a credible and confident manner.
Offsite (www.offsiteequipment.com) provides a full suite of services for both independent dealers and national branches. Our services include:
- Outsourced administrative services on competitive lease end management. Offsite can contact your clients to remind them to send in their Letter of Intent for their old equipment, follow up for return shipping instructions, and manage their return shipping logistics.
- National network of warehouses available to pick up and store leased assets that cannot be returned early.
- Lease return shipping and copier moves.
- Outsourced lease administration, Offsite can process your deals for funding on a per transaction fee thus reducing dealers operating expenses.
- Program Agreement negotiation, back office consultation, lease sales training. Increase leased sales %, secure lower rates, increase credit approval percentage guaranteed.
Visit our website today at www.offsiteequipment.com . At Offsite, we know logistics and we know copier leasing, our services are second to none.
Good selling!
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