[Andy]

Interesting scenario i ran into today, wondering how you pro's would handle it. So Mr. merchant tells me he is doing 20k/month and has credit around a 530 looking for 60k. He tells me he's looking for 13k (reasonable request) to expand his cleaning service, the rest is to pay off company vehicles and a family member. As i start to ball park the amount of money we could put together (10-15k) in reference to what he told me he was looking to accomplish with the 13k, he informed me he has an offer from Rapid for 52k, on a 12 month term at a 12% interest rate. Everything i know tells me this is not possible but as i am communicating this to the merchant he insists that he has the offer in hand. Is this just another sales rep trying to keep him from shopping with (unrealistic) projections? Is there some unique advance product offered by Rapid that can realistically make this offer? Any suggestions for handling this type of objection in the future? Thanks for any insights

In situations like those, you tell the merchant you would be more than happy to go twist your underwriters arm to make him match or beat it, however you cant do so until you get a copy of the competitor contracts. No offense to you mr merchant, but plenty of people have said some outlandish offers, UW will not even listen to me unless I can come to him with an offer in writing. But if you can send me that contract my underwriters will beat it. And if he does not have a contract, then you can explain to him how its just someone promising him the world, bait and switch, its just not realistic.

[Michael I]

Ride Extreme,

I think you make some good points, but I wanted to add to the discussion between you and John Galt.



I agree, and maybe he shouldn't fill it out. If his FICO score is 480 where is he going to get approved at anyway? If he has tax liens outstanding with no payment plan on them and they are very large tax liens, he isn't going to get approved/funded anyway. So why even have him fill the application out?



Actually it's a waste of everybody's time, your time, the merchant's time, the data entry team at your Funder's time, and the Underwriting Team at your Funder's time to go through these "procedures" with a merchant that doing pre-qualification on at the beginning will tell you he clearly doesn't qualify for anything.




Okay but that's a bait and switch. Why not just tell him that our industry approves based on 5% - 10% of your gross annual sales, so if you are doing $600,000 a year expect an approval of $30,000 - $60,000 for this product. So maybe you can get him $40,000 on an MCA and to raise the additional $160,000 maybe he also have outstanding commercial receivables? You can do some A/R factoring on the side. Then maybe he has some commercial equipment that's already paid off? Maybe you can also do a Sale-Leaseback on that equipment as well to further help raise the additional $160,000.





And this here is the problem as I outlined above. We aren't paid on application submissions. We are paid on fundings. It's a complete and utter waste of time for you to sit on the phone "convincing" guys to just "shoot you over an app" if the deal isn't pre-qualified to the point where you at least "think" you can fund it.

Unless you are getting paid on application submissions, this approach might do nothing but just clog up your Funder's pipeline with tons of apps and no approvals.

Some Funders might just cut you off altogether if it becomes a pattern.

In situations like those, you tell the merchant you would be more than happy to go twist your underwriters arm to make him match or beat it, however you cant do so until you get a copy of the competitor contracts. No offense to you mr merchant, but plenty of people have said some outlandish offers, UW will not even listen to me unless I can come to him with an offer in writing. But if you can send me that contract my underwriters will beat it. And if he does not have a contract, then you can explain to him how its just someone promising him the world, bait and switch, its just not realistic.

andy , what does a contract mean ? All the contracts in the industry are not binding to the lender as they can underwrite and decline on the one yard line . A Lot of lenders let big iso create docs by themselves and anyone can type anything in . Its a scam tactic called bait and switch . Call the bluff, it will never fund

[AndyYSCISOdept]

andy , what does a contract mean ? All the contracts in the industry are not binding to the lender as they can underwrite and decline on the one yard line . A Lot of lenders let big iso create docs by themselves and anyone can type anything in . Its a scam tactic called bait and switch . Call the bluff, it will never fund

Unfortunately you are spot on, and it has become a lot more prevalent because as any salesman knows once a merchant has gone through all the work of signing docs they are "pot committed" and are much more likely to accept a greatly reduced offer than to walk away.

[Andy]

Unfortunately you are spot on, and it has become a lot more prevalent because as any salesman knows once a merchant has gone through all the work of signing docs they are "pot committed" and are much more likely to accept a greatly reduced offer than to walk away.

In my experience it is far more likely that the merchant is lying or exaggerating the approval, then that the competitor sent them bull**** contracts. The point of asking for the contracts is to call the merchant on their bluff. Especially when they are claiming they have an approval that any sales rep in the industry recognizes as too good to be true.

And this is still the step that I would follow. Even if merchant can produce the contract, and you know that its bull****, tell them go ahead and sign it! Tell them whats going to happen, let them go through the motions, and they will come back to you and respect your wisdom and judgment and be a loyal client for years.