The eleven-point sentence

How much does mentioning financing change the close rate?

Eleven points, from 38% to 49%. That is a 29% relative lift from one topic.1

This is a correlation, and I'd rather say so here than have a sales manager find out the hard way. Reps who bring up financing might just be better reps, and better reps close more of everything. The cleaner test is the same rep with and without financing across their own appointments. That cut is in the next data pull, and if the lift shrinks, we'll print that too.

The room isn't the same size in every trade, either. A kitchen and bath appointment runs a median of 73 minutes; an HVAC appointment, 42.4 In a 42-minute appointment there may only be one natural place to bring up the monthly number, which is one more reason to plan where it goes.

My read, from listening to a lot of these recordings: financing lands better before the price than after it. Before, it is a plain fact about how people pay for a roof or a kitchen. After, it sounds like a rescue.

Why don't homeowners bring it up themselves?

Most of them aren't thinking about it until somebody at the table does.

Synchrony, which provides contractor financing, surveyed 1,522 homeowners in September 2025. Three in four consumers knew contractor financing exists, but only one in three had ever used it.2 The federal numbers are starker. Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies, working from the Census Bureau's American Housing Survey, found that 76% of 2023 home improvement projects were paid for mainly with cash and 2% mainly with contractor-arranged financing.3

The same Synchrony study found seven in ten homeowners lack enough set aside for repairs, and 48% had delayed or canceled a project because of economic pressures.2 The Federal Reserve's survey of nearly 13,000 adults, fielded in October 2025, found 63% would cover a $400 emergency expense with cash or its equivalent, and 22% had been hit with a major house or appliance repair they didn't plan for in the prior 12 months.5

Savings still pays for most jobs, according to the 2026 Houzz & Home study of 10,176 renovating homeowners on Houzz.6 But a third of renovators already put part of the project on a card. Those homeowners are financing already, on whatever card they had.

Does other research see the same effect?

Yes, measured a different way.

ServiceTitan, which sells software to contractors, reports that contractors on its platform who offered financing saw 12% higher close rates and 13% higher tickets. Its 2025 consumer report, made with Synchrony and Visa, doesn't publish how that was measured.7

The federal data shows the ticket side. In 2023, projects paid with contractor-arranged financing averaged $10,600, against $5,000 for projects paid from savings and $4,000 for projects put on a credit card.3 Bigger jobs are the ones that get financed in the first place, so much of that gap is probably project size.

ServiceTitan's comparison is between contractors who offer a program and contractors who don't. Ours is between appointments where financing was actually said out loud and appointments where it wasn't. A company can have a great program and a rep who never mentions it.

How many other quotes is the homeowner getting?

In roofing, usually two more. Almost nobody gets just yours.

Roofing Contractor surveyed 127 homeowners in August 2025 with Owens Corning, which makes roofing. 66% said they would gather three quotes for a roof, and 1% said they would accept one.8 That is one trade and a small panel. I haven't found a larger, recent survey that counts quotes across trades.

My guess is that when a homeowner is holding two or three numbers, the one with a monthly figure next to it is the easiest to say yes to. The same-rep financing cut will tell us.

What makes a homeowner pick one contractor over another?

Trust and a track record, in the surveys that ask. Price never drops out.

Leaf Home, which sells home improvement products and services, had Morning Consult survey 2,074 homeowners in November 2024. Nearly 70% said they worry about unreliable contractors, and 61% put the most trust in word-of-mouth recommendations when choosing one.9 In the roofing survey, asked what decides it between two companies, 46% pointed to proven experience and roofing certifications and 17% to the sales rep they met with.8

Price still counts. In an October 2025 survey of 1,040 homeowners by Housecall Pro, which sells software to home service businesses, 97% said transparent pricing matters when hiring, and 72% said they would pay 10% more for a company with a better service reputation.10 Mantel, which sells sales software to home service companies, surveyed 422 homeowners who shopped for heating and cooling systems in 2025. 69% searched for pricing online and only 15% found it very clear.11

If I were writing the proposal template, the monthly figure would sit on the same page as the total, not on a separate financing sheet.

What else separates winning conversations?

Giving options and talking less, as far as the public data goes.

In a 2025 survey of more than 1,000 contractors that Thrive Analytics ran for ServiceTitan, 54% of thriving businesses gave three options on at least half their jobs. Struggling businesses did so on fewer than 10% of jobs.12 That links options to healthy businesses, not to close rate on a single appointment.

Gong, which records sales calls for B2B teams, analyzed 326,000 calls of 10 minutes or more in 2025. Reps talked 57% of the time in deals they won and 62% in deals they lost.13 Those were B2B calls, not kitchen tables. I'd expect the in-home version to be louder on the rep's side. We'll know when the talk-ratio cut comes back.