The Answers - How To Increase Invoice Finance Client Numbers
For any factoring company, the question at the front of their minds must be: "How do we increase client numbers?". Well here are the answers. As part of our survey of existing invoice finance clients, we asked them to tell us what they thought invoice finance companies could do to increase the number of businesses using factoring and invoice discounting. These are the answers that they gave:
- 44% - Reduce the cost
- 36% - Promotion and advertising
- 7% - Change perceptions, rename or revamp it
- 7% - Don't know
- 4% - Promote the service not just funding
- 2% - Improve the service
- 2% - Offer more products
Analysis of The Findings
In line with other studies that we have conducted "cost" is an aspect that clients want reduced however, "promotion and advertising" has gained nearly as much support from this sample. These are a few actual quotes from users about how they think the industry could tackle promotion and advertising:
- "Promote it more, TV, radio, banks, magazines, online etc."
- "Big advertising campaign promoting benefits not just funding."
- "Big campaign to get all business aware that it exists."
- "Advertise, change the name as still bit of a stigma attached to "factoring"."
- "Promote the service as well as cash flow/funding benefits."
- "The independents need to promote it as a package . . ."
- "Change the perceptions of many businesses by promoting the full package. . ."
These comments from actual product users show support for a large-scale campaign to raise awareness of invoice finance and to promote it as a package of benefits e.g. credit control etc., rather than just as a funding product. The findings also suggest support for a revamp of how invoice finance is packaged.
It is also interesting to note the first comment, where the respondent has suggested that "banks" should be doing more to promote invoice finance. This would be a key channel for raising awareness as this same piece of research identified that 51% of the businesses surveyed had found their way to invoice finance via their bank.
Sources: Study of Invoice Finance Users February 2015
Note: Some respondents may have given multiple answers to this question.
