Guides: marketing customer financing as a plumbing company

Does offering financing pay?

The close-rate maths guide walks through a four-step calculation: separate your large jobs, find your baseline close rate and margin, add the program's cost, and work out the break-even lift. It uses example numbers you replace with your own.

You'll learn why financing costs you something even on jobs you would have won anyway, why comparing salespeople can fool you, and how to run a fair 90-day test. If the maths says financing won't pay for your job mix, that's a perfectly good outcome; you've saved yourself a program you don't need.

How do I advertise it honestly?

The advertising guide summarises the Canadian rules that touch a plumbing financing ad: the Competition Act's rules on misleading claims and drip pricing, credit-disclosure duties that depend on the type of lender, CASL for texts and emails, provincial consumer-protection offices and Quebec's French-language requirements.

It ends with a ten-point checklist to run before any ad, web page or quote sheet goes live. It links every official source and is clear that it isn't legal advice.

What should I ask a lender before signing?

The program-selection guide lists 25 questions, grouped by regulatory status, costs, marketing rules, customer experience, privacy and exit terms. It also gives you a side-by-side comparison table and a list of red flags.

We don't name or recommend lenders. The guide is about comparing offers on equal terms, and especially about the marketing rules that decide what you're allowed to say once you've signed.

How the guides connect to our services

Each guide stands alone, but they follow the same order as a typical engagement:

1. Decide whether financing is worth it (maths guide).
2. Choose the program (program-selection guide), then use our program launch kit to put it into practice.
3. Present it accurately (advertising guide), through financing pages and ads.
4. Measure it with funnel reporting.

A note on sources

Where a guide mentions a law, regulator or program, it links to the official source and lists it with the date we checked it. Rules and programs change, so confirm current details with the source, your lender or your adviser. Regional differences are covered on our areas pages.

Who these guides are for

They're written for owners and managers of plumbing companies of any size, from a single truck to several crews. A one-truck operator will get the most from the maths guide, because a single extra large job a month can change the year. A multi-crew company will get more from the program-selection and advertising guides, because the risk of inconsistent messaging grows with every new technician.

Office managers and estimators will find the advertising checklist useful too. It's the kind of list you can print and keep beside the quote templates.

What the guides don't cover

We deliberately leave some topics out:

• Borrower advice. We don't tell homeowners whether to borrow, and we don't compare rates.
• Lender recommendations. We don't name or rank lenders.
• Legal interpretation. We summarise rules and link to official sources; your lawyer interprets them for your situation.
• Plumbing technique. We're not a contractor and don't write about how to do the work.

How to use them with your team

A simple approach: read the maths guide yourself, run the numbers, and decide. Share the advertising checklist with whoever writes your ads and quotes. Bring the program-selection questions to your next lender meeting. Then, if you'd like help putting it into practice, look at the services overview or pricing.

If something in a guide doesn't match your experience, tell us. Call, text or email; we'd rather fix a guide than leave it wrong.