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Lease Maestro Checks into Print4Pay Hotel

Years ago I can remember reading an article that stated something to the effect that an average CEO achieved greatness by surrounding him/her with great employees. 

 

I've always envisioned the Print4Pay Hotel forums as the place to go in the Office Equipment Industry to ask questions, glean knowledge, along with getting quick and timely answers that can help us sell more and provide for our families. Thus, I'm always thinking of ways to add value to our Print4Pay Hotel members.

 

Today, the Print4Pay Hotel forums welcomes our newest member aka "Lease Maestro".  Lease Maestro will monitor the forums and answer to the best of their ability any and all questions that are related to leasing.  Leasing plays such an important part in our business that I think it's awesome to have a dedicated professional with 25 years plus experience to help us when we have some of those difficult questions. 

 

It's my general belief that many dealers and direct channels are not educating their sales teams about all of the leasing options/solutions that are available to them on a daily basis.  

 

For instance, if you're confronted with a prospect who does not want to lease and only wants to buy, and that prospect then tells you that they don't have the money to purchase the system now.  WHAT DO YOU DO?

 

It's obvious in this case (I've seen it over and over), that the prospect does not want to lease because they have been conditioned that they will not pay the interest that is associated with a 36, 48 or 60 month lease.  They want to own the equipment!

 

Many years ago when I was a rookie, I was presented with that objection from the prospect.  I couldn't get past the objection and didn't get the sale.

 

So, the next time when my leasing rep visited our office for training (remember when they used to do that), I posed that objection to them.  The solution was to offer the prospect a "bakers dozen" lease. The "bakers dozen" enables the customer to make 13 lease payments and they then own the equipment.  You take the purchase price divide by 12 for the monthly payment and then wright the lease for 13 payments.  The 13th payment is the interest on the lease (check with your leasing company before doing this). The next time I was presented with the same scenario, I presented the "bakers dozen", got the order and still use the "bakers dozen" approach to this day. 

 

OK, so there are many financial solutions that are available, however, for some reason it seems these solutions don't make it to the sales teams. 

 

Lease Maestro will be our virtual leasing expert!  In the next 30 days or so, Lease Maestro will be have a weekly featured blog on our site and will run once blog a week for 25 weeks.

 

You can check out Lease Maestro's wall page here and it would be awesome to welcome them to our site.

 

-=Good Selling=-

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Comments (3)

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Hello Garrett - 

 

The dreaded "Evergreen" clause.  This clause has caused many problems customer and dealers over the years. Depending on your situation, it may be tough for you to get the customer out of the contract early without some significant work on yours and the customers part.  

 

Based on your comment of "win the business", I am assuming that you are not the original dealer that put the customer into the lease with the an "Evergreen" renewal clause.  If this is the case, there is a good chance the leasing company may not speak to you regarding the contract and any payoff's.  

 

Here are my thoughts on what can be done:

1.) What state is the customer located in?  I ask as several states have enacted laws regulating automatically "Evergreening" contracts.  If the customer is in WI, IL or NY, there is a good chance the leasing company may not have followed the rules.  If so, your customer will need to push the leasing company to settle the dispute before the issue is escalated to the courts/attorney general of the state for violating the laws regarding "Evergreening" contracts.

2.) If the customer is not in one of these states or the leasing company followed the rules for these states, you will want your customer to contact the leasing company and plead for goodwill.  Many leasing company employees have rules to follow but are willing to make concessions if they approached in a professional manner and the customer makes a good case on how both parties can win.  Make sure you are coaching your customer on a real value of the equipment at this time (include back-up on similar machines with costs) and have the customer remind the leasing company they have made a fair profit with the lease.  Offer a fair price to close out the contract - the actual value of the equipment and include the current lease payment and any open taxes & fee's.  Buying the equipment will encourage the leasing company to settle as they will not have to worry about remarketing the equipment.  If the leasing company has already collected a few renewal payments, this would ensure they are making money on this deal.

3.) If the above approach does not work or you cannot come to an agreement on the price, then the next step is to start being aggressive. Most leasing companies do not want to deal with the customer multiple times, especially on nominal amounts.  The more of a pain the customer is, the better the chance the leasing company will give (after initially refusing to make an accommodation) in as they are spending too much time working on this one deal.  If the lease end agent will not work with you, ask for their supervisor.  If the supervisor will not work with you, ask for their manager and so on until you find the person that will work with you. Write emails and letters to the CEO and VP's letting them know their company is being unethical.  File a BBB complaint with your local BBB agency.   Make their life difficult and there is a good chance they will give in to get rid of the problem.

 

Just so you are aware, the original dealer will most likely be notified that a customer is calling in on a lease and they may be notified and given a heads up to call the customer and work on the upgrade.  Also, many dealers are receiving a portion of the renewal payments on leases that evergreen and they have negotiated contracts with the leasing company that they are the only party that can break the "Evergreen" as long as they are doing an upgrade with the leasing company.  

 

Good luck with your customer and if you have any additional questions, please let me know.

 

Thanks, 

Lease Maestro

What are the best options to getting around an "evergreen" clause in a prospects lease contract?  Specifically, if the clause renews the contract for 1 full year & they missed the timeframe to provide written notice to cancel?

 

Is the prospect obligated to make every payment?  Is there a way for me to win the business without having to refinance that full year of "evergreen" payments into the new lease?

 

Your input would be appreciated.

 

--Garrett

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