Dental equipment supplier equipment financing can be required for the dental supplier’s own inventory that they are requiring from a manufacturer or another distributor for the purposes of resale, and it can be required by the dental supplier’s customer who wants to purchase equipment from the supplier but will require equipment financing to complete the transaction.
There are different forms of inventory financing available, each with certain attributes with respect to rates and leverage provided.
For instance if a dental supplier has a line of credit through bank to financing inventory, they will have a low cost of financing, but the percentage of the asset value to be financed is going to be very small.
Asset based lenders will provide higher amounts of financing relative to the cost of the supplier’s inventory, but the cost of funds will also be higher in keeping with the higher level of lender risk.
The key to making higher ratio inventory financing cost effective is the amount of times you can turnover your inventory during the course of a year. The more turns, the lower the average cost of financing becomes.
Its also difficult to get dental supplier equipment inventory financing facilities for amounts under $200,000.
The other type of dental supplier equipment financing is financing that is arranged for the customer by a third party financing company that has qualified the dental supplier as a reputable supplier of equipment to this industry.
Being prequalified as a supplier with key equipment financing companies all transactions that are subject to financing to be reviewed and committed quickly, making this a key step in the successful completion of a sale transaction.
When the dental equipment supplier has an established relationship with a third party lender or leasing company, the signed sale transaction can be sent, with the customer’s permissions, directly from the supplier to the equipment financing company so that everything the customer requires to complete the sale can be handled within one process.
By not allowing or requiring the customer to go out and source his or her own source of dental equipment financing, the dental supplier has a much tighter sales process that will be less susceptible to competitive pressures which can discount or even lose the deal for the supplier.
Depending on the dental equipment supplier, both types of financing are going to be important and need to be in place and functioning properly for optimal results.
If you are in the dental equipment supply business where your primary customer is going to be dentists and dental practitioners, then you going to want to make sure that your target customer always has a readily available source of capital to complete any potential sales transaction.
And while dentists are typically very good credit risks who can get their own financing arranged without too much problem, the reality is that dentists are very busy people in their own right and are looking for “done for you” supplier solutions which include equipment financing options for any equipment they want to acquire.
Not only that, but supplier competition is typically very high for the dental industry, so getting the jump on the competition and getting a sale closed where financing is required as quickly as possible is a strategic advantage.
The reality is that while most dental equipment suppliers will typically have some alignment with sources of dental financing, these relationships are not optimal in many cases for a lot of different reasons.
First of all, if you are working direct with one lender, there is a number of risks you can run up against. Number one, direct lender relationships are most often for “A” credit customers and if your customer falls outside of the lender’s financing parameters, they don’t have any other options for your customer and the sale gets put at risk while the customer looks for other options which could land them on the doorstep of a competitor.
Number two, if your dentist customer has multiple locations, you run the risk of concentration issues with the lender you’re working with due to the fact that they are likely going to have a limit as to how much exposure they are prepared to have with one client.
Number three, even if you’re working with an equipment leasing broker who claims to have a number of lending sources, the reality could very well be that they only have one lending source that can do your deals with no other options to consider.
Number four, depending on your business model of product sale or service delivery, the dental equipment financing sources you are aligned with might not be making it easy for you to close the sale which is something that can likely be improved upon.
The best solution to make sure that your customers are happy and your sales are being maximized is to work through an equipment leasing broker who 1) has SEVERAL lender relationships to finance your customer requirements including both “A” and “B” credit profiles; 2) has experience facilitating dental customer financing requests and has a high success ratio. Every industry has its quirks and the dental financing industry is no different; and 3) has the capacity to provide the dedicated level of prompt customer service required to get deals closed quickly.
If you currently have a customer financing or vendor financing program in place, we suggest getting a free assessment to see how its performing and how it stacks up against other options in the market.
We provide a customized and customer focused service designed to quickly determine the best financing solution and then get financing is place so that your sale team can get deals closed and not have deals lost to the competitors from lags in the financing process.
If you’d like to know more about how our service works and how we can help you, please give us a call and we’ll go through a free assessment process of your existing financing programs to determine where we can bring more value to your customer financing options.