When Sound Inc. noticed that more of its customers were shifting away from owning their own hardware, Steve Kocimski, director of sales at Sound Inc. in Naperville, IL, knew it was time to rethink how the company positions its equipment and service offerings. “Whether it be hosted voice or cloud computing, customers have the mindset of operational costs vs. capital purchases,” says Kocimski.
Sound Inc. wanted to find a partner that could help it launch an as-a-service model. After contacting NSCA, it learned about NSCA Business Accelerator GreatAmerica and its financing services. Several months later, Sound Inc.’s Sound Decision program was born; it’s a program designed to let Sound Inc. sell its hardware and service to customers for a single monthly payment.
“In one year’s time, we’ve increased our sales somewhere around five times,” says Kocimski. Those additional sales will turn into a recurring, five-year sales pipeline when those customers refresh their equipment.
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Because GreatAmerica pays Sound Inc. for the equipment and labor, Sound Inc. doesn’t have to worry about slow cashflow, calling the customer to collect down payments or final payments, or increased DSO (or “days sales outstanding,” which is the average number of days that receivables remain outstanding before they are collected).
Sound Inc. simply creates an invoice and sends it to GreatAmerica to get a customer’s project started, billing for a portion of the project upfront. GreatAmerica pays it and then bills Sound Inc.’s customer for that down payment. Once the project is complete, Sound Inc. invoices GreatAmerica for the remaining amount. GreatAmerica pays the invoice and then collects from Sound Inc.’s customer.
With GreatAmerica’s help, Sound Inc. now provides customers with the payment options they wanted – and experiences better cashflow and lower DSO as a result.
