Applications, Approvals & Close Percentage: What Your Financing Metrics Are Really Telling You

Applications, approvals and close percentage can reveal where your financing strategy is working—and where there may be opportunities to improve.

Your financing numbers should tell you more than how you're performing.

It's easy to look at financing performance as one big number.

Are we getting enough approvals? Are we financing enough customers? Is the program working?

But those questions don't always tell you where the opportunity actually is.

At FormPiper, we encourage businesses to pay attention to three distinct metrics:

Applications. Approvals. Close percentage.

Each tells a different part of the story. And, as FormPiper VP of Sales Operations Austin Fowler explains, each can point toward a very different next step.

1. Applications: Are Customers Engaging With Financing?

Start at the beginning.

How many customers are actually completing financing applications?

If application volume is lower than you'd like, immediately adding another Provider may not solve the problem. First, look at adoption.

Ask questions like:

- A great financing program can't do much if customers never reach the application.

That's why FormPiper talks so much about introducing financing Early & Often.

And “early and often” isn't limited to the conversation your team has with a customer.

It's also about where financing shows up.

A link on your website. A QR code on direct mail. A link in an email or text. Signage inside your business. A financing link within customer-facing technology.

The easier financing is to find, the more opportunities customers have to engage with it.

Low applications may be an adoption and visibility opportunity.

2. Approvals: Does Your Provider Lineup Cover Your Customers?

If customers are applying but aren't receiving enough approvals or useful payment options, it's time to look further down the funnel.

Now the question becomes:

Do you have the right lender lineup?

Customers don't all arrive with the same financial profile. Relying on a limited lender lineup can leave gaps in your financing strategy.

That's where the concept of the Perfect Lender Lineup becomes important.

Depending on the business and its customers, that may mean building a financing waterfall that includes Lenders designed to serve different credit profiles and financing needs.

With FormPiper, Applicants complete one application that can connect them to multiple payment options—rather than requiring them to start over with separate applications each time one option doesn't work.

If applications are healthy but approvals aren't, your lender lineup may deserve a closer look.

3. Close Percentage: Are Approvals Turning Into Business?

Now imagine applications are coming in.

Applicants are getting approved.

But those approvals aren't consistently turning into completed transactions.

That's a different problem.

And adding more lenders or generating more applications may not fix it.

Instead, look at what happens after approval.

Does your team follow up?

Are employees comfortable explaining payment options?

Do they know how to help customers understand the next step?

Is financing being presented as a normal way to pay—or only brought up when a customer says they can't afford the total?

This is where training, coaching and process become especially important.

Your financing technology can create the opportunity. Your team still plays an important role in helping the customer move forward.

If applications and approvals are healthy but close percentage isn't, there may be a coaching or process opportunity.

Three Numbers. Three Different Actions.

This is why looking at “financing performance” as one broad metric can be misleading.

A business with an application problem doesn't necessarily need the same solution as a business with an approval problem.

And neither necessarily needs the same solution as a business with a closing problem.

Think of the three metrics as a diagnostic:

Applications → Adoption
Are customers engaging with financing?

Approvals → Provider Lineup
Are Applicants getting the right opportunities?

Close Percentage → Training & Process
Are approvals becoming completed transactions?

The goal isn't simply to collect more data.

It's knowing what to do with it.

What If Applications Are the Problem?

That's where the next question becomes interesting:

How easy is it for customers to find your financing application?

Financing doesn't have to live only at checkout—or depend entirely on an employee remembering to bring it up.

Custom FormPiper Links and QR codes can create direct paths to your application from your website, email, text messages, direct mail, signage and connected customer-facing technology.

In other words:

Put financing where customers can find it.