Sticker shock. Every salesperson’s worst nightmare (except for that one where you haven’t been to class all semester and there’s this big exam coming up and you’re not sure where the classroom even is…). There’s little worse than spending hours—or longer, depending on your sales cycle—ferreting out needs, working with the customer to come up with a best-fit solution and then having it all fall through because of that big scary number at the end. The answer? Don’t give the customer a big scary number at the end of the sales process. Instead, integrate financing early in the process and refer to it often. Make the mountain of the total price of a solution into the molehill of an easy monthly payment that doesn’t strain cash flow or use up existing credit lines.