I have talked about Section 179 a lot, and how companies can use this great tax deduction to buy equipment that improves their operations and production. 

I have also talked about using Section 179 to sell more. In other words, if you sell equipment that is eligible for the Section 179 deduction, reminding your B2B customers that Section 179 can effectively lower the price of your goods is a winning strategy.

But that second part falls on deaf ears all the time. It’s almost like companies really don’t believe me when I tell them Section 179 is an awesome marketing tool. So I wish there was some way I could prove it. Then the answer came to me – Buyers are already proving this via the act of buying. 

Here’s what I mean:

If you are saying to yourself “hey, let’s take advantage of Section 179 and buy those updated widgets”, you just “sold” yourself equipment because of the Section 179 deduction. So is it fair to ask that the day before you thought of this, if a company making that same equipment said “buy our stuff and use Section 179 to save”, would that have prodded you? After all, you were clearly primed and ready.

See what I’m getting at? 

So use this same logic on your own products. Out of the 30+ million businesses in the USA, there are thousands (and perhaps millions) who will decide to buy products like yours over the next few months. And most of them will do such with the Section 179 deduction in mind. So you have companies who need your product and already have Section 179 in the back of their minds. How much will it take to trigger those two things and make them come together and buy from you? Not much at all. Trust me on this – I’ve seen companies raise sales time and time again using Section 179. 

One more time for clarity: If you use the Section 179 deduction to buy equipment, then you’ve already proven to yourself that using Section 179 to SELL equipment works.  It’s just looking at it from another angle, that’s all.

Ask us at Crest Capital about this – we help our vendor partners sell more all the time by using Section 179 as a marketing tool along with equipment financing.

As you can tell from reading here, I’m pretty excited about Section 179 being raised to one million dollars. It’s a huge boost for companies, and to me, makes complete sense. Because when you allow a full tax deduction for equipment purchases, more companies will buy equipment – it’s really that simple. And that helps everyone – buyers and sellers both.

Let’s talk about equipment sellers today, and the huge sales gift that the IRS is (and always was) giving them. Because if you aren’t using Section 179 to help you sell equipment, you are missing out.

Now on the surface, you would think that it’s not a big deal for equipment sellers to tout Section 179. After all, assuming the equipment qualifies (most does), the deduction is available to every buyer, and all eligible equipment, regardless of manufacturer, can get the deduction. In other words, two identical machine manufacturers can both say their product is Section 179 eligible. So it can seem a little like an auto manufacturer saying “our car has wheels”.

Ahh, but there’s a difference. All car buyers are aware of the wheels (I hope so, anyway). But not all equipment buyers are aware of Section 179.  

Yes, believe it or not, there are thousands, perhaps even millions, of executives and business owners that are not aware of the Section 179 Deduction on a day to day basis. Oh, they will be aware of it when they visit their accountant at tax time, and the accountant gives them the pleasant surprise of a big deduction. But how many business owners would have bought more had they been aware of / reminded about about Section 179 earlier in the year?

There is no doubt in my mind that if every business owner in the United States was magically made fully aware of Section 179 tomorrow that equipment sales would spike markedly by weeks’ end.

So yes, using Section 179 to help sell more is, without question, a viable and desirable business strategy.  And lastly, who cares if your competition can technically do it also? They aren’t reading this blog – you are. Get a leg up.

Next time, I’ll talk about specific strategies you can use.