The pitch call, line by line

1. The false familiarity

“Hey — following up on the file that came across my desk. We spoke a couple weeks ago?”

You did not speak. The opener exists to buy four seconds of "wait, did we?" instead of an immediate hang-up. In a room, this is called warming the dial. What is true is that they do have a file on you: your UCC filing, bought from a list vendor. Here is how that works.

The sentence that ends it: "We have not spoken. Where did you get this number?" Then write down the answer, because the answer is evidence.

2. The pre-approval

“Good news — you're pre-approved for up to $150,000, we just need to confirm a couple things.”

Nothing has been approved, because nothing has been underwritten. "Pre-approved for up to" is a number chosen to be flattering, calculated off your estimated deposits from the same list. Its job is to move you from "no thanks" to "well, how much exactly", which is the first commitment in the script. The real number arrives after the statements, and it is always smaller.

The tell: approval before documents. Ask what the approval was based on. There is no good answer.

3. The statement grab

“Just shoot over your last four months of bank statements and I'll get you real numbers today. No obligation, no credit impact.”

This is the actual objective of the call. Four months of business bank statements are the currency of this industry: they can be shopped to a dozen funders at once, and in some rooms they are traded or resold. Once your statements are circulating, the calls multiply — you have gone from a name on a list to a documented, live file.

Before you send anything: ask, in writing, (a) which specific funders the file will be submitted to, (b) whether they will be submitted simultaneously, and (c) whether any hard credit inquiry will be made. "Soft pull" claims are common and often loose. Get it in email.

4. The comfort-level anchor

“What kind of monthly payment are you comfortable with?”

You are being asked to price the deal against your cash flow rather than against the cost of the money — the one framing in which a 1.49 factor sounds fine, because $520 a day sounds survivable. Answer with a cost question instead: total repayment, all fees, and the term. Then run it. Calculator.

5. Manufactured urgency

“I can hold this at today's rate but the funder's allocation closes at 5 — after that I can't promise this pricing.”

Allocations do not close at 5pm. Pricing on a file that is genuinely approvable does not evaporate overnight. Urgency exists because the script's conversion rate collapses when a merchant has a night to think, or an hour with an accountant.

The sentence that ends it: "If it is a real offer today it will be a real offer Monday. Send the full terms in writing and I'll look at them tomorrow." Note what happens next — a genuine funder sends the paperwork.

6. The bait and switch

“So the bank line we discussed didn't come back the way I wanted — but I got you approved on a short-term product instead. Same money, we just move a little faster.”

The call opened as a line of credit, an SBA loan, or "bank-rate financing". It ends as a four-month advance at a factor rate. Sometimes the first product was never available; other times it was, and the advance simply pays the broker more. Ask directly what the broker's compensation is on each product. You will learn a lot from the response, including from a refusal.

7. The fee that appears late

“There's just an origination and a standard underwriting fee, comes right off the top — everybody has that.”

Points taken off the top raise the real cost sharply, because you pay the factor on the full purchased amount while receiving less cash. A $50,000 advance with $2,500 in fees is a $47,500 advance priced as $50,000. Put every fee into the calculator's fee box and watch the APR move.

8. The stack pitch

“You're about 60% paid down on the first position — that means you qualify for a second. Most of my clients run two.”

This call comes on schedule, because your paydown percentage is estimable from the filing date. A second position does not add to the first; it compounds against the same deposits, and it is an event of default under most first-position agreements. Run both positions and look at the weekly number before anything else.

9. The rescue call

“I saw you're having some trouble with your current position — we do consolidations, one payment, cut your daily in half.”

This arrives once you are visibly struggling, and it is the same list logic pointed at distress instead of at growth. Some consolidations are real; many are a larger advance at a worse effective rate with a longer term, or a "reverse consolidation" that lends you the money to make your own payments. Read the distress playbook before you take this call seriously.