So you’re out in the field or on the phone selling credit card processing.
Maybe you’re managing a team of credit card processing sales people, and in the back of
your mind you keep getting this question that says, “Is merchant sales getting harder?”
You know when you have all these competitors like Square and Stripe and we have all these
different point of sale systems.
So one of the questions I get asked a lot in my consulting practice is you know is this
just a losing battle?
Is it just getting harder and harder?
So I’ve got some really interesting thoughts about that, that I wanted to share with today.
#1.
The answer to the primary question is no, it’s not getting harder; it’s getting
different.
It’s changing.
Just like everything, things change.
Okay and so I guess I would say merchant sales is getting harder, if you’re doing the same
thing that you did for the last 10 years and you haven’t changed at all.
Right?
But merchant sales in many ways is actually getting easier, if you’re changing and you’re
adapting to the new way of doing things.
What do I mean by this?
Well, a couple of key things that you need to understand.
Number one, you need to understand the concept of hyper-targeting is what I call it.
The idea of hyper-targeting means you need to start targeting verticals.
Now that doesn’t mean that I only walk into hair salons.
Maybe I only walk into hair salons, auto repair, and pizza shops, but for each of those I have
a unique value proposition.
So the concept of hyper-targeting is these companies now, these businesses, they want
more from their payment processor.
They don’t just want cheaper rate.
They want more than that.
So you have to be prepared to offer that to them.
You have to know what’s the point of sale options that I have for this particular vertical?
What is the terminal options I have?
What does the terminal do?
Like what are the unique barriers to selling this particular vertical.
So if you’re not thinking that way out in the field, again you may be literally walking
into every business on the street, which I think is still a great strategy, but if you’re
walking into every business with the same pitch and the same value proposition, yes,
it’s probably going to seem a lot harder to you because business owners, they don’t
all want the same thing anymore.
They want different things.
So you have to start adjusting to that reality in the market place because you’re not operating
in a vacuum.
You have competitors and you have to adjust to that.
So I think on the short term like right now, is it just so much harder than it was 3, 4,
5 years ago?
No, it’s not.
It’s just different.
It’s changing and you have to adjust to that kind of hyper-targeting.
Now the second question though I would look at is more of a long term.
You know is this a losing battle over the next you know 5 years, 10 years?
Because you know you look at changes like cryptocurrency.
You look at changes like Square and Stripe and PayPal and even Amazon you know getting
into the game and Google and like what’s going to happen to the payment processing
industry?
One of the interesting themes that I’ve seen over time here is that every time some
new thing gets rolled out that’s going to be the industry changing, blow everything
away, there is one detail that gets forgotten and that is small business owners are actually
super hard to sell.
So there’s always going to be a need for an army of sales people that know how to get
small business owners to take action, and to be able to sell a small business owner.
I think one of the key things, if you’re looking at long term, how are things going
to play out with crypto and different things like that?
I don’t know.
You don’t know either and there is no expert that can tell you how it’s going to play
out.
Nobody knows.
Right?
Look at Apple Pay.
What a great example?
Right?
When Apple Pay gets rolled out, everybody is freaking out because they are like, “Oh
my goodness, Apple is in the payment space.
It’s all over.”
Well, there is two things that actually happened and if you go back and watch my videos from
when it rolled out, this is the two things I said were going to happen literally before
Apple Pay was even live.
Number one, I said that they’re going to run it on the same rails as everything else.
Why?
Because they need merchants to accept Apple Pay.
The only way to get merchants to accept Apple Pay is if there is a whole bunch of sales
people out in the field, thousands of them from all the different ISO’s getting them
to accept Apple Pay and that’s exactly what happened.
Right?
Number two, I said just because they are a big company doesn’t mean they are going
to dominate the marketplace and they didn’t.
Apple Pay is miniscule compared to the larger scheme of things.
Why?
Because they didn’t actually have any concrete benefit for consumers and merchants.
So it doesn’t really matter.
So don’t get yourself all worked up about these big changes because what really all
you need to focus on is this.
If you’re keeping track of what’s happening in the payments industry, following our content
and others like it, right?
So you know kind of what’s going on.
Continue to develop your skill set at selling small business owners.
It is an art, an absolute art.
I’m telling you right now it is an art form.
It is a skill.
It is a very valuable skill and I promise you that ten years from today, the skill of
being able to walk into a small business owner off the street, or call them and schedule
an appointment, and then walk in and talk to them and convince them to do something
they weren’t planning to do, that is an extremely valuable skill set.
Now how is it going to relate to the payments industry?
I don’t know.
What exactly are you going to be selling in five years or ten years?
I don’t know, but I do know that skill set is going to continue to be valuable.
So whether you’re managing a team, or you’re an individual agent, continue to work on developing
your skill set and how to close merchants and sell merchant accounts and don’t use
the excuse because certainly right now it’s not any harder to sell merchant services at
all.
I know people that are selling more than they’ve ever sold and they’re walking in cold turkey.
I know people that sell 15, 20 accounts every month like clock work purely from prospecting
with no leads.
It’s not that hard, but it has changed and you need to have a unique value proposition
for these different verticals and then develop that sales skill and get better and better
at selling small business owners.
My name is James Shepherd.
Have an awesome day!