How to be a Successful Merchant Services Sales Agent

www.ShawMerchantGroup.com

Starting your own small business is a fantastic way to build an income. Whether you already have a full-time job and you’re looking to develop your second income, or you want to become a full-time business owner yourself, there are many markets you can go into. One lucrative market you can enter is that of a merchant services agent, also known as a credit card processing agent. Within this market, how much you are able to generate is determined by the amount of work you put into selling merchant accounts. Leading sales representatives can generate over $100k per year using fantastic sales techniques alongside hard work and grinding.

Due to the competitive nature of the market, as well as unfortunate stereotypes that are commonly attached with salespeople, getting your foot into the door can be challenging at first. Many people may have felt selling mislead or even lied to by merchants in the past, which has made it difficult to become a credit card processing reseller. Here are some steps to help you in your journey to selling merchant services and developing the six-figure income you have always dreamt of.

Know the Ins and Outs of Your Business

When it comes to selling merchant accounts, you cannot undermine the importance of knowing your product. Within the market, there are very few merchants who are actually able to make sense of their merchant statement. Even those with experience within the industry may not completely aware of the details, which is a fantastic way to help you stand out from the competition.

By understanding the economics behind selling merchant accounts you are able to efficiently explain the cost-savings opportunity that you are providing. You will be able to answer any questions that are thrown in your direction, which will help to fill your potential client with confidence.

The second benefit of understanding your business is that you can understand the financial impact from your perspective. It is known throughout the industry that the best sales agents understand how much profit is built into each merchant account. This knowledge can be used in a variety of ways, especially when it comes to selling. You will be able to determine which deals are best and when you should choose to walk away. Understanding your business is the best way of understanding how to sell merchant services.

Develop Your Own Sales Plan

In order to produce the highest number of merchant services sales, you must build and refine your sales plan. Every top sales agent within the credit card processing industry has an understanding of how they go about their day to day business. They understand how they can increase their monthly income and how to sell. However, there is no 'optimal plan of attack'. Every agent builds up their own plan that works around their routine and style of selling. Some may choose to target certain parts of the industry, whilst others may make use of referrals or cold calls. Many agents will choose to do a mix of all three of these options to decipher the best results. Learn what works for you and then build upon this foundation to optimize your sales ability.

Build Long-Term Relationships with Local Businesses

Within the industry, building up long-term relationships is crucial so that you can become a successful merchant account reseller. Unfortunately, many sales reps will choose to make a sale, then move onto other opportunities to increase their revenue. There are several faults in this tactic and in the long run, it will work against you. Whilst you are scanning the market for the next sale, it is common for your clients to be approached by competitors within the market. Here, they will be offered cheaper rates, as well as other enticing deals. By building up long-term relationships with your client base, you can protect and build your portfolio. Your unique relationship with the local business will differentiate you from competitors and will become a key selling point when it comes to expanding your own portfolio.

Focus on Referrals

At the end of the day, cold calling is not the most efficient way to make a sale. For many people, it can be outright draining. At the start of your business there is no way around it. At the start of your career, it is simply something you will have to. However, it is not something that you will have to do forever. Referrals will become the most efficient and eventually the best way to grow your business. There are a number of ways in which you can get the most from referrals and become a successful merchant services agent.

Start by setting up a streamlined way in which you interact with your clients, allowing you to maximize your referral potential. Begin by informing your client that you will be back for referrals after you have proven the value of your services. This should be done from the very onset of your relationship, this way you can set the expectation. After your client has been working with you for around a month, show them the benefits that you have benefits you have brought. Once you have shown them the value you have to offer, you can ask for specific referrals. It is important to be as specific as possible. Ask for the doctor they use, the mechanic that fixes their vehicle or the vet who helps their dog. The more specific the question, the more specific the answer.

Summary: Whith these steps won’t guarantee your success within the industry of selling merchant s ervices, they will definitely set you up in the right direction. With the market expanding exponentially, getting started it vital to your success. Make sure that you truly understand everything about what you are selling, as this will provide you with the best foundation to set yourself up for success in the future. Once started, you can always choose to learn more as you advance and develop your business.

How to Start an Online Payment Processing Company

One of the most lucrative fields that you can get into as a salesperson is selling to other businesses. Unlike most end consumers, business owners keenly understand the value of investing wisely in long-term solutions, and not merely throwing away their money on something cheap. If you want to truly contribute value to other business owners, while making a decent paycheck every month yourself, one of the best ways to do that is to offer quality merchant services. You will be invaluable to your clients, and if you serve them well, they will continue to look to you for ways to make their business more efficient.

Why start selling merchant services on your own, though? Isn't that a lot more work? What are the benefits if you're already working in a commission-based kind of job? Well, here are a few of the major ones:

More Control - Even if you're working in a field where you get a relative amount of independence, like in sales, you still don't have complete control, and your whole work life revolves around satisfying someone else's numbers. You may have your own personal selling style, but the overall strategy that the company follows—the direction in which “the ship” is being steered—is not determined by you, but by someone else. This may not be such a bad thing for some people, but it also means that your livelihood is ultimately in someone else's hands. What if the owners of the company that you work for make a dumb decision that spells the end of the business? You will have to suffer the consequences anyway, even though it wasn't your fault.

More Cash - Of course, if you start your own merchant services business, you have the potential to make a lot more money than someone who doesn't. If you're an independent contractor, at the end of the day, the people above you are raking in the most money. Sure, as a salesperson, you might make a hefty percentage of that, but the fact of the matter is that your potential for financial growth is stunted. If you have a business that you control yourself, it is basically up to you how much money you want to make, and you keep more of the fruits of your hard work.

The Potential for Scale - The thing about a normal job, even a sales job, where you're working for someone else, is that you rarely have the possibility to scale things up. In other words, you can't “replicate” yourself by hiring someone else to do some of your tasks, and this can greatly reduce your long-term income potential. When you start a merchant services business, you can choose to run it in many different ways, but one way is to outsource the work slowly until your business can practically run on its own. For true residual, passive income, this is the kind of situation that you will want to be in. This is what makes it possible for you to work because you want to, and to make money even in your sleep. You just can't do this when you work for someone else.

Now, you may be thinking: How do I start a merchant services business? Maybe you've been a salesperson for awhile—maybe you've even been selling POS equipment and other important retail tools—but you're not sure how to make that leap into selling for yourself.

Well, unless you've invented and designed your own solutions, you're going to have to start by forming a partnership with a merchant services agent program that you believe in. They're going to have to make a product that you can really get behind because, if you're building a business for yourself, most of your money is ultimately going to come from the back-end, from repeat customers. This is why it is so important to take a step back and think about quality above anything else. By all means, find a program that is lucrative, but don't ever sell a product that you wouldn't feel enthusiastic about using yourself. In the end, this is what is really going to create repeat business.

What traits do you look for in a merchant services agent program, then? Don't be taken in by any fancy bells and whistles. Basically, these are the things you are going to want to see:

A History of Reliability - Again, there's no sense in selling shoddy services or products. Look up reviews of the company and decide if they are any good. Research their products and make sure that they are user-friendly. Find a way to use them if you can. The easiest products to sell are the ones that are actually good because they basically sell themselves time and time again.

Generous Revenue - Share Since this is going to be the core of your business, you are going to want to find a merchant services partner program that gives you a good cut of the sales. If you're doing all the work of finding and maintaining leads, then you need a fair percentage of what that customer is paying.

Residual Income - Part of what makes selling POS services so lucrative is that there is often a monthly fee involved or else the merchant services agent program takes a percentage of the user's sales. As a partner, make sure that you have access to a significant portion of that long-term income as well. This is what is going to pay you month after month, even long after you have made the initial sale. This is where most of your money is, really.

Lots of Options and Flexibility - The company you work with should have lots of different options when it comes to revenue sharing, that way you will be able to build a strategy out of the one that best suits your business.

So, what specific company can you go with that will fulfill all of these needs? There are a few, but one of the best and most reliable is North American Bancard. We provide real value to their clients, so you should have no trouble working with them and building a stream of residual income from their products. Ultimately, though, just focus on solving your customers' problems and finding a company that can help you do that, and you should be able to start your own merchant services business.

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