Cash Discounting – The Opening Pitch and How to Sell It

Here is the Grand Finale of my series on How to Sell Cash Discounting.  This episode contains the nuts and bolts.  Create an opening pitch that’s sure to sell your prospects.  I’ll help you make a presentation which will get you to the six-figure income this year AND save your merchants big money, too!

How to Sell Merchant Services in 6 Steps

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My experience in the field has shown me that a “conversation pitch” is best when selling cash discounting.  There are sales situations in which you have many objections to overcome.  In those cases, your presentation must be carefully planned and executed.  I think of those sales opportunities as prospects holding the rope while being lead through a mine field of objections.  Attention must be given to every detail in an effort to avoid various objections.  However, that is not the pitch needed to sell cash discounting.

In the situation of selling cash discounting, you can be confident merchants would say “yes” if they understood.  There must be conversation to pave the way.  (Thus, my term “conversation pitch.”)  I’ve gotten the best response by just talking about it.  Sorry that sounds so obvious!  Here is an example of my own pitch:

“Hi!  How are you doing?  My name is James Shepherd.  I’ve got a local business in the area and have a quick question for you.  We’ve been doing payment processing for years.  I’m sure you get calls constantly about it.  It’s a very competitive business.  If I came here offering credit card processing services, you’d probably kick me out since you get that pitch so often.  Am I right?”  [You completely disarm the merchant right off the bat.]

The prospect responds, “Yes.  We have no interest in switching.”

Then you continue, “Right.  So, here is my question for you, Mr. Merchant.  About three or four years ago a law was passed allowing the use of cash discounting.  You might think of it as a surcharge, but that is a little bit different.  The idea of cash discounting is to say of your prices, ‘These prices all represent our cash price.’  When clients prepare to pay with a card, you let them know the price is $10.50 unless they pay with cash.  ‘We’ll knock $0.50 off for cash payment.  The price would be $10 instead.’  You can lawfully offer a cash discount.  When this first came out, to be honest with you, John, I wasn’t super excited about it.  I felt it would scare away my merchants’ customers.  However, after cash discounting has been used for several years, some studies have been conducted.  Every study so far has shown no change in consumer behavior whatsoever!  Not only have businesses still processed the same amount of credit card transactions, but customers haven’t switched to paying cash at all.  There has been no difference at all to the consumer.  In 99.2% of the time business owners doing cash discounting say their consumers didn’t even ask about it.  The best part of this opportunity is that if you start using cash discounting, you can just stop at any time.  I’ve given this much thought lately and have set up some of my clients to use it.  My question for you is, what are your thoughts on all this?  Have you thought about doing it?  I’m sure it would save you hundreds of dollars a month.  Has it come across your mind yet?”

There is the pitch which tells you how to sell cash discounting.  You must get merchants in the conversational mode.  Completely disarm them at the beginning.  Talk about cash discounting, then slide into the details.

One very important detail of the sales process is leasing the terminal.   As you talk about cash discounting, wait until the very end of the sales process to do the lease.  Wait until the deal is done and the merchant says, “This sounds great.  Let’s do it.”  Here is the spot where you should say something negative about your offer if you want to make the sale.  Otherwise, merchants will not trust you.  They will think it’s too good to be true! 

“Now, John, I do want to be really clear with you.  The cash discount is going to wipe out most of your fees but not all of them.  I’m not saying we are going to process your transactions for free, but there will probably be 80% savings.”  [Don’t say 100%.]  “There are still some monthly fees.  The terminal has a different program; it is more expensive to set up.  So, there are a few costs such as equipment.  But the fees should drop 80%.  I don’t want to mislead you.  Please don’t feel like you’re never going to pay for processing again.  Right now, you are paying $500.  With cash discounting, you are probably going to pay $60 or $70.   The good news is this is going to save you a lot of money every single year.  Are there any questions you have about that?”

Make sure you insert a line like that to set up the lease.  Then when you are at the very end going through the costs, be very assumptive about the lease.  Don’t dwell on it at all.  Pass over it quickly, “Okay, let me just break this down for you.  It looks like we are going to save you $___.  Then you have your monthly fee.  And you have this $29.95 a month lease for the equipment.  You are going to get that new terminal.”  The way you present that is very important.

Another vitally important detail is offering merchants a way to get out of cash discounting.  In practice, if they want to get out, you are just going to switch them to a normal merchant account and not lose their business.  But they need to have the peace of mind that they can get out of this if their customers don’t like it.  Make sure your processor offers a 60-day trial or month-to-month agreement.  When you submit the application, include a note concerning this offer for the merchant.

Hopefully these examples will help you understand how to sell cash discounting.

Now, just before the close of this mini-series I’d like to summarize again and emphasize the definition of cash discounting.  I know this subject can be confusing.  As an example, let’s assume I’m going into a retail store selling bicycles.  The average cost of a bicycle in this store is $100.  There are two ways the merchant cannot pay the credit card processing fees on that bike:

• The bike can be marked for sale at $100. At checkout the employee says, “If you use your credit card, you’ll be charged an extra 4% [or 3% or an extra $3.]”  The extra money is collected and used to pay the fees on that bike.  That’s a surcharge.
• A cash discount is almost exactly the same, but the language used is different. As sales reps we know words are important; they really matter.  The bicycle is still $100.  However, at checkout the employee says, “That bike is $103.  We offer a cash discount of $3 on this bike.  Would you like to pay $100 cash and get that $3 discount?”

Although both examples are basically the same, the explanation is different.  The merchants can either mark up all the prices in their store 3% and then offer the cash discount at checkout.  Or, as most are doing, they keep the prices the same but post a large sign at the door saying, “All prices represent cash discount.”  Then employees simply explain that the price on each item is the cash discounted price.

Hopefully, this clarifies the difference for you.  If you have any questions or are looking for the right processor, go to CCSalesPro.com or email me directly at james@ccsalespro.com.  I will be glad to talk with you.

Make sure, make sure, make sure you are set up with a good company!  You need all the options available:  leasing, the proper method of taking payment from the merchants, all the things I’ve mentioned in this series.  Read and/or watch the series more than once.  Then connect with me.  I think I’ve earned ten minutes of your time in exchange for all this free content!  Click on “find processor” at CCSalesPro.com to fill out a form requesting a ten or fifteen-minute phone call from me.  I have relationships with many different companies.  I’ll be glad to make recommendations for a good processor.  And I’d love to talk to you about our instantquotetool.com.  It has cash discounting proposals and everything you need when you’re in the field.

Have an awesome day and a big year selling cash discounting!    

Read the previous article here:  http://bit.ly/2EkVW5Y  Per Item or Percentage Cash Discount, Which is Best?

Read the next article here:  http://bit.ly/2D1G37L  Do You Have a Job or a Business?