What to Do When Clients Already Have POS. Get the Secret for Selling POS Clients.

Remember that day you were pumped about walking into businesses?  But, oh no! The prospect already had a touch screen point of sale system on the counter.  Your heart sank as you thought, “Oh, I can’t make this sale!  What am I going to do?”  Should you walk away?  Let me help you evaluate the situation.  Find the best approach and know how to proceed with these prospects.

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If you’ve made less than ten sales or are still brand new to the industry, the right thing to do in this situation IS to walk out of the business!  Wait until you have 10 – 15 sales and are getting into a comfort zone.  Then you could take on the mess of integrating with a point of sale system.  Realize you ARE losing money by walking out.  So, don’t keep walking out forever!  This episode will explain the secret to integrating these solutions.

The following is a base model for many point of sale companies:  Companies create point of sale software, then find hardware that works with it.  They decide to integrate with a big company such as Mercury Payments or Heartland.  Then they can choose their charge since people want the software.  The company knows once they get a customer, they’ll make $59 a month software cloud services fee AND $100 or $200 a month in credit card processing residuals.

The approach I use and recommend for interaction with a business who already has a POS is one I call “negative sales tactics.”  If you tell prospects something negative about the service you offer, they are always going to trust you more.  I know that sounds counterintuitive.  Here is an example of my opening:

“Hi, my name is James Shepherd.  How are you guys doing today?  Hey, I’ve got a small business here in the area.  I do payment processing services.  I see you have a point of sale system.  To be honest with you, a lot of times I can’t even integrate with these things because the point of sale company locks it up.  Not that I can’t integrate technologically.  The company restricts me from integrating because they are making so much money off the credit card processing.  Do you mind if I ask the name of your software provider?  Do you know who you do the processing through?”

I explain right off the bat that I may not be able to integrate with it.  This puts them at ease to realize I’m not trying to sell them today since I can’t!  By asking for help to learn more about the software, I get the information I need.  After you have some experience, you’ll probably know from this information in most cases whether you can sell them or not.  However, there are thousands of different software vendors who have customized software.  For example, some may work only with dentist offices.

Now, here is the big secret to selling these POS providers.  Call the POS provider directly and ask for technical support.  Look them up online for contact information.  Don’t talk to sales or the executive who won’t want you to switch the account – only talk to technical support.  When you reach the contact say, “Yes, I have a technical question on my point of sale software.”  When you get tech support say, “Hey, I’ve got a question for you.  I’m over here at XYZ business.”  (Don’t use the wording “work for the company.”)  “If we want to switch to another payment processing provider we like and lower our costs, what is the charge for you to switch and use a different vendor?  What is involved with that process?”  Probably about 30% of the time they will say, “We don’t that.  We only work with these two processors.”  They do that to lock in their profits.

I estimate 60% to 70% of the time, they CAN work with different processors.  They will charge a fee of $200 to $1000.  In many cases changing is not difficult, but the company charges a fee in order to offset all the money they’re going to lose over the next years of processing.  As the sales person, you’ll need to work with your processor and use your upfront bonus money to pay that fee, allowing you to switch the prospect’s service.  The odds are if they are locked in, their rates are probably very high.  You can probably save them a lot of money.  The sale will be worth your investment.

Another secret to success in selling these POS clients is to have a lot of front end solutions.  Think of the front end as the technology that allows you to authorize the credit card transaction.  The front end communicates with the Visa, MasterCard, Discover networks to see if the transaction is approved.  Then the front end sends back an authorization code.  (The back end is very different – the actual moving of the money.)  Have as many different front-end solutions as possible.  You must have First Data front end and Tesis front end.  And I also prefer having Vantiv.  The more you have, the better.  You may need multiple processors to accomplish this.  More ideally, try to find one processor who has 2, 3, 4 different front ends which they use, even if they only have one back end.  Unless you have access to multiple front ends, you will have a hard time integrating with the different point of sale systems.  Call your processor and ask, “What front end solutions are available to us?”  Perhaps they do 85% to 90% of their business through Vantiv, but they may also have Tesis, Chase Payment Tech, and First Data front ends.  With that information, you will be better prepared to make the call to tech support.  Tech support may express doubt about integrating with one front end.  You can respond with assurance which others you have available to use.  Whether you get the sale or not, it is always worth a phone call.

This episode gives you the best approach to proceed with POS clients. Hopefully I helped you sell some bigger accounts this week.    

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