I firmly believe if new agents really understood how much their net worth could be increased with every visit made, they would be waking up without an alarm in the morning to get out in the field! Here are some quick numbers that I hope will motivate you as you build your merchant services business this week.
1. Before we get to the numbers, understand that I am talking about the results of working with a processor which provides life vested residuals with a low cost structure and competitive pricing and programs like free equipment and month-to-month agreements.
2. The value of an account.
3. The value of a visit: As a general and very conservative rule, you will walk into ten businesses per hour and get one solid prospect for every hour you spend in the field. And you will close 25%+ of these prospects. So that means you get one sale for every four hours of prospecting time or one sale for every forty times you walk into a business. Armed with these facts, we can now divide the total worth of each account by the number of prospects and hours taken to get the account, and we come up with the following: Final Results: As an agent prospecting in the field, your net worth is growing by $287.50 per hour. Also, every time you walk into a business whether or not you have a positive result, you are basically adding $28.75 to your net worth. The next time you feel you are wasting your time in the field, imagine me standing at every door handing you a $20 bill.
So why don’t agents succeed in this industry? The reason is no great secret….they don’t prospect. In fact, I can prove this. How many hours did you spend last week out in the field prospecting for new business? If you spent five or six hours last week, you are probably better than the average rep. If you spent 20+ hours prospecting for new business, you are probably going to succeed very quickly in this industry. If (like me when I started) you spent thirty hours prospecting, you probably won’t be reading this much of the blog article. Rather, you are too backed up with paperwork for new sales and customer service while maintaining your current accounts. Every time I talk to agents who have difficulty succeeding I ask them for a schedule of when they prospected in the field last week. I always get the same responses. Either, “I am planning to do a lot of that this week!” Or, “I know I need to work on that, but what other sales tips can you give me?” Or my personal favorite… “I spent a lot of time prospecting; I walked into at least twenty businesses last week!” This last response almost makes me burst into laughter as I respond, “So walking into twenty businesses takes about two hours. What did you do with the other thirty-eight hours of your work week?” Do you want to succeed in this business? Do you want to make a lot of money in this business? Do you want to see your net worth explode? WORK. PROSPECT. And WALK INTO BUSINESSES. That is the best advice I can give you. If you don’t follow that advice, none of the other advice I give you will help much. But if you are following that advice and spending hours in the field each week meeting new business owners, even one improvement can multiply across your efforts and provide major increases in your performance!
Let’s get out in the field this week!
James Shepherd
Read the previous post: Who should I sell as a new merchant services agent?
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Do I need Appointment Scheduled Leads to Succeed in Selling Merchant Services?