How Many Merchants Can You Sell – Merchant Services Sales Commission

I’m excited to do this mini-series on Merchant Services Sales Commission.  I am going to be talking about how much money you can make in merchant services. I know lots of merchant services sales reps that make $100,000 a year.  I also know some that make from $20,000 a year all the way up to $300,000 a year!  It’s easy to talk about how much you can make per sale but there are certain assumptions that are used to create these projections.

I’m going to talk about the most important assumption first.  I don’t care which processor you sell for.  I don’t care how long you’ve been in the industry.  I don’t care what kind of compensation plan you have.  The number one criteria or assumption is “How many merchants can you sell?”  How many are you going to sell each and every month?

As we go through this mini-series, I’m going to be using a calculator that I built.  I’m very excited about this.  I’m giving it to you free!  Go to instantquotetool.com and click on goals.  You don’t have to have an account at our website or even log-in in.  Go to the upper right-hand corner in the navigation bar.  Depending on if you are mobile or not, you might have to do a drop down to click on goals. This will take you to a little income calculator.

This income calculator is something I made because I had so many sales people asking, “James, how much money can I make selling merchant services?”  My answer to that question was, “Well, I don’t know?  How hard are you going to work?  What is your closing rate going to be?  How are you going to prospect?  What does the processor pay?”  There are so many variables.

Let’s go back to our income calculator and talk about “How many merchants can you sell?”  Specifically, we are talking about that very first box, where it says, “Sales per month – year one.”  The question we must answer in this episode is “How many sales can you make per month in your first year of selling merchant services?” 

Based on my experience, I’m going to give you the criteria that reflects an average merchant services sales rep.  When I say an “average merchant services sales rep is going to make X number of sales per month,” this is what I mean:

1. 1. It is assumed that you are going to work full time in this business. You are also going to walk into twenty businesses a day, where you have not yet spoken to a decision maker.
2. I also would assume that you have gone through training. You must have some understanding of merchant services.  If you are not trained, go to instantquotetool.com; and click on training.  The training tab is right next to “Goals” in the tab bar.  After you click on training you will see some courses there.  It would probably take you about a week to get through all of these courses.  You need to be trained.  Once you are trained you are going to be ready to go into the business full time.
3. You must have some idea of how to sell. You are a good sales person.  An average merchant services rep walking into twenty businesses a day, where they have not yet spoken to a decision maker, is what you can easily do, if you are working full time.  It will take you between one to two hours to walk into twenty businesses, maybe three hours at the most.  You are trained.  You understand merchant services.  You’ve gone through some training courses and you can close at a reasonable rate. You have the building blocks you need to go out there and sell.

Once you meet the requirements we just mentioned you are going to average twelve sales per month as a merchant services sales rep.  Go back to the income calculator now in instantquotetool.com. In that little box at the top, I have eight as a goal by default to be conservative.  Go ahead and change that eight to a twelve and look at what that does to your first year income.  The difference is significant!

You say, “James, I’m an amazing sales person.  I’m the best sales rep I’ve ever met.  I close really high.  How many sales am I going to make?”  If you are as good as you say you are, you are probably going to make somewhere around twenty sales.  If you walk into twenty businesses every day where you’ve never spoken to a decision maker you are probably going to be on pace to make one sale a day. Again, this is based on the fact that you are a very good  sales person!

An average sales person is going to lose a couple of those deals where a more experienced sales person would have sold an extra two.  You are going to lose those two.  You are going to sell three a week instead of selling five. This is how we would calculate your sales per week at twelve instead of twenty

If you say, “James, I’m not a great sales person,” then you are probably going to close somewhere around eight to ten deals a week.  Your closing rate is going to be a little lower.

If you are working at your sales part time, it’s really simple to make the calculation.  I originally said, “If you are walking into 20 businesses a day, where you have never spoken to a decision maker you will average twelve sales per month.” If you are walking into ten businesses a day, you will average six sales a month.  Right?  If you are walking into five businesses a day, that’s going to get you three sales a month.  Hopefully, you can use these metrics to put your goal into that first box in the income calculator.

Hopefully, using the income calculator will be a great motivational tool for you. Use the criteria of “an average merchant services sales rep” to guesstimate your projected sales average for a year. In our next episode we will talk about how many sales you can make per month after that first year!

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