How to Sell More Than 100 Merchants – Merchant Services Sales Commission

Today let’s discuss how to sell more than one hundred merchants.  I realize this seems like an arbitrary title. Sales people in our industry seem to hit a barrier when they’ve sold one hundred merchant accounts.

In the last episode, we talked about the “average” merchant services rep.  We defined an “average salesperson” by the following criteria: Someone who has had training, someone who is working full time, walking into twenty businesses a day and someone who knows how to close deals.

The average salesperson makes ten to twelve sales per month and will most likely reach around one hundred deals by the end of the first year. The average income at this point would be $4,000 or $5,000 a month in residuals.   One of the first barriers to overcome is a comfort level that comes from making a consistent amount of money, but there are other barriers as well.

Before we dive into that, I want to talk to you about this mini-series. We are using an income calculator I developed.  Make sure you have the calculator pulled up right now.  It doesn’t cost a thing and you don’t have to sign up or log in to use it. Go to instantquotetool.com and click on “goals.”  We are now in the second two boxes.  In the last episode, we changed the first box from eight to twelve. We talked about how, if you are an average rep, you are going to make twelve sales a month.  Go ahead and make that change.

Now look at the next two boxes.  Calculate how many sales per month you should make in the second and third year and beyond.  We want to talk about how to get past that hump of one hundred deals.  I have a couple tips I want to give you.

1. Make sure your processor is helping with client support as you get more and more deals. You are going to have a lot of customer service issues arise once you have one hundred accounts. One of the mistakes merchant services reps make is to direct their clients back to themselves for technical issues. From a sales perspective, I understand that.  From a technical standpoint it does not make sense.

When my merchants call me directly for technical help, I’m rarely able to solve the problem for them.  I end up calling the processor anyway.  Tell your client, “I have a great tech support department.  I’m giving you their contact information, so you can reach out to them before you call me.  You are going to get an answer to your question much faster by doing this.” If an issue arises where tech support is not solving their problem, encourage your clients to call or email you at that time. I suggest revisiting your existing clients to explain this process to them as well.

Why is this important?  Once you get to one hundred merchants, you are going to have a hard time making sales if your merchants are all calling you for technical support.

2. Don’t be afraid to reinvest in your business by hiring someone part time. If you’ve reached the point where you sold one hundred merchants, the odds are you probably have the skill set necessary to get to five hundred merchants. Do you realize how much money you would make if you had 500 merchant accounts?  Many of you right now have about one hundred merchants, and you are making around $4,000 a month.  If you had five hundred merchant accounts, you’d be making $20,000 a month.  That’s pretty good.  How do you get there?  Out of the $4,000 you are making now, take about $1,000 and reinvest it in hiring a part time person.  This could be anyone that is technically inclined.  This person should understand some of the basic communication errors and common issues that pop up for your new clients.  Use them to do customer service for you.  Be thinking about delegation by the time you reach one hundred merchants.

Let’s go back to our income calculator.  Assuming you do a good job of delegating, you can change your goal to twelve from the seven defaulted in the calculator.  You are not going to drop down because you are hiring people.  You may even become more effective and more efficient and continue to move that number higher.

Remember to step back and think about getting past the one hundred merchant barrier.  Make sure you get to the next level.

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