Triple the Merchant Services Leads You Generate and Convert them Into Sales

There are two issues that I have found with merchant services leads. First of all, there are way too few of them because the bar is set too high. If you are trying to hire a telemarketer, the instinct is to tell them that you will only pay for leads where they got you a solid appointment. If you are using Pay Per Click leads, the “Call to Action” is usually for the business owner that is ready to get a cost analysis.

Even if you are just walking into businesses, you probably set the bar too high. If the business owner isn’t interested in moving forward with the sales process, you just move on to the next one. Today, I will show you how to triple the number of leads you are getting from your lead generation service.
The second issue with leads is that even with the bar set high in terms of quality, your chances of actually closing the lead are rarely higher than 50% and so this means after spending a fortune to buy high quality merchant services leads or spending hours in the field trying to create high quality prospects, you still lose at least half of your investment.

I am going to share with you the secret to tripling the number of merchant services leads you generate while also increasing your closing rate over time.

Step #1 – Significantly lower the bar. A lead is really just a piece of data when you think about it. So, the question becomes, how much data do you need in order to qualify a lead. Here are the criteria I would suggest:

• Phone Appointment: Name of owner and email address (with permission to email) OR Name of owner and time the owner may be available.
• Web Lead: Business Name, Zip Code, Email Address OR Business Name, Zip Code, Owner’s Name
• Walk in Conversation: Name of who you spoke to, Owner’s Name, When they may be Available OR if you spoke to the owner, just their name and email address.

Obviously you want to collect as much data as possible but these basics are plenty to work with as long as you are nurturing the leads you get. For those of you paying for leads or hiring people to generate leads, imagine how many additional leads you would get using these criteria. Again, you are still trying to get appointments and commitments but if you don’t get those things, you are still generating a lead a getting that lead into your system.

Step #2 – Keep the data in a CRM / Drip Marketing System. We of course have a great drip marketing system or you could create one yourself, but it is essential to collect all the data you gather in the process of generating leads and then input that data into one system.

Step #3 – Establish a “next action step” for each lead. This is really what lead nurturing is all about. It isn’t just about technology or emails. Technology and email drip marketing is simply an easy way to organize your nurturing but it doesn’t replace face to face interactions or other personal touches such as birthday cards or stopping by to say hello. The important thing is to establish next action steps.

Depending on the prospect, that next action step might be your responsibility or yours. For instance, let’s say I speak with a pizza shop owner and they are not interested. I decide to put them into one of the new lead nurturing drip campaigns we are rolling out this Thursday so they get one email per week. I then decide that the next action step is them opening 3 emails. Once they do that, I am going to go back out. Now the ball is in their court. If I have a really good lead, I might decide that the next action step is to call them next Monday regardless of how they interact with my email drip campaign.

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