My Secret Weapon For B2B Prospecting

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As is often the case, my recent conversation with a newer sales professional has propelled me to address this topic today.  I’m sharing my secret weapon for B2B prospecting:  Targeting specific business types with my pitch.  This does NOT mean you only physically target certain types of business, i.e. only going into one type of business.  Rather, I mean you should create a custom pitch for each business type.  Each business type has unique challenges concerning payment processing.

Consider the example of pizza shops.  Because pizza shops typically have a smaller average ticket size, trying to minimize per item fees (transaction, interchange, etc.) would be priority.  Also, they usually handle many phone orders which translates to keyed-in transactions.  This is an example of my pitch for a pizza shop:

“The reason I stopped by today is to meet you all and inform you that I actually have a special program designed specifically for pizza shops.  By helping you adjust only two key elements, this would allow you to reduce credit card processing costs dramatically.  The first element is the per item fee.  If you were a fine jewelry store with average ticket sizes of $1,000, the difference of a few cents on transaction fees wouldn’t matter.  However, in your case you probably have many tickets with $10 to $15 transactions.  A difference of as little as $0.03 per transaction might mean a savings of as much as $100 per month.  So, Mr. Jones, I have designed a special program for pizza shops which targets that issue.  The second important element is the method by which you handle key-entered phone sales.  This has a major impact on your business as well.  What percentage of transactions are you taking over the phone?”

That gives you a “feel” for this pitch.  If I go into a jewelry store, I offer a special program for them.  My pitch might include this:  “You’re unique situation is greatly impacted by the type of card you take and your actual percentage fee since your average ticket size is high.  Another key element impacting your costs is charge backs.  The correct method of handling credit card information could prevent a customer’s denial of a purchase at your business.  You could lose $1,000 by making one mistake a year in the way you handle your credit card data.”  Talk to this type of business about charge backs and how they’re handling them.

To pitch to auto repair, I love to talk to them about electronic check processing.  Depending on the business location, they may have suffered from bad checks.  Even if they didn’t lose money, they may have had an embarrassing conversation with a client.  Remind them in your pitch that they’ll never have to do that again.  Also, spending time filling out long deposit tickets and running to the bank rather than earning $70 an hour making repairs is a frustration.  You can ensure they just run checks through the machine, and the money is in their account.

This article is not an effort to give you all the specifics.  Rather, I want to encourage sales professionals to walk into a business without the mentality of just selling “credit card processing.”  Offer business owners a custom program that you have created for their specific business type.  This pitch is extremely effective.

Here are some tips on how to make a custom program which will work with different business types.

1. Go to instantquotetool.com and sign up for the FREE 30 day trial. Absolutely no commitment for thirty days.  Click on “training” and find “advanced statement training.”  As my gift, you may take this course for free even during the 30 day trial period.  While interacting with many of you, I feel there is a lack of knowledge about credit card processing and how interchange works.  Knowledge of our industry is vital to be able to craft a custom program for specific business types.  And you NEED that secret weapon!  By investing only 120 minutes, just two hours of your time, I promise by the end of the course you will easily be able to craft custom programs to present to various merchants.
2. Read the book Challenger Sale. This is a great book which will help you understand the idea of “disruptive presentation” which involves giving business owners new ideas and fresh insights that will really resonate with them.
3. Make sure you try the interchange calculator while you’re on the Instant Quote trial period. We offer videos showing how to use the calculator.  You can play around with it.  Consider a pizza shop. Enter example information such as $15,000 in volume, $20 average ticket size, etc.  Then change things such as phone sales from 5% to 50% to see the impact on savings and cost.  Familiarize yourself with the effects of difference changes.  See the difference of a shop which does 2% of business with other community businesses compared to one who does 15%.  You will see these differences with ease on the quote tool.  You need to dig into these things and start understanding interchange.  Then you, too, can take advantage of my secret weapon of understanding how to customize my program to each business.
4. Here is one more little tip that would be absolute killer for those already using the quote tool – you can make additional programs. For example, after you create a program for xyz processor.  Clone it five times, changing the name of the program on each clone to be “pizza shop program,” “auto repair program,” etc.  Actually change the transaction fee and basis points.  Try to minimize the basis points for the high ticket businesses along with a higher transaction fee, while doing the opposite for small ticket business types.  Customize the programs a little, while staying above the minimum pricing guidelines you’ve set for yourself.  These specialized programs will help you so much in the field when you’re standing in front of a merchant.  If you have a hard time remembering which customized program is the right fit, just click “compare programs” on the tool.  IT’S RIGHT THERE!

By-the-way, this approach is killer on the phone, too!  You must be doing this when on the phone or the merchant will hang up on you.  Customize your pitch for the business type and watch how much more traction you’re going to get from your prospecting process.

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