Steps involved in the selling process for Security

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Hi, my name is James Shepherd and today I want to talk to you about the merchant sales process. Now the merchant sales process in my opinion has actually changed a lot. There is a lot of similarities, but it’s actually changed a lot. I feel like just over the last few years for a couple of reasons. #1. The industry as a whole has become more competitive, but also the competition is different. You know you’re competing against Square a lot more now. You’re competing against ISVs, you know these software vendors. You’re competing against point of sale providers. There is just a lot more kind of unique competition out there that you are facing today. So I think that really you know plays a really big part in it. One of the other big challenges though that you’ll see out there is that merchants don’t have their statement anymore. They’re not as willing to share this information. So today I want to talk to you and I’ll be honest, this video today, I’m going to be a little bit bias because I’m going to talk a little bit about our solutions that we have here through our instant quote tool and things like that. But I think it’s really important because I’ll use that as kind of a context, but the idea of changing the sales process is just crucial. I do a lot of consulting for ISOs and things like that, as many of you know. So one of my jobs is to help develop a sales process. That might be for a company that is generating Facebook leads and then they’re giving those to an inside sales team, or it might be for a company that has, you know, people going out in the field and they’re selling. What’s their sales process look like? All of that, so I’m all the time developing sales processes and I want to talk about how to do that for yourself as an individual and how to do that for your agents as an ISO. The number one key is that you need to develop your sales process step by step. You need to make sure that each step is well thought out and also that each step is realistic, that you’re asking the merchant for is something that you, if you were in their shoes, that you would take the action you’re asking them to take. So when you’re developing a sales process, the way to think about it is not in terms of what are you going to do as the sales person. The sales process is really designing a step by step process of action steps that you want the merchant to take. Okay, this is a key thing. You know as I talk to sales people and I’m like, “How does the sales process usually flow for you?” They’re like, “Well, usually I do this and then I do this and then I do that.” I’m like, “Okay, what does the merchant usually do?” “Well, they say they’re not interested.” Okay, well then, that’s not a very good sales process. You got to think about merchant, right? So let’s break this down. How does this process generally work? You walk into a merchant location, or you call a merchant on the phone, or you get them through a Facebook advertising campaign. Somehow you are interrupting the merchant. Okay, so you’re interrupting the merchant and trying to get their attention and get them to think about credit card processing. Okay, so that’s step one. Step one is you’ve got to get the merchant to just shift their mindset into thinking about how they currently process payments. That’s it. That’s a step. There is a lot of different ways to go about that step. Again, it could be a really well placed video ad on Facebook, and you’re using our new marketing platform that we have with our instant quote tool, where you can put a custom link to a campaign, and they can get their quote that way. Like whatever it is, you might have a video ad. You might be just walking into a merchants location and you know you’re opening pitch, but see here is the mistake. Sales people a lot of times think about their opening pitch as I need to make my opening pitch to get them interested in what I have to offer. Well, yes and no. Actually the first step is you need to get them to think about their credit card processing needs. That’s really it. You’ve got to get them into that mindset first. Okay, so again, that could be over the phone. That could be in person, whatever, but that’s like step one. We need the merchant to shift their mindset because they weren’t thinking about credit card processing when you walked in. They were thinking about the bad meeting they just had with their new employee that they may have to fire. They were just thinking about their inventory order. They were just thinking about ordering lunch. They were just thinking about their kid’s softball game, baseball game, whatever that they need to get to. Like, they’re not thinking about what you want them to think about. So you got to get them to think about that. Okay. Step number two is you need to ask them for the minimum amount of information possible in order for you to provide them with information, the minimum amount, okay. I don’t want to ask them for their statement, huge mistake. Initially, we don’t want to ask for a statement. That’s a big mistake. You’re asking for way too much information. Imagine if a stranger walked up to you on the street and said, “Hey, you know what? Do you have a copy of your bank statement you could email me? I’d like to take a look at it.” You’re like, “Who are you?” Many of you, that is a pretty good summary of your sales pitch. You walk into a business for the first time. You call a business for the first time. You do a Facebook ad and they interact with your website for the first time. You’re like, “Hey, send us a statement, so we can take a look at it.” Really? You’re crazy. They’re not going to do that. I mean maybe one out of a thousand will, or one out of a hundred, but that’s stupid. Why would you do that? Why not make a pitch that’s like one out of three are going to do it, or one out of two are going to do it? Right? So ask them for a minimum amount of information. So for instance, using our instant quote tool, whether you’re an ISO or an individual agent, you know you just ask for their total volume. “So do you know roughly last month how much you processed, 10 thousand, 20 thousand? What was the total processing volume for Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Amex, Pin Debit? What did you do in total volume last month?” That’s a minimum amount of information. A lot of business owners will answer that question. Especially if you predicate that by saying, “I don’t even need to look at your statement. I just want to give you a rough idea of what our program would run, what the investment would be? Do you know roughly how much you processed last month in volume, 10 thousand, 20 thousand, 30 thousand?” Put that into our tool and click on create proposal. That’s all you need. Our algorithm will do the rest. Is it going to be 100% accurate? No, it’s statistics. It’s an algorithm. It’s going to be fairly close, but it’s going to tell them, “Hey, you know what? I can tell you that a rough estimate, what we would, the cost with us. The investment if you go with us would only be $536 a month. Now do you know any idea, like is that a little bit more, a little less than what you paid last month?” See now, we’re asking them questions and so this next step is you ask them the minimum amount, so you can provide information to them. Here is what our fees would be. Let me email you a link to this proposal, so you can see what how our pricing breaks down. Right, like you’re giving them information. Now you’re asking for more and so this middle stage of the process, this middle sales process is a back and forth where you get more and more information, so you can share more and better information. Now you’re like, “Okay, great. What did you pay last month?” They’re like, “You know I’m not sure. Let me go grab my statement.” Now they’re going to get their statement on their own. They might say, “I don’t know. Let me pull it up online and see,” or they might just answer the question. They say, “Yea, I think we paid about six hundred.” “Okay, let me put that in here. So six hundred, okay wow, it looks like we would save you a little over a thousand dollars a year. Now what I would like to do with your permission, I still don’t need to see your statement, but is you wouldn’t mind just grabbing your statement, you could read a few numbers off to me. I’d like to just make sure all these numbers because as you can see here, we’re kind of estimating what Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Amex, we’re estimating all of that, but it would be great if we could a little bit more information, so I could give you a full side by side comparison.” Now they get their statement out. Now you put in that information at the top of the volume and the thing I love about our tool is it’s going to give you the side by side comparison no matter how much information you have or don’t have there. It’s just going to be more and more accurate, more and more detailed, more and more line items. You’re like, “Okay, cool. Here is our side by side comparison for you. Now again, I don’t know exactly, that’s why we have these other fees here. It looks like that your current company is charging you $182 a month and what I have down here as other fees, I don’t know what those other fees are. Would you like me to take a look at your statement and show you what those fees are?” “Well, sure I would. I don’t know what that $182 is. Here is my statement.” So now we got the statement, but we did not get it by walking in as a stranger and asking for more information than they want to give. We got it by asking for a minimum amount of information, putting that into our tool, right? Slowly getting more and more information and then when we finally get to the point where we are like, “Let me show you this. Did you know you’re paying $182 in just additional stuff? I don’t know what it is, but I would love to itemize and show you what we charge versus what your current company has. Would you like me to take a look at that for you?” “Sure.” Well, with our tool the update we just made last week, we now have a really streamlined process where you just click on edit existing fees and you can just like a little table view, just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, add the fees in one by one from the statement. Just cross them off as you go. Add them all in. Every fee that you add it’s always accurate. It’s just that instead of it saying other fees, it now takes it out of other fees and starts to itemize it. Right? So it gets more getting information, you’re getting more and better information. Right? So you’re itemizing it, starting to look really, really good. Now the last phase of the sales process is closing the sale, but that is so much easier once you built up to it. The key to closing the sale, I have so many videos on that. Just go look up closing the sale CCSalesPro on YouTube and you’ll find so many videos, so many tactics of being assumptive and using the paperwork close, and all these tactics, but the key thing I want you to take away from this today is if you want to sell merchant services in today’s climate and today’s environment, in today’s competitive marketplace, okay, you have to go step by step and think about what you want the merchant to do and you’ve got to reciprocate information. They give you a little bit of information. You give them information and back and forth until you have everything you need to confidently close the sale. My name is James Shepherd. I hope that you have an awesome day!