Selling merchant services is an interesting gig.
On the one hand, just about every business in the US needs what you have to offer. That means you have at least 33.2 million potential customers to reach out to.
On the other hand, there are many other salespeople to compete against, and clarifying the benefits of your particular solution can be difficult.
That’s not to say that selling credit card processing is impossible. It just means you must learn how to sell merchant services effectively. We’re here to help!
Keep reading to learn 11 tips on selling merchant services consistently. Let’s go!
11 Tips for Selling Merchant Services Accounts
As stated above, selling credit card processing services is far from impossible. But it does require a strategic approach. These tips will help you close more deals and crush your quota.
Define your ideal customer profile (ICP)
To sell merchant services effectively, you should first create an ideal customer profile, sometimes called an ICP.
An ICP is a fictional company that can benefit from the products/services you sell. Your ICP should include information regarding industry, geographical location, company size, current budget, and most prominent pain points.
Once you create an ICP for your sales team, prospecting will become easier because you’ll know exactly who to target. We’ll talk more about this in a bit.
Craft your unique selling proposition
You need to answer, “What makes my platform different from the competition?”
You could offer a complete solution rather than just a piece of the payment puzzle. For example, people choose your business because they want a one-stop app for all of their payment needs. Or you could offer a more reliable product. Or have a better customer service team.
Whatever the case, you need to identify your company’s unique selling proposition (USP) so that your reps can use it to differentiate your brand in their sales pitches.
Set clear activity and performance-based goals
At this point, you know who you want to sell merchant services to and why they should buy from you, not a competitor. Now what? Keep your reps accountable.
The easiest way to do this is to set activity and performance-based goals. For example, you can ask your reps to source X amount of leads per day. Or contact X amount of prospects per week. Or close X amount of new business per month.
If you want your sales team to achieve specific things, you have to tell them what those things are. Doing so will boost your chances of success.
Remember the fundamentals
Next, make sure your reps remember the basics. The fundamentals aren’t super exciting, but they’re absolutely essential. Let’s run through a few of them:
- Speak less, listen more: According to Gong, top salespeople talk 46% of the time and listen 54% during sales calls. One of the keys to selling merchant services is silence. Let potential customers talk and direct your conversations.
- Demonstrate value: It doesn’t matter what you’re selling. You have to prove to prospects that it’s valuable. This is definitely true when selling credit card processing tools. Make sure your reps use your USP to clarify the benefits of your offerings.
- Prepare for objections: Even the best sellers have to deal with objections. They won’t derail your sales process if your reps are prepared to answer them. Track common objections, then teach your reps how to respond effectively.
- Be transparent: Your reps should never trick their prospects into buying from them. It will only harm your company’s reputation. Instead, encourage reps to be transparent—even if they lose a potential sale.
- Choose the right merchant service partner: This is a big one. Only work with merchant service providers that genuinely care about your customers. We suggest choosing partners that offer omnichannel solutions, too, which many people prefer.
- Secure the processing statement: This is another fundamental that should never be ignored—even though it can be a total pain. You may have to visit your customers multiple times to secure a processing statement. It’s worth the extra effort.
- Be flexible with pricing options: Selling merchant services can be difficult. Flexible pricing options make it a bit easier. If you can limit short-term fees and long-term costs, you’ll differentiate your offerings from the competition and make more sales.
Assign sales territories to the right reps
Your territories are extremely important when selling merchant services.
You want to cut territories that have enough high-quality leads in them to keep your reps busy. But not so many potential buyers fall through the cracks.
You need to make sure that each territory’s boundaries are well-marked, too. That way, your reps don’t waste time-fighting over whose prospect is whose.
SPOTIO and other territory management tools can simplify this process. Cut territories based on geographical boundaries or by drawing on a digital map. Then assign them to the most qualified rep.
Deploy a multichannel sales strategy
You probably use a field sales team to sell merchant services. But if in-person visits are the only communication channel your reps use to engage prospects, you won’t make many sales. This is especially true in a post-COVID world.
Your sales reps should use every channel at their disposal, including in-person visits, the telephone, email, text messages, and even social media.
Just make sure you use a tool that can track all your reps’ communication efforts.
SPOTIO is one such tool. With it, your reps can automatically log prospect interactions and automate email and text messages to send at predetermined times. Related data can then be sent to a CRM of your choice for analysis.
Leverage existing customers in your territory
Your reps spend a lot of time engaging new prospects. Make sure they don’t forget about the people they’ve already sold to. These folks are a potential gold mine.
Think about it: by talking to current customers, you reps can source testimonials, which they can then use to help close future deals. Even better, current customers can help produce referrals. Every salesperson knows referrals are super valuable.
Use ICP data to find new qualified prospects
We’ve shared a bunch of tips on selling merchant services. The advice above will help you close more deals in less time. But we’re not done yet!
Here’s another strategy: ask your reps to use ICP data to source qualified prospects.
One way to do this is to create a custom rating system for your company. For example, you could create a three-tier system that includes “Best,” “Good,” and “Bad” categories. Then your reps can sort their prospects based on how closely each matches your ICP. Once sorted, reps can focus on selling to high-value leads.
Ready to look for potential buyers? Give SPOTIO’s Lead Machine a try.
With Lead Machine, your reps can find red-hot prospects in their territories, then filter through them using 200+ parameters.
Track minimum daily sales activities
Earlier, we suggested setting activity and performance goals. Now it’s time to track them to make sure your reps are actually achieving success.
One of the main things you should track is the daily sales activities for each of your reps. Why? Because while your reps can’t control who buys from them, they can control how many leads they source, how many companies they visit, etc..
With SPOTIO, rep tracking is a piece of cake. Managers can quickly view travel histories, find out which specific prospects were contacted, the channel used to contact them, and more. This is really valuable information!
Automate repetitive parts of the sales process
If you want to learn how to sell merchant services quickly, you need to invest in an automation platform. Doing so will make your reps much more productive.
Imagine how much more they’ll accomplish when they don’t have to do tedious data entry tasks. Or when email marketing sequences are sent on autopilot. With a tool like SPOTIO, entire sales workflows can be built and automated.
Enable your team with the rights tools
Finally, make sure your reps have access to the tools they need to succeed.
One of these tools is SPOTIO, which we’ve mentioned multiple times. But there are other apps you should consider investing in as well. Some of them include a quality CRM platform, email marketing software, and a proven sales forecasting solution.
No matter which tools you use, make sure they integrate together. This will ensure your entire sales process is as efficient as possible.
Sell more merchant services accounts with SPOTIO
There you have it, 11 tips on selling merchant services. Once you implement these best practices, you and your sales team will begin to close more deals.
But if you really want to boost sales, you need to invest in SPOTIO. Our platform was specifically built for field sales teams. As such, it has all of the tools field sellers need.
Some of these tools relate to lead generation, appointment setting, route planning, task automation, multichannel communication, territory management, and sales tracking tasks.
Sound like something you could use? Sign up for a free demo to see SPOTIO in action!
