Welcome back to another week of Confessions! Grab your lukewarm coffee, take a seat, and let’s talk about the absolute madness we call “closing a deal” selling merchant services.
If you read the standard sales books, they’ll tell you about the Assumptive Close, the Puppy Dog Close, or the Alternative Choice Close. They paint a picture of a slick rep in a tailor made suit closing a deal over a crisp handshake and a polite nod.
But anybody who has ever pounded the pavement selling payment processing knows the truth: textbook closes rarely work when you’re standing in a flour dusted pizza shop or talking to a grease covered mechanic.
Sometimes, standard pitches fail. Sometimes, you’re on day 29 of a dry spell, your pipeline is looking thin, and you have to pull off a move so desperate, ridiculous, and completely unhinged that it belongs in the Sales Hall of Fame.
Looking back on my years in the field, these are two of my favorite war stories closes that had no business working, but paid off in long-term residuals anyway.
1. The 50-Taco Marathon (Buying My Way into the Residuals)
We’ve all heard the classic merchant line: “I’m too busy right now, come back when we aren’t slammed.”
A few years back, I walked into an authentic local taco shop at 10:45 AM. The kitchen was in full prep mode for the lunch rush, and the owner shut me down before I could even finish saying “interchange plus.”
“No time, mon. We open in 15 minutes and I need to sell tacos, not talk about credit card fees.
Most reps would have handed over a business card and walked out. I didn’t. I looked at the menu board, looked at the owner, and pulled out my personal credit card.
“If I buy 50 street tacos right now, will you sit with me for the 15 minutes it takes your line cook to make them?”
The owner froze, looked at the ticket value, and burst out laughing. “Fifty tacos? Are you serious?”
I paid $125 out of pocket on the spot. True to his word, the owner sat down, handed over his current processing statement, and listened to me break down how much money he was losing in mid qual fees. By the time the cook bagged up 50 hot tacos, the application was filled out, signed, and off for approval.
The Aftermath: I ate four tacos in my car, drove down the strip, and handed out the remaining 46 tacos to the receptionists and managers of the surrounding retail shops—using the free food as an icebreaker to pitch them on processing. I signed two more accounts that afternoon off my taco trail.
2. The Plumber’s Pitch (Closing Under the Kitchen Sink)
Closing a deal is all about timing, but this one took “being in the right place at the right time” to an absolute extreme.
This story comes from a sales rep named Dan who was walking into a local diner to pitch the owner on a Tuesday morning. Just as he pushed open the door, the place was in absolute chaos. The manager was running around screaming, the kitchen staff was frantically throwing down towels, and water was spewing across the floor from behind the prep counter. A pipe trap under the sink had burst right before the lunch rush.
The manager yelled at me, “We’re closed! I need a plumber right now or we’re losing the entire day!”
Now Dan says he used to do handyman work back in college. Instead of walking out, he ran out to his trunk, grabbed his tool kit, walked right past the panicked manager, and slid onto his back underneath the leaking sink.
Ten frantic minutes, two replacement washers from his kit, and one pipe wrench later, He had shut off the leak, tightened the trap, and saved their lunch service.
He crawled out from under the sink, covered in grey water and grease, wiped his hands on a towel, and said, “Alright, your sink is fixed. Now, hand over your merchant statement so I can see if i can fix it.”
The owner who was also there didn’t even ask about rates. He handed over the statement, brought out a hot plate of food, and say sat and discussed ihs statement with Dan . That diner has been paying Dan a monthly residuals for over six years now.
The Confessions is
Sales trainers like to talk about “value propositions” and “ROI matrices.” But out in the field, pure hustle, adaptability, and the willingness to do what nobody else will do is what actually closes accounts.
You can’t script buying 50 tacos. You can’t put “under-the-sink plumbing” into a PowerPoint deck. But when you prove to a business owner that you are willing to roll up your sleeves, solve their problems, and sweat for their business, you aren’t just selling a merchant account you’re building a relationship that no competitor can ever steal with a cheap rate drop.
The Truth: It’s not always pretty, and it definitely isn’t in the corporate training manual. But a signed app is a signed app, and a residual check spends the exact same way whether you closed it in a boardroom or under a leaky sink.
What’s the most unhinged, desperate, or ridiculous thing you’ve ever done to close a deal that actually worked? Drop your best war stories in the comments below.
let’s see who holds the ultimate Hall of Fame record!
Happy Selling,
David
