Like any professional in the outside sales world, it takes time to finetune and develop a routine that will benefit the varying schedule of a sales professional. While it may take time to find a strategy that works, it can be very beneficial to create structure around your week. This added structure can give you more time to grow a lead list, contact new businesses, and explore other methods to increase your book of business in an organized and effective manner!

Create A Schedule & Stick To It

As a sales professional, it can be difficult to find a schedule that works on a day to day basis, as no day is truly the same. Instead of a daily schedule, it may be beneficial to opt for a weekly plan. This can give you ample time to plan out which day you want to set up meetings, which day to make calls and visit businesses, and which day to organize and plan for the next week. By breaking down each day and creating some sort of structure, can allow you to stay organized and on track, with an additional layer of flexibility for the unexpected.

Ask for Client Referrals

If you are sales professional that has noticed a slowing trend in new business, it never hurts to reach back out to your prior clients to ask for referrals. Most business owners will belong to a chamber of commerce or some form of group that links local businesses owners together, so the chances of them knowing someone in need of your services is more than likely. If you have a healthy relationship with your clients, it can be very beneficial to grow your client list through word of mouth, and keep those residuals flowing in!

Utilize Social Media To Build New Leads

Social media has become a pivotal tool for business owners, entrepreneurs, creatives, sales pros to grow their audience and their client base by posting on social media platforms. This method can benefit to sales professional greatly as social media platforms serve as an excellent opportunity to reach out to old and new connections to help grow their business. As a sales pro, utilizing social media to highlight your services, reaching out to old friends and potential clients is a great way to increase your network and grow your leads in a digital space.

This is especially useful for anyone in the merchant services industry as it allows you to connect with new businesses, expand your existing network to create new relationships via LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and so forth.

Why Sell Merchant Services?

By providing merchant services to a client you are giving your customers access to so many new options like dual pricing, without sacrificing great service. Offering your clients one flat monthly fee allow businesses of all sizes a chance to lower their monthly overhead, increased profits, increase employee benefits, and grow their business with infinite possibilities.

Let me know what ways you increase your sales efforts.

Happy Selling,

David

Whether you realize it or not, you are blessed with incredible gifts. You have a purpose for being here. We are all souls having a human experience, trying to figure out why we are here. This is why it’s important to have a life purpose.

Without a life purpose, we end up feeling stuck. A life purpose will guide you and keep you focused. It will give you clarity on what really matters to you. Your purpose will help you achieve the life you really want.

The truth is, your purpose and your gifts are inside of you. You have to find out how to bring them out. All of us are blessed with certain unique gifts and talents. The first step is to discover what your genuine purpose is. Your purpose is a common ground between what you love and what you’re really good at. Ultimately, the key is to find out these talents and then get paid for them.

I have seen far too many people that are filled with talent, and they never reach their full potential because of fear. Fear is the number one killer of confidence. Fear holds us back from achieving our goals and dreams. The truth is that fear is a liar. Fear will tell you that you are not good enough. Fear will tell you that you are not worthy.  What lie is your fear trying to tell you? The truth is, we all have fears. The difference between living the life of your dreams and not, is overcoming these fears. Do not allow fear to stop you in your tracks. You have a purpose. You can be afraid, but take action anyway.

Once you have overcome your fears about pursuing your purpose, it’s time to write down what you would like to accomplish. It’s important to have a clear focus when it comes to achieving your dreams. Think about things you need to start or stop doing to fully embrace your purpose. This will help you to take your dreams and put them into action. 

We will never be able to begin to live our purpose without taking massive action. In order to get to a place on where you want to be in life, it’s all going to boil down to what you do today. Think about where you would like to be this time next year. Put together a plan on how you are going to make your life purpose come to fruition. Make a decision to keep improving and to keep growing. You must take action right now! 

Finding your purpose really is just the beginning. When you have a clear vision on what you’re working towards, it becomes easier to remember the important things. This will help you to make decisions that move you closer to your goals. It’s important to stay focused.

Get passionate about your goals. When you are excited about achieving your goals, this will help you to live your purpose more fully. It will keep you moving forward, even when you are going through the difficult times. Along the journey of success, you will have distractions and you will have challenges. You must tune out these distractions, and keep moving in the right direction.

You will find that when you are developing your purpose in life, you will receive gratification. There’s nothing like the joy and fulfillment you have when you know that your work is making a positive impact and you are living the life of your dreams. You begin doing work that’s important to you, and that is helping to create a a wonderful life.

Your purpose in life becomes more of a calling then it is a job. You begin to inspire people to help you bring your vision to life. This will help you to boost your self-esteem and your confidence as well. By having a calling, life becomes a lot more fun and meaningful. Your calling gives you purpose and true joy.

So find out what it is that you are good at. I’m talking about things that come easily to you. Get passionate about it and make sure that you enjoy the journey. Once you have a better vision of your future, create a life purpose statement. Write it out and then use your best qualities to create the future that you would like to have.

You have been gifted with great talents, and it’s time to use them to create the life that you want. Be clear with your vision and go out and make it happen! Find your purpose and be a blessing wherever you go!

Happy Selling,

David

The text book answer is this:  Residual income is money that you continue to earn on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis after you sell a product or service. 

We hear this question a lot from our potential sales partners.  They often are looking for a new career and are not sure why working with Payment Lynx is the right choice for them.  Residual income IS the reason we are the company you want to partner with to sell merchant services. 

How does it pertain to what we do?  Every time you set a new client up with credit card processing through us you will earn money EVERY month that they run credit card transactions through our system.  You set up the account once and you start earning a monthly income on that account immediately.  This is how you can build your own business and start earning enough money so you don’t have to go to work every day.  This is what makes working with us different than that 9-5 job you were considering. 

Our top sales people earn six figure incomes – they had to hustle in the beginning to build their book of business – but once that residual is up and running they can relax a bit and set their own hours.

What are you waiting for?  Start earning your residual income today. 

Contact us – 833-626-8326 or info@PaymentLynx.com

Happy Selling,

David

Happy Friday morning everyone. I needed a little inspiration recently. So, I went looking for the greatest sales quotes of all time. Since it took me awhile to find them, I figured I’d share them with you today.

Every entrepreneur and sales professional needs a little inspiration at times.

Throw one of these sales quotes into your next presentation, webinar, or eBook. Tweet them, like them, share them. Whatever you want. So as usual in David Letterman fashion,

From the home office in Flippin, Arkansas

Here are the top 10 sales quotes. They’re all yours.

10. Try not to become a person of success, but try to become a person of value. 

        -Albert Einstein.

9. There’s no lotion or potion that will make sales faster and easier for you – unless your     potion is hard work.  – Jeffrey Gitomer

8. Remember that failure is an event, not a person. Yesterday ended last night. 

    – Zig Ziglar

7. Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour day.       – Zig Ziglar

6. In sales, a referral is the key to the door of resistance. – Bo Bennett

5. Success is the culmination of failures, mistakes, false starts, confusion, and the determination to keep going anyway. – Nick Gleason

4. The questions you ask are more important than the things you could ever say.

     -Tom  Freese

3. Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. – John Wooden

2. Obstacles can’t stop you. Problems can’t stop you. Most of all, other people can’t stop     you. Only you can stop you. – Jeffrey Gitomer (This was almost #1)

And the number one sales quote is…

1. Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says,    ‘Make me feel important.’ Not only will you succeed in sales, you will succeed in life.    – Mary Kay Ash

I hope this help these motivate you and get you out in the field.

Happy Selling.

David

Has this ever happened to you? You’re talking with a prospect about your services and the conversation has been positive. They have given you information about their concerns, you have overcome any objections they had and you have explained your solutions. Everything is leading you to believe that the merchant is ready to sign.

At this point, you pull out the application and get ready to complete it, right? However, at the last minute you have a brain malfunction and decide to bring up a product or solution that you think would be of interest to the merchant. You say something like, “While we’re talking, let me tell you about something else that we offer.” From my experience, many people do this because they’re nervous and are uncomfortable with the silence.

Unfortunately, more often than not this tactic will backfire on you. The result is that the green light the merchant seemed to be providing has suddenly turned to yellow. There is a pause, and the excitement you felt seems to wane. The merchant says, “Well, I hadn’t thought about that. It may be something we should consider, but I need to talk to my partner.”

The next thing you know, you are being asked to check back in a few days. When you do, the response is something you hadn’t anticipated, “We are not quite sure right now. We will call you when we decide to move forward.”

With one statement, the merchant has gone from a deal ready to close to one that likely has no future.

I have talked with many sales people who have experienced this very situation and were honestly unaware of what happened that caused them to lose the sale. In their eyes it was a done deal. However, if you walk through the sale, it becomes obvious: they went from being a consultant or trusted adviser to a product salesperson.

The merchant shared their pains, and an agreement had been reached on how to address them. They were comfortable with you and your merchant credit card processing services, but before you moved to the next step and closed the sale, you injected an effort to add or sell something.

Everyone will say that merchant retention, pricing consistency, and loyalty is found in consultative selling. In other words, find the pains that the merchant is experiencing and find ways to address those pains. This form of selling requires merchant sales people to actively listen and ask questions. When enough information has been shared, the solutions are presented, and if time has been spent building rapport, the merchant should be comfortable and ready to sign.

The challenge in the above scenario isn’t that a product offering was made. Rather it’s when it was made and how it was presented. The merchant had developed a level of trust, and felt confident in the solutions proposed. At the time they were ready to move forward, but then they received what they perceived to be a sales pitch.

There is a way to position the product offering in a way that will not cost you the deal. The first step is to start the application process without offering any additional product. Instead, position the offering differently.

For example, when completing the application, say something like, “You know, I am not sure you would be interested or not, but as we compile this information another solution has come to mind. It may be something that you would want to consider.”

Keep this part of your discussion very low key and toward the end of the paperwork, and if the merchant doesn’t ask for more information move on to another topic immediately. If the merchant seems intrigued and asks a question, give them the basic facts about what the solution does, but be sure to end with something along the lines of, “again, I’m not sure you would be interested, but I just wanted you to know that it was available.” Do not imply that you are selling. Instead position it as a “by the way” opportunity.

Just remember, even if the merchant passes on the solution now there will be opportunities to present it after they are up and running.

Don’t forget that the time when you close the sale is when the merchant is the happiest. Those times are what we all seek.

Do you have any other tips that you would like to share on how to make sure that you don’t miss another opportunity to close a deal? If so, email me below.

Happy Selling,

David

Even if you think you may have a deal in the bag and ready to sign up there is still the possibility of walking away empty handed. Typically deals fall apart during the final stages of negotiations – so this is your time to make sure you are doing everything right. Below are the 4 most common mistakes a sales professional can make when negotiating a deal. If you read this list and any of these sound familiar to you then it’s time for you to make a change in your tactics so you can start closing more deals.

Not negotiating with the signing authority – The owner

If you can identify the ultimate decision maker early in the sales process, you will be much better off. Unfortunately, this identification is not often made until the negotiation phase. If you start negotiating with someone who does not have the signing authority, you risk losing out big time. Say you go through and make some concessions and settle on a number less than your regular price. If you have you have done so with someone who does not have signing authority, you will have to start the negotiation process all over again with the person who does, only this time instead of starting at your regular price, you have to start at the one you agreed to with the previous correspondent.

Using lump phrases

You may think you sound confident in your sale when you throw around phrases such as “this is non-negotiable” or “it’s a deal breaker.” In reality, the more limitations you establish in the negotiation, the less likely it is to be successful. To enable both sides a successful negotiation, you must be open-minded and flexible. Putting the most options out there as opposed to the fewest will actually benefit you.

Over negotiating

Over negotiating is one of the biggest mistakes a sales professional can make. You want to make a sale, but you do not want to seem desperate. If the prospect makes a statement of the threshold they are willing to pay, do not immediately jump to change the price and give them a contract without a signing date. Instead, ask clarifying questions about why the prospect needs the price below a certain amount. This will help both parties come to a mutual agreement and the prospect will know exactly what value they’re getting for the purchase price.

Not properly preparing

Rushing into a negotiation without thoroughly preparing. You may think you know what you want to get out of the deal, but that is not enough. It is important to take the time to analyze all aspects of the negotiation with care and come up with a BATNA, or Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement.

If you can’t reach an agreement during the negotiation, your BATNA is the best alternative course of action. Establish at which point you will walk away to help yourself make rational decisions.

Are you looking to fine tune your negotiation skills? Let’s talk, email me at Info@paymentlynx.com.

Happy Selling,

David

When you sell credit card processing signing up the the client for a  merchant account is only half of the job.  The sales professionals job is not really complete until that client is actually set up and processing credit cards as well.  

We all get excited when we are closing a deal and finally sell that prospect on our credit card processing services – but sometimes we forget that the client does not benefit from our merchant services account and that you  – the sales professional- does not make any residual income unless the credit card terminal or point of sale system actually gets installed. 

So how do we make sure this happens?  By setting expectations on when the install will happen.

Simply put:  you need to set up an appointment with the client to complete the install when you are signing the contract to set up their new merchant account.  Once they sign the paperwork you just need to set a date to come back in.  Unless they are in a huge rush try to make it no more than a week later.  This gives you time to receive any equipment you ordered for them and to test it out before you go plug it in. 

You should be doing this for any new account with a mobile swiper, terminal, or online account.  Even if they just need to set up a user name and password to access a portal to process credit cards – you should be there to assist them.,  This will be the best way to make sure set up gets completed AND it will strengthen your relationship with the client. 

The only time you may not be able to do this is with a Point of Sale set up.  Your best course of action is to start working with the POS vendor right away to make sure they assist with the switch.   Keep after the POS vendor  – if they don’t return your calls  – keep calling them until they do.

If you follow this simple MMA (Money Making Activity) rule to always get a set up appointment in place then you will get significantly more of your clients running credit cards with you – this will lead to faster residual growth – and more success in merchant service sales! 

Happy Selling,

David

So many times in life, we get so caught up with what everybody else is doing. Unfortunately, with all the social media outlets that are out there, one can become fixated on comparing themselves to others. If you really want true success, it’s important to focus on yourself. 

The only one you should compare yourself to is you. Your goal should be to become better today than you were yesterday.

You cannot do that by focusing on others. You have to focus on what you can do today to keep improving and growing.

People that are successful keep positive no matter what is going on around them. They do not get caught up on past failures. They take the proper steps they need to get them closer to achieving their goals. They do not get caught up in all the other distractions that come in life. 

Now, in no way am I saying to be selfish. I always believe it’s important to help other people. However, what I have found is that you can’t give away something that you don’t have. This is why it’s also important to take care of yourself. You have to make yourself a priority.

For me, I have found that life is always about continued growth and progress. It is very important to not stay stagnant. You must always work on improving yourself.

  In order to have self improvement, make sure you’re constantly writing down your goals so you know what direction you are heading. When you make the commitment to work on yourself and to improve each and every day, you will see the results that you have been looking for. You can have the life that you want by working at it each day. 

When you focus on you, you will receive many benefits. By improving your relationship with yourself, you’re going to benefit in all areas of your life. You will learn to limit stress when you prioritize taking care of you.

If you’re not doing this already, start spending some time alone. Make this part of your schedule. This is why I stress waking up early and starting your day off positive. Create time each day to just sit quietly and focus on gratitude. Take a walk in the morning, which will help you get energized for your day.

Many times, we can be too hard on ourselves. It’s important to treat yourself like you treat others. Treat yourself with kindness and patience.

Make sure that your life is heading in the right direction. Create a list of goals that you would like to achieve and then create action items that will get you closer to the things that you want. Get rid of the things that are weighing you down and stopping you from having the life you desire.

Perhaps start exercising each day and eat healthy to feel your best. Make it a priority to take care of your body. Try to get at least 30 minutes of exercise each day. Go for a walk, hit the gym or even do some exercises right in your own home. Choose something you enjoy so exercising doesn’t feel like a chore. Start eating healthy and you will find that you will have much more energy.

Sleep also is a very important part of taking care of yourself. Sometimes, when life gets hectic, people sacrifice sleep in order to get everything done. The reality is, doing that is counterproductive. You will end up becoming exhausted and unfocused. Be consistent with your sleep schedule. For me, seven hours of sleep is what I need. I recommend getting at least 7 to 8 hours a night. Also, avoid checking your phone in bed. The emails and social media updates can wait.

A big goal in life is to be able to bless other people. You cannot do this if you have not focused on taking care of you. Make yourself a priority. You deserve that!

Let me encourage you, going forward, to focus on you. Make a commitment to grow and improve each and every day. You are your greatest asset.

Your future looks incredible and today is the beginning of the rest of your amazing life!

Happy Selling,

David

 It’s been over 25 years since Seinfeld show left the television airways, but it remains the undisputed classic television comedy. But here’s a little known fact: did you know that you can learn a lot about sales and selling from watching Seinfeld clips? It’s true! Which bring me to this weeks top 10 list, 

I’ve gathered 10 ten clips, each of which illustrates a basic principle of selling, sales technique, or sales psychology. As usual, We will do this in David Letterman fashion.

From the home office in Panther Burn, Mississippi Here are

The Top 10 Sales Tips from “Seinfeld”

Here we go…

10.  In sales, determination isn’t enough; you also need  basic skills, like how to answer an objection.

9.  If your offering is good enough (like the soup in this clip), you can actually increase sales by making it more exclusive and more difficult to buy.

8. In sales, as in all business, simply showing up is half the battle. Even if you don’t really do anything.

7. Newman’s Big Request –  If your sales pitch does not work, don’t take it too personally.

6. BUSY GEORGE – Now you know why the marketing team always looks so busy.

5.  THE TELEMARKETER – Make sure you cold-call at the right time.

4. ELAINE’S DANCE – Never drink more than just a sip or two in front of merchants or co-workers. Never.

3.  JERRY BUYS A JACKET – Let the customer sell himself, then close the deal.

2. George’s New Suit –  Never wear a completely new suit when meeting a customer for the first time lest you run into an unexpected “wardrobe malfunction.”

And the #1    Sales Tips from Seinfeld.

1. OPPOSITE GEORGE –  If what you’re doing isn’t working, try something completely different.

Well there you have it sales professionals. We can find sales tips anywhere, all we have too do is look for them. 

What should we do next week? more TV shows, sitcoms, movies maybe sales objections send me your thoughts an ideas.

Have a awesome weekend,

David

How many times have you walked in to a business and had the owner say this:  “I get people like you in here all the time….”?  If you are like any of our other sales people you know the answer:  Every day. 

While this is a fairly easy objection to over come ( watch our rejections and rebuttals webinar on the agent portal if you need a refresher on this rebuttal )  You can avoid getting this objection altogether if you change where you are selling.

The biggest issue we run in to when we sell credit card processing is that they want to go where all of the businesses are.  Typically downtown or a strip mall.  The problem with this is that EVERY sales rep in our industry is  going to the SAME PLACES!  This is causing multiple problems.  One is that you are going to bump in to this rejection and two is that profit at these businesses has been driven down since they have renegotiated their deals so many times.  

BUT  – There is a solution and it’s obvious.  Go where nobody else is going.  Find the businesses that are standing alone in the middle of nowhere.  Find industrial parks.  Go to medical and dental buildings.  Go out of your way to sell in places that have never been sold to by anyone ever before.  There is significantly more profit and a whole lot less competition. 

Open up google maps and search for the following terms:  industrial park, dental office, medical office, and even the word business.  Find the businesses that are NOT downtown.  Go there and you will be surprised to hear that many of these businesses have not negotiated their contracts in years. 

Success in our business can be easy.  It all starts with finding the under-served client.  Begin the process by NOT going where everyone else is.

Happy Selling,

David