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Education

StreetSmarts SM

“Setting up your ISO for success”

WITH
AARON NASSEH

Never sell a merchant account again

By Aaron Nasseh I would like to share tips on how you can go from a one-
Finical Inc. person shop to a high-producing sales office – without
you signing up a single merchant account. Sounds too
Editor's note: Unexpected developments have made it impossible for good to be true? It's not. That's the beauty of our industry.
Finical Chief Executive Officer Aaron Nasseh to complete a full year as
Street Smarts author. Thus, this is his last article in that capacity. We The secret is in building teams. However, this is no simple
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are sorry for his departure and will miss the calm, concise advice he has task. To build a solid team you must first be a good leader,
you must be a good coach, and it goes without saying
offered ISOs and merchant level salespeople (MLSs) to enhance their that you must have reasonable experience with merchant
knowledge and effectiveness in the payments business. Stepping in on services sales.
short notice will be Steven Feldshuh, President of Merchants' Choice
Payment Solutions East, whom many of you will recognize from the Five steps for team building
refreshing, informative articles he has written for our Education and
Views sections. He will take over the column as of our Sept. 11, 2017, Here are some key steps to start building your team:
issue. 1. Identify your target recruits: Your target recruits
s I write my final article for Street Smarts , I for this program should be individuals with very
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can't help but be excited about the opportuni- little to no merchant services sales experience. When
ties available in our ever-changing industry. you are starting this program, I suggest you limit it
A While some believe this industry has long to this group.
passed its best days and that the race to zero is all but
over, I respectfully disagree. Countless opportunities still 2. Find the best possible program: You must find
exist within our industry. In fact, I would argue that with an ISO partner that is willing to offer you a very
some of the newer pricing programs available today, the aggressive program, while handling most of the
industry has turned the profitability margins back a good servicing of your customers, because your time is
15-plus years. best spent on recruiting and training. Your program
must be aggressive enough so that you are able to
Top of mind: increase sales offer your agents a worthwhile compensation plan.
Don't get greedy. Treat your agents well and the good
During the months I have been writing for The Green ones will stay and continue to produce for you. If
Sheet, a number of you have been kind enough to contact you don't treat them well, they will end up calling
me and show your appreciation for the articles. It seemed someone who will.
like the universal theme in the discussions was related to
tips on how to increase sales. So, for the purposes of this 3. Create training material: Since you are going to
article I'm going to focus on the smaller MLSs who are recruit inexperienced agents, you must put together
hitting the streets daily, and doing the hard work to sign a good training program and create some marketing
up new accounts. I found that most of these good people material for their presentations. This isn't as compli-
were not lacking in effort, they simply did not know how cated as it sounds. You are not trying to make your
to multiply their efforts. MLSs experts in the industry; your training should
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