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Education

The real reason so dustry. They have the sales skills and
maybe even the contact list (Rolodex
many newbies fail for the old schoolers), but what they
lack is key industry knowledge.

By Jeff Fortney When new agents are brought on
board, the hiring ISOs and MLSs
Clearent LLC have confidence they can provide the
knowledge and direction necessary
e all know selling merchant services is not easy. People with to help them succeed. The problem
superb sales skills but limited knowledge of our industry rou- is that for many newbies, success re-
tinely fail. Time and again, I see promising reps leave the indus- quires handholding and a time com-
W try because they don't find the success they anticipated. mitment. Both take time away from
what made the ISO or MLS successful
This trend bothers me. In any field of sales, there will be turnover with newbies. in the first place – selling.
However, the number of newbies who fall flat in our sphere has always seemed
higher than it should be. It would be easy to chalk this up to the complexity of The established ISOs and MLSs then
payment processing, but that is too simplistic. I've seen too many individuals fall back on the old tried and (be-
fail who had the skill set, desire to succeed, thirst for knowledge and thick lieved) true approach. They advise
enough skin to handle the rejection. Maybe the problem isn't them, but us. Let newbies to just get merchants' state-
me explain. ments and submit them for analysis.
A faulty growth plan The ISOs and MLSs will then provide
proposals that save merchants mon-
The common goal of successful ISOs and merchant level salespeople (MLSs) is ey. The expectation is that the new-
to grow their businesses. One way to do that is to bring on new agents to work bies will present the proposals and
for them. In most cases, these people are either brand new or newer to the in- merchants will be thrilled with the
savings. It worked for the ISOs and
MLSs at the beginning; surely it will
work for newbies, too.
Poor outcomes

This approach involves no training
on any facet of the industry; no ref-
erence to terminals, POS systems or
even basic information on how pay-
ments are processed; no discussion
on the needs of the merchant; and no
conversation about interchange and
its components.

This commonly results in one of the
following scenarios:
• The promised savings don't
materialize once the merchants
sign
• Merchants start asking common
questions that newbies can't an-
swer

In both cases, the weight of the situ-
ation falls on the newbies, not the
agents who hired them. After about
10 of these calls, newbies are not only
frustrated, but also embarrassed.
They don't want to anger their con-
tacts, so they leave the business or
seek others who can be of assistance.

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