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Education

StreetSmarts SM

“Starting in the Street

and ending at the

Merchant’s front door”
Steve Norell
How do you recruit, train

and manage your sales team?

By Steve Norell
US Merchant Services Inc
erchant level salesperson. MLS. How many
people even know what those letters mean? The NAOPP legacy
How many know that if you are not an ISO
M or merchant service provider, you are an Serving professionals in the payments industry throughout
MLS? Probably fewer than you would think.
the United States and Canada, NAOPP endeavored to help
So lets start from the beginning. When did the term MLS MLSs succeed by bridging the gap between them and other
first start, and who came up with the name? Well, I can segments of the industry, as well as by providing educational
answer those questions since I was there the day it was opportunities and resources that included in-person meet-
originated. It was Feb. 23, 2003, and the location was the ings, mentoring, advocacy, teleseminars and more.
Sheraton in Tampa.
Vicki M. Daughdrill, managing member of Small Business
Naming the MLS Resources LLC, served as executive director of NAOPP. In a
2007 interview with The Green Sheet, she said that when
The first meeting of what would later be called the the association was formed in 2003, the original members
National Association of Payment Professionals was on wanted to create an organization to serve the needs of the
this date, and we all agreed that calling agents ISOs was MLS as well as serve the industry as a whole. "They felt there
wrong, since they were not ISOs. So we decided to come was a need for a source for education to advance the quality
up with something new. I said merchant level street and professionalism of individuals engaged in the payment
person. Paul H. Green, who founded The Green Sheet Inc. processing industry," she said. "Certification is the logical out-
was also there. He suggested merchant level salesperson come of an established education and testing program."
– and voilà! That is how it came to be.
With limited time to devote to trade association development,
So now I'll jump ahead and focus on the real purpose NAOPP members subsequently disbanded, deciding to focus
of this article. Over the years, all of us, as either ISOs or on bringing the voice of the MLS to the thriving regional
MLSs, have attempted to recruit or hire MLSs to represent acquirer organizations. But their desire to create a certifica-
our companies for the purpose of submitting merchant tion program was championed by the Electronic Transactions
accounts for processing.
Association, which thereafter created the Certified Payments
The old way Professional program (www.electran.org/certification).
For those of us old enough to remember, there used to
be one way and one way only: the ISO recruits agents by
phone or recruitment ads, has them sign some papers,

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