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Education

wishes them the best of luck, and the avoid this method – as I never cared for it – clearly, from a supervisory position,
next thing you know, they are send- it was the most cost effective and least time consuming.
ing in deals. Maybe.
Workable models
It was done this way because it was However, with the industry getting harder to navigate and more challenging to
easy and cheap. The ISOs had very penetrate for new people, should we, as ISOs, start to think about only hiring
little, if any, money in the game and W2 employees?
would assume most of the agents
would not amount to all that much. If If we do adopt this model, we all know what comes with it: babysitting and
they sent a deal or two a month, then constant training, reports, goals and so on – all the things that we never had to
great. So as long as you had hundreds, do before. No one wants to spend money on a product or person that does not
if not thousands of agents, you had it provide a good return on investment ‒ and right away.
made. I should also add that the com-
mission schedule was nothing like it So here is what I want to know from other ISOs and MLSs out there with all
is today. If you got a 25 percent return size offices.
you were lucky.
How do you hire agents? What type of training do you provide them? How do
OK, fast forward to today. The indus- you compensate them? What is your success rate?
try is rampant with MLSs. Most have
no clue as to what they are doing. Please reach out to me at the email address or phone number provided in my
They are all following a script with a bio below. Or you can contact me through GS Online's MLS Forum. My handle
closer in another state ready to jump in the forum is Steve Norell.
on the line to make the deal. This is
the result of a number of companies
that heavily recruit online, train new Steve Norell is Director of Sales at US Merchant Services Inc. Based in Port St. Lucie, Fla., he oversees
agents for six hours online and then the USMS sales force and maintains the company's bank and processor relationships. You can
send their MLSs on calls from leads reach him by email at steven@usmsllc.com or by phone at 772-220-7515.
that were obtained through telemar-
keting. It should be noted that the
majority of the leads are poor, at best,
for these types of ISOs.
Shifting conditions

Today, technology is king, and de-
ploying a tabletop terminal has no
future. Revenue from the sale or
lease of a piece of hardware is almost
gone. It's all recurring revenue now,
whether it is residuals from the cards,
monthly cloud fees or gateway fees.
Has the time come that the indepen-
dent MLS is a thing of the past, and
the MLS needs to become something
different?

Through the years, I have tried every
known method when it comes to re-
cruiting and paying MLSs. I have had
paid employees; I have had 100 per-
cent commission independent con-
tractors, not employees; I have had
MLSs that were independent contrac-
tors, but were paid a base; and on and
on and on.

Guess which one always worked the
best? You got it: the MLSs that were
independent contractors. Period. End
of story. As much as I have tried to

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