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Education

StreetSmarts SM

Dee Karawadra
Emily Karawadra

Operations and sales depend on each other

By Dee and Emily Karawadra In our case, our operations staff, with zero sales experience,
Impact PaySystem had no insight into the life of sales reps. They didn't know
how many times an MLS tried to close a deal or how
iscord between operations and sales teams much effort it took to convince merchants to switch their
can harm the health of an organization. In this accounts to Impact. They didn't see the statement analysis
article, Emily and Dee Karawadra discuss how or the reconnaissance work that went into getting that
D these distinct, but interdependent arms of a merchant's signature. They had processed paperwork and
company can work together for greater efficiency, hap- supported merchants. Selling was foreign to them.
pier merchants and more profits.
Years of frustration over unfinished and ineligible
From Emily paperwork finally reached a boiling point between the
two arms of our organization. We then realized that
In the merchant level salesperson (MLS) world, sales requiring operations staff to engage in sales tasks would
fuel success. Without them, there is no growth. You can open their eyes What we did next was enlightening for
have all the policies and procedures in place, but without all involved. We had an internal conversion scheduled for
customers and new sales, a company stagnates. And an merchants on legacy equipment and platforms that we
operations versus sales mentality can quickly hinder needed to transition.
the growth of any MLS. When these two instrumental
arms don't work together chaos ensues, and the customer Normally, we would utilize an inside sales team for
eventually feels it. this. Instead, we enlisted our operations staff to call
merchants and convert them. They had to make contact,
How do we prevent this from happening? We can relate explain the conversion and obtain newly signed merchant
first hand as Dee is the sales guy who goes out and sells agreements. These customers had been with us 10-plus
a complicated deal and I, being more operational, get to years; our operations staff thought this should be easy.
figure out how to make it work. This has fueled many
a debate at the office and at home. We see this struggle They quickly learned they couldn't approach these
within our own sales and support teams as well. conversations in the same way they interacted with
merchants when in a support role. They had to speak
MLSs who bring in big deals and multilocation merchants with real enthusiasm; they had to convince merchants
appear to be living high to operations staff. They see sales that change was a good thing, and that the hassle of new
reps constantly recognized by upper management with paperwork and learning a new technology was going to
President Clubs and "atta boys," while the operations staff benefit them.
does all the work of making the merchant account work.
When something goes wrong, it's always the operations They got off to a rocky start. By the end of the first day, we
staff that gets the brunt of the blame. had no willing merchant participants in the conversion.
We met with our team and went over all the responses
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