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Inspiration

The enduring power of sales skills

espite tremendous changes in the payments 1. You often face rejection and resistance to your ideas.
industry over the past sixteen years, which Any customer can turn you down. A long-awaited sale
have been well documented in this and other may be canceled. You are never psychologically safe.
D publications dedicated to our sphere, basic
principles that applied to the business of sales in 2004, 2. You must learn to conquer distractions and
when Paul H. Green published Good Selling! SM: Thirteen interruptions. Your tasks require endurance. You have
Weeks to Personal Success, still apply today. to persevere until you get a commitment. You are the
person who brings in the business. Your organization
This means that despite the fact that ISOs and merchant relies on your success to keep its doors open.
level salespeople (MLSs) have had to reinvent themselves
repeatedly, their basic skills, knowledge and practices 3. You are vulnerable. Your successes and failures are
remain essential. Reinvention was driven by several out in the open for everyone to see. In addition, pats
factors: the commoditization of payment processing, the on the back are generally rare.
appeal of free equipment, technological advancements,
consolidation within the industry, and the fact that 4. Without any warning, you will have to adjust to
leading with price became ineffective when compared a wide range of emotional shifts, from the sheer joy
with providing a full suite of targeted business products of closing a big sale to the devastating setback of an
and services that complement payment processing. unexpected rejection. To handle these frustrations,
you need to be persistent and resourceful – and you
It is true that the best MLSs today serve as business have to have bounce-back capability.
consultants, offering an array of products and services
designed to improve merchants' efficiency and bottom Overcoming these four factors requires personal
lines. But successful MLSs are still consummate resilience, a quality inherent to some people more than
salespeople, just like MLSs of old. And traditional sales others. However, resilience can be enhanced with the
skills are the power behind our industry's increasingly right support. Of course, not everyone is cut out for sales,
sophisticated feet on the street. but for those who are, resources abound. It's also wise to
reinforce the basics, even drawing on wisdom from all-
Tools and tests time greats. For example, according to Green, Benjamin
According to Green, two enduring tools of the sales trade Franklin advised that you should take one thing at a time
are: human skills, to understand and relate to people as and give a week's attention to that one thing, leaving all
individuals; and technical skills, to match your products the others to their ordinary chance – and then repeat the
or services to the customer's needs. However, these skills process every 13 weeks.
may be easy to state, but using them is far from easy to
do. That's because MLSs work in an intensely competitive What if you applied that advice to your sales skills? What
arena where they are tested daily. Green described four of would you emphasize this week?
these tests as follows:

Kate Gillespie, President and CEO
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