Page 32 - GS200301
P. 32
Education
StreetSmarts SM
Find your niche
By Dee and Emily Karawadra We also had merchants sharing their good experiences
Impact PaySystem with other merchants, and word of mouth brought us
many referrals.
s an independent sales organization (ISO) in
the payment industry, our primary focus is We were able to take the complicated out of the sales
always our sales strategy. Being in a sales- conversation by educating our field sales representatives.
A fueled industry, this has been and continues At the time of our emergence into petro, only a couple
to be our top priority. What has worked for us in the past ISOs were actively pursuing the market. We had MLSs and
and works now in the present is to focus on niche mar- ISOs who had relationships with FD Buypass but could
kets. This has allowed us to home in on what that niche not figure out how to board the merchants correctly not,
market needs and build a program that our sales agents most importantly, could they figure out how to support
can communicate and sell. them. We were considered an expert in petroleum and
pay-at-the-pump just by becoming educated, making
One of the first niche markets we tackled was petroleum. ourselves the experts and educating others.
Petro was considered complex and merchant level Creating a home in lodging
salespeople (MLSs) were hesitant to go start selling to
merchants in this sector. We had to open the conversation Another niche market we went after was lodging/hotels.
up with the MLS community to which we were recruiting. This was another niche market that MLSs shied away
from. Agents were unsure of the preauthorization process
Tackling the petroleum market
and the terminal functionality. When we first tackled
First, we had to have a platform that serviced petro this market, we were mostly dealing with mom-and-pop,
merchants. We found this with the Buypass Platform at unbranded locations. Once we mastered that, we soon
First Data Corp. They had the infrastructure built and the went after branded franchise locations where we saw
technology to service these accounts. Then we targeted high volumes in processing and great residual returns.
unbranded gas stations and jobbers servicing these
locations. We educated our MLSs on petro retailers and We again began to educate the MLSs on how to talk shop
all that was involved in the setup. We created guides to with hotel owners. We researched each hotel brand and
help them in the field that enabled them to identify the what property management system was being mandated
pump software and communication methods. by their brand. Then we had to ensure we had access to all
of the platforms or gateways these brands were utilizing.
Petro put us on the map, and soon MLSs were seeking us Soon, we were attracting MLSs and ISOs who wanted to
out so they could put bring their petro business to us. master the lodging market and sell into it.
32
