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Education

StreetSmarts SM

SHARING WISDOM
SHARING WISDOM

WITH JEFF FORTNEY WITH JEFF FORTNEY

Identify your targets, the top

tenet for sales success

By Jeff Fortney Five tenets to sell by
Signature Payments Over the past few months, I've been approached by sev-
eral ISOs and MLSs who have faced this issue and want to
ooking back over the last year and a half, I know what I recommend for restarting their sales efforts.
can attest that, at the pandemic's onset, we all Whenever I'm asked for this type of advice, I go back to
envisioned a finite date when businesses would the five basic tenets for successful sales plans that I have
L reopen and people would leave their homes used myself and when training others.
to shop, dine and enjoy life fully again. But today, with
COVID variant cases spiking in several regions, we aren't I don’t normally spill my candy, but at a times like these,
able yet to put the pandemic and all of its associated and our new normal, I thought this time I would make an
restrictions behind us. exception, so here goes:

However, it is also evident that consumers have changed 1. Identify your targets.
their buying and dining habits. Merchants are opening 2. If your competition is doing something, stop doing
with specific precautionary steps to protect against CO- it yourself.
VID., and they are endeavoring to adapt to today’s con-
sumers. 3. Never chase maybes.
4. Listen more.
Any good salesperson wants to sell. In fact, many mer- 5. Act as a mirror.
chant level salespeople (MLSs) are in the field now trying
to talk with merchants, asking for statements, and doing Although the tenets remain constant, today’s new normal
what they have always done. This applies to many ISOs as has changed the definitions and how they apply. In this
well. And they are finding that road to be much rougher article, I will cover the first—and maybe the most impor-
than in the past. tant—tenet: identify your targets.

I hear their frustration often, especially when they talk A scattershot approach, which relies solely on one mes-
about prospects who just won’t sign. Many agents tell sage fitting all, has never been an effective method of sell-
me that they've demonstrated they can save merchants ing to merchants. It is even more ineffective today. Identi-
money and give them better service, but merchants won't fying targets helps to provide focus when selling; in our
move forward. In response, I invariably suggest they industry, it begins with classifying merchant types.
might not be offering what merchants need. You see, right
now many merchants are just trying to survive, and even
cost savings doesn't guarantee that.

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