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Education

StreetSmarts SM

SHARING WISDOM
SHARING WISDOM

WITH JEFF FORTNEY WITH JEFF FORTNEY

Now is the time to reassess

and make needed changes

By Jeff Fortney ditional data can be uncomfortable. Merchants are likely
The Strawhecker Group to push back with a statement like, "I was never asked for
this before."
f you have read my previous writings, you know
I've made the case that if you intend to remain If you revert to asking merchants to show you their state-
successful in the payments industry, you must ments so you can save them money, today's added docu-
I revamp marketing efforts in response to changing mentation burdens will likely drive away merchants you
conditions. The new normal is real, not a brief interlude approach this way. Even if they take you up on the offer,
before we go back to the way things were before the 2020 your profit margin will not justify the pain to get them to
lockdowns. sign, and your retention likelihood will be poor.
Requisite research
This is difficult for some merchant level salespeople to ac-
cept. At times, people of my generation remind me of a I have discussed techniques, questions and steps needed
variation on the old light bulb joke. Question: How many to garner information about merchants' pain and then le-
Lutherans does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: verage the answers to that pain. Yet even with merchants
What? Change?" (I am a Lutheran so I can get away with who represent our best candidates, the sales activities and
repeating this joke.) practices we used before the pandemic need to be adapted
to this new normal.
But it's impossible to ignore today's sustained increase in
online and phone ordering, or the new or increased web When discussing the new normal recently an agent asked
presence of even the smallest merchant. Talk to under- me, "Can I still call on all merchants within a shopping
writers and have them tell you about the need for addi- center if one of the merchants I am targeting is in that
tional documentation on what used to be auto approvals. center?" The answer before the pandemic was that you
They will tell you about the increased documentation that should—and leverage your completed call to your advan-
is required by the change from 100 percent face-to-face to tage.
even a percentage of only 30 percent non-face-to-face sales
transactions. That answer is no longer appropriate if you want to be suc-
cessful. In today's new normal, rather than go from mer-
For many merchants, increased risk now must be con- chant to merchant in the center, you first must research
sidered during the approval process. Yet asking for ad- the merchants you intend to approach to gain adequate

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