Cheap is better?

LOW! LOW! LOW! PRICES!
An attention getter if there ever was one. But is the cheapest price what you really need? All too often in order to offer the cheapest price the service provider has to cut out a lot of the service in order to afford the cheapest prices. In reality the "Lowest Price Strategy" also usually gets you the lowest quality. When you are shopping around it is important to look for the best value as opposed to the lowest price. In the Merchant Services industry you can find all sorts of offers that "Won't be undersold." In doing research for a presentation recently I even found one company offering a "5% guarantee" saying they would beat any price by 5%. WOW. OF course while it sounds good, what they are talking about is 5% of a tenth of a percent, or somewhere in that neighborhood, which would be 5 thousandths of a percent. So how much of a sale is it?
When you are making decisions, look long term and judge by the relationship. Is the company/agent trustworthy? Are they open with information before you sign up? How did you find them? Through a trusted contact, or through a faceless connection on the internet? These are the kinds of questions that lead to a good merchant services decision.You are making a decision which hopefully will lead to a long and mutually beneficial business relationship.

GOAL! GOAL! GOAL!

Do you know where you are going? Are you striving towards a goal? Do you even have an end point in mind? That is what goals can do for you. How can you figure out how you have progressed if you do not know where youare heading? Setting goals is a must, and they have to be good goals. A great way to measure them is the acronym S.M.A.R.T. Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Relevent, and Time Bound. It is not enough to just say your are going to do something. It has to be a realistic goal by a certain time. You can't say "I am going to improve my networking." You also have to set a time frame.
A common goal for almost everyone would be "I will succeed." Okay lets look at that. What is Success? How do you measure it? Is success attainable? What relevance does that have for you? And by when? Do you see why it is important to answer these questions in setting your goal?
How about if we change it to this goal......" I will close thirty business deals within the next 4 months." Depending on your business this may be an excellent goal.
To use a cliche, the trip of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Til next time. Ric

Failure is good.

How many times have you been afraid to try something because you might fail? Contrary to how it sounds, failure is good. Think about it. Through failure we as humans learn how not to do things wrong. Eventually, we then figure out how to suceed. Take a look at babies, they do not come into the world and start running around the delivery room. They arrive and eventually their parents teach them to stand. This is a long process which includes hundred of failures and much falling on our rears until we learn to balance. Then we start on walking, leading to more failures until we finally learn to take that first step. Well this is not a blog about baby care, it is a blog on Networking and Merchant services. And this applies to networking very well. We learn to network in business and to find and pass referrals to our contacts by failing. The key is to figure out why you failed, when you do, and then not make the same error the next time. Eventually if you hang in there, and don't become afraid to keep trying, you will start to succeed. Many self made people failed before they succeeded. Its like the sayin that it's not so much how many times you fall down that matters, it is how many times you get back up. So remember if at first you don't succeed, then come at it from another direction and TRY AGAIN.

Low Low Low credit card Rates!!! yeah right.

You see it all the time. A Processor says “we have the lowest qualified rates around.” The problem with that statement is that low qualified rates may or may not do you any good. To start with lets ask the important question of what is a qualified transaction that will be charged the qualified rates? There are some company specific rules here but usually there are a few things which will make a transaction a Non-Qualified transaction. The first is usually some sort of rewards card. Miles or points it doesn't really matter. Another thing is when a merchant hand enters the card information. These things usually downgrade a transaction.
Another important question is how does your business interact with the customers? Do you see them face to face? Or are you working off of order forms or over the telephone? IF you are set up to do face to face you should usually have a lot of qualified transactions. But if that is not how you interact with the customers you could be paying a premium for those transactions. This is because there are Mid and Non qualifying fees which could be assessed.
All of which means that you probably should be asking the following questions. “What are the Mid and Non-Qualified rates? Are there other fees that apply? Do some transactions incur both fees and discount rates? These are the points that should help you make your merchant services/credit card processing decisions.

New Year, New Beginnings

Happy New Year, So how many resolutions have you already shattered? I lost most of mine already but there are a few that are holding on. One of my New Years resolutions is to work on my saving. I have taken several steps to save more and spend less. Why am I mentioning this in a blog? Well, it's because lots of businesses make the same resolution over and over. Not just for New Years. Then they do not do anything different. Well, now is the time to do something different.
Look at your expenses and get quotes from competing companies. A lot of times that can save you money in a hurry. I am in Merchant Services, I do free analysis' for companies all the time. It always amazes me when they get the analysis, find out they are paying more than they have to and then.......do nothing. Make no changes, keep on paying too much. Wondering why they can't seem to save a little more. There is a story about 5 frogs sitting on a log, 4 of them decide to jump off the log. Guess how many are now on the log? That's right, 5. There is a big difference between deciding to do something and then doing it. Start your year off right decide to make a change , then actually do it.