November, 2011:

Finding the right merchant services provider that offers you a good price and gives you the tools you need to do merchant services processing fast and efficiently is not an easy task.

In this guide, you will find out 10 simple, yet important characteristics to look for in your merchant services processing partner.

Download A Guide to Merchant Services Processing: Finding the Right Merchant Services Solution For Your Company and find out the answers to questions such as:

• How do I know when I have a good deal on merchant services?
• How do I know which merchant services provider I should use?
• Can I really get free merchant equipment and free merchant services software?
• Which merchant services providers are trustworthy?
• Which merchant services solutions can fit my needs?

Download A Guide to Merchant Services Processing: Finding the Right Merchant Services Solution For Your Company.

Finding the right merchant services provider that offers you a good price and gives you the tools you need to do merchant services processing fast and efficiently is not an easy task.  In our new guide we give 10 simple characteristics to look for in your merchant services processing partner.

Download A Guide to Merchant Services Processing: Finding the Right Merchant Services Solution For Your Company.  On Monday we will be releasing this new guide to the general public.  Yet, since you are a loyal blog, Twitter or Facebook follower of The Merchant Services & Business Insider, we are giving you the full guide early! 

Download A Guide to Merchant Services Processing: Finding the Right Merchant Services Solution For Your Company and find out the answers to questions such as:

• How do I know when I have a good deal on merchant services?
• How do I know which merchant services provider I should use?
• Can I really get free merchant equipment and free merchant services software?
• Which merchant services providers are trustworthy?
• Which merchant services solutions can fit my needs?

Download A Guide to Merchant Services Processing: Finding the Right Merchant Services Solution For Your Company.

It was announced today that the Super Committee appointed by both houses of congress and both political parties have failed to cut  $1.2 trillion dollars in debt from our budget over 10 years.  That’s just $120 billion per year that they had to cut and they could not do it.  Pathetic!

Can we rely on our national leaders to get us out of the brink of economic meltdown as the Federal government piles trillions of dollars of debt on top of  trillions of dollars of debt?  Nope.  Apparently they are too busy doing nothing to actually get the job done.  So take matters into your own hands – grow your business and cut costs, that that you can do your part to help cut the national debt.  Here are 5 simple tips to grow the earnings of your business.

Tip #1: Use Internet marketing.  It is the lowest cost and highest ROI form of marketing and you can literally track your ROI to the penny.  In other words, you can tell if I put $1.00 in I get $10 in return.  Partner with an industry leading internet marketing firm.

Tip #2: Hire top performers.  The economy stinks.  That means that top talent very well may be underpaid or stuck in a bad compay.  Now is the time to implement the hiring techniques of Who and get top talent into your company to help take it to the next level.

Tip #3: Cut Wasteful Spending.  Merchants across the nation pay too much for merchant services processing, partner with a good merchant services company that gives you a low 1.05% rate and free merchant equipment.  It could save your company up to 40% per year in credit and debit card processing costs.

Tip #4: Farm Existing Accounts. Your existing customers are your easiest customers to grow revenue with.  Make sure you have additional quality products and services to offer your customers. If you don’t have them now, develop them.  Once you have them put together an aggressive plan to farm your clients and grow them into bigger clients.  Selling happy existing clients on something else of additional value is the easiest sale you will ever make.

Tip #5: Put a Client Retention Plan Into Place.  Build a bonus plan for your people that will reward them for improving client retention, as retention improves your growth will accelerate and so will your profitability.

On November 16th, Fox News broke an amazing news story Newt Gingrich is now the GOP front runner.  The former House speaker is at 23 percent, essentially tied for the lead with Romney, with 22 percent.  What are the top 3 lessons from this can we apply from this to business?

1) Credibility is key.  Rick Perry & Herman Cain lost their credibility within the past two weeks.  Herman Cain lost his credibility due to lack of character and Rick Perry lost his credibility due to being horribly unprepared for a debate.  In business, we develop credibility by operating our business with integrity and with simple and effective solutions to complex problems – then we make sure all of our target clients know about it.

2) If you lose face, you can recover, with time.  Newt Gingrich fell from grace when he slammed GOP darling Paul Ryan, then had his entire campaign staff quit, and had some bad press about his extravagant lifestyle.  With time he delivered intellectually sound arguments in a forceful way and when Rick Perry and Herman Cain fell flat, his past was pretty much forgotten.  In business, if we can consistently deliver great customer service, if we make a mistake we can recover by continuing to deliver great customer service.

3) Never give up.  Newt was considered down and out, yet he kept fighting and now he is back leading the pack.  In business, work hard and keep working hard and you will get ahead.

One of my favorite business mentors is Jack Welch.  He wrote a book called “Winning” which is great for any career oriented person, executive or CEO.  One of the points he stresses in book is the importance of having candor in the workplace.  Want to know more about how to have candor in the workplace and the power it can unleash?  Watch this video to hear Jack Welch, in his own words, talk about the greatest dirty little secret in business.

How do you innovate and stay ahead?  Learn from the mistakes and successes of successful venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki.  Learn the Art of Innovation in 10 Steps.

How do great companies like Apple inspire people to buy their product?  How do great leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. inspire a movement to victory?
Watch this video and learn about the Golden Circle and How Great Leaders Inspire Action.

Today news broke that Herman Cain is being accused of some pretty disturbing sexual harassment by a 4th accuser, Sharon Bialek.  According to the accusation Herman Cain tried to take advantage of her in exchange for a job.  If these accusations are true it is incredibly disturbing, and as I said before, he is not qualified to be president due to his lack of experience, repeated serious policy gaffs while running for office and now 4 accusations against him of sexual harassment by different women, all while he was married. 

It’s time for Republicans to find a new front runner.  I digress….

In the merchant services world there is merchant equipment that will Herman Cain you – merchant equipment that in other words will take advantage of you and will give you higher credit card processing fees due to the way that the equipment processes merchant service transactions.

Choice #1:  The Omni Vx570 – ideal for restuarant merchant services, medical merchant services, retail merchant services,  or just about any form of merchant services processing.

Choice #2: The Vivopay 4000 – the merchant services terminal of the future with tap and go technology.

Choice #3: The First Data FD100 – also ideal for restaurant merchant services, medical merchant services, retail merchant services,  or just about any form of merchant services processing.  This merchant equipment is small, compact and one of the newer terminal on the market.

Choice #4:  The Verifone VX570 – one of the leading merchant equipment terminals of today.

Choice #5: The  Nurit 8020 – the leading wireless merchant services equipment of today.

All of the merchant equipment above you can get for free through Choice Merchant Services and they will save you money in merchant services processing costs.

I think that everyone can agree that the United States of America is in a world of hurt right now.  We are seeeing American power fade, our economy stagnate, and the U.S. get saddled with crushing debt as our current President deals with a horrible economy he inherited and then made much, much worse through bad policies.  President Obama, although he may mean well, did not have the experience or the economic understanding to be a good President for America in this critical time in our history.

Now on the Republican side people are excited about a canidate named Herman Cain, former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza.  He has no experience dealing with government, politics, or even more importantly no experience dealing with macro-economic issues – he instead did a good job running a pizza company.  Note I said he did a GOOD job running a pizza company, if you want to see the story of a GREAT job running a pizza company – look at Papa John’s.  I digress, so essentially he has no real reason as to why he is qualified to be President of the United States.  Now add to that, Herman Cain has a history of sexually harassing women and I ask you, why should he be president?  Because he sounds good when he talks?  I think its time for the Republicans to find a new front runner!

I would not hire Herman Cain to work at Choice Merchant Services, not alone to be President of the United States.

I recently read Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play, a great book about how to improve sales – especially business to business sales. The authors argue that the key to making your close rate and your sales increase is to really know the pains and opportunities of your prospect.  In other words, simple get et to really understand their business.  Literally you should be doing about 30% of the talking and your prospect should be doing 70% of the taking.  When you ask questions and really understand your clients, and their bosses, pains and opportunities you can then develop a solution that is built to specifically solve their pains and solutions.

This is a great win-win becuase it enables you to give your prospects something that they really want and in so doing you get to close the sale more, faster, and usually bigger.  It also enables you to save time because if you realize, early in your question asking process that your solutions can not solve your prospects problems – then you should end the conversation and move on.  What is the end result?

You spent more time on the right opportunities and less time spinning your wheels.  So you sell more.  In addition, a you sell something of great value to your prospects, in return, they are much more likely to be your happy and loyal customer forever.