The Merchant Services & Business Insider

Any small business, in order to be successful and grow and thrive in good times and in bad needs to be built on loyalty.

If you are building a company that does any of the following you are setting yourself up for failure:

1) You make promises and break them.

2) You treat your people more like property, or parts of a machine, than you treat them like people.

3) You care almost exclusively about performance.

If you do this, and don’t care about the best interest of people and don’t want the best for them, not only are you a bad business leader, but frankly, you have to question if you are a bad person.  If your build your company on loyalty, your people will do just about anything to help the company and to help you.  Almost everyone will reciprocate goodness and loyalty with goodness and loyalty.

Choice Merchant Services is offering free merchant equipment to all new applicants for credit card processing in January 2012.

Get a merchant services quote for our best merchant services offer of 2012.

Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, and 21st century business thought leader, had some very nice things to say about Mitt Romney on January 9th on CNBC.

“In my lifetime, Mitt Romney is the most qualified leader I’ve ever seen run for the presidency in the United States,”  Welch said.  He went onto say,  “We haven’t’ had anybody do all these things . . . Certainly Obama didn’t have those credentials, two years in the Senate,” he said. “Come
on, we got a guy a here who’s a leader that’s demonstrated beyond anything we’ve ever had, great family. We’re the luckiest people in the world to have this guy there at this point in time.”

This goes to show that business experience managing big companies can be a powerful credential when being President.  If you can manage businesses like Staples and many other great companies like Mitt Romney has, then you have a better chance of being a great manager of the Jurassic Federal government.

In 2012 there are 6 things that will cost you more money.  This will raise the cost of your personal lives as well as the costs to run your business.

1. Airfare- A finance professor at Northeastern University’s College of Business Administration in Boston is projected at 10% to 15% rise in the cost of airfare.

2. Restaurant Dining – at least for meat and fish.  Food prices in general are expected to rise 4% in 2012 after an 8% increase in 2011 – meat and seafood prices will rise more.  These price hikes will take their toll on already cash-strapped consumers and they will add costs to running your business if you like to take employees out to lunch or bring in catered food for your company, customers & prospects.

3. Coffee – Expect an 18% rise in the cost of coffee in 2012.  This is an important staple for just about any business – its the fuel of productivity after 2:00 in the afternoon.

4. Gas – Gas prices are poised to go up substantially in the months ahead – especially due to tensions with Iran and in the middle east.  Gas prices will easily hit $3.50 per gallon this year.

5. Mail – Starting on Jan. 22, the cost of a first-class stamp will rise to 45 cents,  priority mail prices will jump 3.1% and the cost of using express mail will jump to 3.4%.

6. Clothes – Expect an 8% to 10% rise in the cost of clothes in 2012.

What can actually decrease in cost for you in 2012? Mechant Services.  With the passage of the Durban Amendment most companies can find up to 30% savings in merchant services credit & debit card processing costs in 2012.

CNNMoney recently ran an article about 5 Smart Ways to Market Your Business.

Here are their top 5 suggestions:

1) Find new ways to do free.
For example, Charge $10.00 for your free download.  Then have 100% of that $10 donation go to “Feed The Children.”  You will then see your company name skyrocket across groups like Facebook, Link In & Twitter & forwarded referral emails.

2) Off beat invites For example, send Potential clients heart shaped “Love Notes” and write about how much you would love to do business with them.

3) Get really crazy.  For example, host a flash mob at a local mall and have them promote your product by giving them jackets with your company logo on it.  Record it, and then promote that video everywhere you can online.  Watch your campaign go viral in a few days!

4) Explore social network niches.  For example, find a twitter group or a linked in group that talk about what your company has to offer.  Then simply go there and answer questions.

5) Kill them with courtesy.  Go above and beyond to give crazy good customer service and your net promoters will give you more referral business than you know what to do with.

There are 5 great ways to market your business.

The Omni VX570 offers everything that you could need for swipe merchant services processing.  The VX570 retails for $378.00, yet Choice Merchant Services offers it for free to our merchants.  We do this becuase it is a robust, fast, credit card procccessing terminal that is user friednly and offers quick downloads into most accounting systems.

What are the Omni VX570 Key Benefits?

• Accept credit & debit cards, echeck, and gift cards from one terminal
• Secure. It is PCI compliant.
• Offers a built in thermal printer
• Fast processing time
• Small terminal that uses little counter space
• Secure. It is PCI and PED compliant.
• Quick upload into many accounting systems like Quickbooks.

Want to know more about the Omni VX570 and merchant services from Choice Merchant Services?  Learn about our merchant services solutions.

Choice Merchant Services would like to wish you a happy new year and a prosperous future in 2012.

Petroleum Merchant Services have evolved over the past 10 years.  Pay at the pump merchant services technology is the only way to go.  Gas stations that offer the convenience of paying at the pump see an increase in gas sales of in excess of 40% compared to gas stations that do not offer this convenience.  It is a necessity in today’s petroleum business to consumer as well as business to business industry.

The question is, how does a gas station keep up in-store sales while at the same time increasing gas and diesel sales at the pump with pay at the pump technology?  Here are two solid ideas to increase your sales and profits:

1) Sell merchandise at cost in the gas station store to get people in the door and then advertise this at the pump in an at pump display and on the gas station door and windows.  An example of this is sell a $0.50 hot dog and $0.50 king size candy bar.  This will get consumers inside your store.  When they are there they can then purchase higher profit items like fountain drinks, chips, snacks, tobacco, lottery, or alcohol.

2) Then in your convenience store accept payment through the First Data FD100, Hypercom T7P, or the Omni VX570.  This merchant service equipment can save your petroleum station a lot of money in processing costs and the best merchant equipment providers will provide this to you for free – especially if you are in need of petroleum merchant services.

3) Another way to beef up sales is to put a Subway or Jimmy John’s franchise inside your convenience store.  Sheets has learned how to grow sales dramatically with the MTO sandwich shop inside the store location.  You could do this as well.  If you are at a gas station that already has a lot of foot traffic you may want to strongly consider this as adding a Subway or Jimmy John’s will create an additional very strong profit center for your company.

Yesterday, we talked about using the iPhone to accept credit cards wirelessly anywhere you can pick up a wireless internet signal.  Today, we are showing that you can do the same thing with the iPad2.  What this 30 second video about how to use your ipad to accept credit cards wirelessly.

Wireless merchant services just got easier with the iPhone.  This setup gives you the power to credit cards from anywhere you can get a signal on your iPhone.  You can do both swipe and keyed credit card transactions on your iPhone.  In addition, you can then print out a receipt on the spot or get the email address of your customer and email them their receipt. 

For a business that works in the field this is a cost effective way to accept credit cards as your merchant equipment can essentially be built into your iPhone, your wireless Internet that you need to accept credit cards is included in your iphone’s data plan, plus you can use your iPhone as a mini-PC, and phone all at the same time.

Watch this 2 minute video to see how the iPhone mobile credit card reader works on the iPhone4.