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Education

they had received that day. One by one, we tackled the Evaluate the relationship between you (or your team) and
objections. They found they had the right answers; they operations in your business. Even if you're a small shop,
just had to position them differently. And they learned the relationship between sales and operations can make
what it takes to get a merchant account. There are life easy or difficult for all. Next time you talk to someone
numerous questions and significant resistance to change at your ISO or on the operations team, remember that a
to overcome. It's not as easy as filling out new paperwork call that came in before yours might be why the person
and scanning it over to the boarding team. In the end, who're speaking with seems frustrated or grumpy.
our operations team, with help from sales, converted 85
percent of that portfolio. Work together to keep applications flowing and keep
merchants happy to lower attrition. If your operations
From Dee team is happy, they will always have your back. Behind
Being inclined toward sales, I tend to favor the sales side every successful ISO and MLS, there is a support team.
of the business. I work hard courting MLSs and ISOs to And as always, Safari Njema!
partner with Impact. The sales cycle involved in bringing
on a new sales partner can range anywhere from one day Dee Karawadra is president and CEO of Impacy PaySystem, and Emily
to two years. What I find frustrating is bringing on MLSs Karawadra is the company's chief financial officer. Since 2001, Impact
who then encounter issues boarding new accounts. This PaySystem has been a leading provider of payment processing technolo-
causes the MLSs to stop boarding. Operations plays a big gies and services to merchants throughout the United States. Through
role in this. alliances with payments industry leaders such as Chase Paymentech,
First Data, Buypass, Sage and more, Impact PaySystem offers tailored
From my perspective as a sales guy, I assumed solutions to meet the unique needs of each merchant. Dee and Emily will
operations had an easy gig, and there was no reason welcome your questions and comments at dee@impactpays.com and
why the operations team should have an attitude. But to emily@impactpays.com, respectively.
understand breakdown in our sales cycle, we looked at
why the operations team seemed frustrated and grumpy.
In truth, operations staff does a host of things that make
them part of our A team. And they rarely get calls just Snapshot of Up Coming Events
to tell them they are doing an awesome job. They aren't
invited to have lunch, dinner or drinks with merchants.
They don't receive a residual check monthly. Their job is
to take care of issues that arise from merchants during
presale, boarding or post sale.

To succeed at sales, you must have a team to support
you. Before a sale, your support team can provide
valuable information pertaining to merchant types, such
as applicable integrations, supported terminals, value- July 17 - 18, 2019
add products, etc. And we rely on operations staff to
board merchants, get deals through underwriting, build Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center
terminal profiles, prepare for downloads, mail welcome Schaumburg, IL
kits, download terminal(s) and ship them out. https://midwestacquirers.com/

After the sale, it's operations staff who are tasked with
keeping merchants happy. Depending on an ISO's
business model, often, merchants call the ISO for support.
The operations team keeps merchants processing, taking
care of technical and billing issues, change of address,
chargebacks, bank account changes – and the list goes on.

Why is it so important to be in sync with your support team?
It pays to keep them happy. Without them, you wouldn't
have time to sell; you'd constantly be troubleshooting on
merchants' issues, which would mean fewer merchant
applications. The support team is all many MLSs have August 20 - 21, 2019
for sales help. Operations staff have better knowledge of Caesars Palace
what's hot and what's not, what it takes to get an account Las Vegas, NV
approved, what different industry requirements are, and http://www.theprepaidexpo.com/
how to land complicated deals. Support staff deals with
this daily.
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