Today’s marketers and sales reps need to fulfill many different roles when reaching out and building relationships with prospects. Nowhere is this more relevant than in the merchant service space. This industry has lately been seeing some tectonic shifts in the way business is being done, that prospecting in this sector needs a major rethink.
According to the 2016 Global Payments Insight Survey, as much as 81% of merchants view payments as a clear part of their business strategy, while another 92% say they’ll be maintaining or increasing their investment in payments over the next year-and-a-half.
The report also finds that merchants are increasingly becoming more open to working with less-traditional payment providers such as startups and online players.
This means there’s ample opportunity for merchant services, but the landscape is also evolving. As a result, cultivating relationships with potential merchant clients as well as gaining their confidence has also fundamentally changed. You now need to wear many different hats and carry out multiple responsibilities to earn prospects’ trust. Here’s three you should be considering:
#1. Innovator
It’s a vastly different world for reaching out to B2B buyers today than it was just a couple of years ago. Other than the fact that the buying cycle has gotten longer, the buyer’s journey has become increasingly more complex. There are now more heads needed to give purchase decisions a nod, requiring more time to evaluate a solution and more concrete proofs of ROI.
Your role as an innovator is to develop fresh ways not only to show returns but also to demonstrate successful integration and use of your merchant solution. Check out the Best Marketing Strategy for Merchant Services?
#2. Consultant
A study by the National Retail Federation (NRF) finds that retailers are betting on organization, technology, and metrics as the top three ways for staying competitive. These are now the three main areas that merchant products and services providers are looking into in order to put together solutions that merchant clients really need.
To win your target buyers’ business, you need to take on the responsibilities of a consultant and help potential customers find the right solution to a pressing business problem. This means being able to map your merchant solution’s benefits, features, and capabilities to an urgent pain point or need.
Learn How to Be a Major Market Player in the Global Merchant Industry!
#3. Partner
In a Gartner survey of tech buyers, almost two-thirds of respondents pointed out that they’d increase their purchase from an existing provider if the value from their initial investment was clearly shown.
However, only about 44% felt that vendors were helping them consistently maximize returns.
You enable your existing and future merchant clients to maximize value by being a reliable partner. You have to show that signing them up is only the beginning of your relationship. Being a partner means being transparent, so you have to provide them with everything they need to know upfront.
Always remember that no marketing ad could triumph over customer loyalty. Here’s how we gain the trust of our Merchant Client.
Related: Low Cost Marketing Options for Merchant Payment Processors
The Takeaway
Earning the confidence of merchant clients goes beyond your choice of headgear. Being an innovator, a consultant, and a partner all boil down to one thing: choosing what’s best for your customer. When you’re unable to clearly show to your target buyers that selecting your solution is in their best interest, you’ll never be able to gain their trust no matter what hat you wear.