Three Best Practices in Payments Sales: A Buyer’s Perspective

I’ve been impressed by some payments sales teams I’ve met. Payments and on/off ramps sales (wonder what on/off ramps are? Read the intro guide here) demand attention to detail, general knowledge, and technical understanding.

The three top best practices below apply to general sales, and are especially crucial in payments and on/off ramps sales.

Credit: Photo by Pickawood on Unsplash

1. Fast engagement speed

Fast engagement speed is a baseline expectation.

• Before the sales process starts: Being prompt to say yes or no to supporting a merchant. A fast “No” is better than maybe, especially with how long and extensive approval process can be in payments, especially for Crypto merchants. I’ve appreciated quick Nos from sales team. It saves everyone time.
• Through the sales process: The best sales folks are prompt in their responses, share deadlines and what’s possible. Also, being fast didn’t mean they reduced the quality of their responses — they balanced detailed answers with fast responses.

Given the detail oriented nature of the payments sales process, there are many times where a sales person has to come back later with the answer. They weren’t always the fastest— they knew how to triage and be fast on the important points, and figure out how to get the answers to less important questions later.

2. Expert insights relevant to needs

Teach your buyer something.

• The sales team should knows more than the buyer about the industry, landscape and product. It’s especially crucial in the payments and on/off ramp world. Your buyers and your competitors know the industry. It is painfully obvious when someone lacks knowledge about how payments work, what popular regional payment methods are, what a success rate is, and what underlying costs are. Lack of knowledge damages credibility during the sales.
• To bring “challenging” insights, you need to know your buyer’s needs. You have to ask good questions to get visibility into these needs. Hence, expert insights are a balance of sharing what you know, but also making sure you’re not just talking. A great book about teaching is — Challenger Sales, where sales teams bring insights and best practices specific to that industry.

3. Transparency

Transparency builds trust.

There’s no point in sending information with missing parts that requires more follow ups (no to more meetings!), or is contradicted by publicly available information (websites, reddit, customers reviews [1]). It is a concern to have to pressure test everything and look out for “trapdoors” (hidden fees, overselling product capabilities, inflated metrics).

My top three best practices are (1) Fast engagement speed (2) Expert insights relevant to needs (3) Transparency, which has made discussions a joy and great fun.

[1] “Trust, but verify”. I cover this in another post on market research via support FAQs