Friday, February 27, 2015

MG is NEVER BORING!

Love booths!  Here are some pics from the Firebaugh Business Expo yesterday.   Subject was food booths and speaker was from Fresno County Health Department -- B  O  R  I  N  G !  !  Purpose was to get everyone up to speed for the opening April-October Farmer's Market season.


HIGHLIGHT:  Lety was invited to address the crowd and she was EXCITING and got a ton of interest and people signing up for appointments with her.  Got a couple of good videos to post later.  GREAT JOB, LETY!!

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Lety got interest from all the merchants there, several of whom are using square so our comparison sheet came in handy!  One was very interested in Clover so we are sending him the pdf file.

And while Lety was playing around with the Pay Anywhere unit, under settings she clicked on languages and there were about 50 listed in there and clicked on 'spanish' and it responded with 'Mexican or US'?  When she clicked on US the whole system switched over to Spanish!  

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Wednesday, February 25, 2015

A little housekeeping from Avita:

"Can you put out a reminder that all pay anywhere and phone swipes are business not individuals. I have sent out an email in the past. When they start the app it ask if it is for personal or individual and many of them are putting personal. This is causing confusion and the high tickets can not be over $100. "
BE SURE YOUR MERCHANT PUTS 'BUSINESS' when filling out app for Pay Anywhere.

NOTE:  save the PA vs. Square doc on yesterday's blog!

On a straight comparison, a merchant running $50k volume is going to pay Square 2.75% or PA 1.69% -- which would you do?  So on rate alone you are WAY AHEAD.  Never mind the awesome FREE equipment and all the other deal-making benefits...

Remind your Square merchant:  Square has to pay for all those fancy tv commercials somehow!

Very busy getting ready for Business Expo with Lety tomorrow!

Marlyn had great success in SF with her booth and she has lined up several more with her team.  If you want some booth tips, I'll post here next week.

Lots going on:  listen up for John!

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FROM THE INBOX:

Dave Margolati shares this just now:

"Mike, I just checked the specs on the pay anywhere and it will do inventory control so that's another selling point"
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Can we  place 50 Pay Anywhere terminals in the next 2 weeks!?

Let's wow Mark Gardner -- with 100 of us that should be a snap.  You in?



Monday, February 23, 2015

10 Great Business Lessons

Thanks to the Harringtons for some great tips on getting merchants!  You can listen to them by dialing in to:

(605) 562-0029  code  319-289-214  Ref. 11  or  http://fccdl.in/2drMtvVzl

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Training from an Expert:  Love #9

10 Great Business Lessons from Mark Cuban

By Brad Aronson   |   Posted in: Entrepreneurship, Featured
Mark Cuban
I recently finished Mark Cuban’s book, How to Win at the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It, and loved it. Here are some highlights and quotes from the quick, interesting and funny read (not to mention it’s only $2.99).

1)    Learn to sell. In business you’re always selling – to your prospects, investors and employees. To be the best salesperson put yourself in the shoes of the person to whom you’re selling. Don’t sell your product. Solve their problems.
2)    Customers want to see that you have other customers. When Mark started MicroSolutions he did the work for his first customer free – only charging them the cost of the software. He called it his, “no money down approach to start a business.’”
3)    “Everyone has got the will to win; it’s only those with the will to prepare that do win.” Mark Cuban paraphrasing Bobby Knight.
4)    “Your customers can tell you the things that are broken and how they want to be made happy. Listen to them. Make them happy. But don’t rely on them to create the future road map for your product or service. That’s your job.”
5)    One thing we can all control is effort. Put in the time to become an expert in whatever you’re doing. It will give you an advantage because most people don’t do this.
6)    That being said, don’t get caught up in how many hours you work. Judge success based on having goals and measuring your results. Hard work, and lots of it, is certainly needed, but focus on what you get done. What do you need to do to deliver for your client? To land the next customer? To expand within your customers? . . .
7)     “Business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.”
8)    Great companies start without investors. He cites Apple, Dell and Microsoft as a few examples. Given that he’s a venture capitalist, and he’s recommending not to take venture money, it’s certainly worth trying to avoid. That’s probably not possible in some cases – but it makes sense if you can pull it off.
9)    “The beauty of success, whether it’s finding the girl of your dreams, the right job or financial success, is that it doesn’t matter how many times you have failed, you only have to be right once.”  And, “then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.”
10) “As I would learn later in life, money makes you extremely handsome.”


 

Saturday, February 21, 2015

LIVE FROM GEORGIA!

Merchant Guard Top Agents and Georgia leaders Wayne and Angelia Harrington will be Special Guests featured tomorrow night on MG Weekly Wrapup Call!

They are wonderful merchant guardians who have already amassed wide knowledge of how to help local merchants.  How did they accomplish this in such a short tine?

Hop on and listen.  With a guest or 10☆☆!

Friday, February 20, 2015

MG Week

Weekly Wrap-up in Pics:

Meeting Mike Orozco (middle) stateside from HI!

Quang's 'Happy Agent' dance...

Jose with Marlyn's booth poster.

The buzz after the biz ... Chan and St. Clair.

Chan firing the group over Phone Swipe app.
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WAYNE AND ANG special guests on Sunday night call!  Hop on and meet these two awesome people.  

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I apologize for the noise level but hope you can understand Jose Ibanez... his 30 years as restaurant owner/operator give him a special understanding of merchant card processing -- from the merchant's side!






Thursday, February 19, 2015

No suits, no ties, NO LIES

BURNING UP THE ROAD!

Mike and I are headed to Milpitas for the CRAZY Thor's Day Night intro/training session featuring Top Agents Chan Krohn and Benjamin Ng, and guests tonight include Marlyn Ano (just submitted a PayAnywhere terminal on BIG monthly revenue restaurant -- their current processing fee was around $3k/month and Marlyn cut that by a   lot), and Mike Orozco from Hawaii, looking to see how MG is done on the mainland -- plus lots of guests.

WISH YOU WERE HERE.

Along the way we have an appointment with Agent Leslie Juenke -- it will be good to catch up with her.

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John Daniels should have another 'big news story' addition around the end of February -- KEEP BUILDING YOUR MG PORTFOLIO.

Why?

Think about it:  if you find a merchant who is paying $3,000 in fees monthly, and he signs with you and pays $2000 in fees -- good for him!  He's a happy client and you get 20% of the applicable fees every month... that's $ to you always for saving someone money on a service they have to have!

You don't need to target large merchants:  just set out to save everyone money -- after just a few months in this business we've seen that small things lead to big things.

And you can't judge a book by looking at the cover:  a hole-in-wall little market/station here in Fresno got an Agent their partial statement.  They are paying $500 processing.....DAILY!

How would you like 20% of $500 every day for every month?!  That would be $100 every day.

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I'm throwing out these numbers because they are real, they exist in YOUR town, YOUR village, and currently some slick, fast-talking salesman is collecting those fees and scalping your local merchants while you struggle to pay your bills and pay the higher fees that the local merchant has to charge to cover his exorbitant processing fees!

It's a cycle that you can reverse to flow your way:
  1. save the merchant on his fees
  2. receive income for your family
  3. help your community.

GET OUT YOUR ATTITUDE AND POLISH IT UP!

Remind your local merchants:

with a Merchant Guard Agent, there's no suits, no ties, and NO LIES!


Jobs did a pretty good sales job:  by giving people an awesome product with great value and quality and delivering what he promised.... not by dressing fancy!

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Us vs Them Looks Like 'Opp Security' to Me

Some small biz stats from sba.gov 2014 prove that we have our work cut out for us, since there are 100-something of us MG Agents and 27 million-something of them!