Business Even When it's Pouring Rain

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Good Dreary Rainy Afternoon to my Detroiters and Michiganders. I certainly hope that in spite of the rain that today has been a productive day for you all, I know that it has been for me.

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Today I went out in the pouring rain I must reiterate and did some follow-ups and some new drops. For those of you that do not know; drops are when you walk into a business during your prospecting. Today was interesting and this is why; It as previously stated is storming here in Detroit but I went out any way. It would have been really easy to sit here at home on my do nothing and do nothing but that's not where my heart is. Financial goals can not be reached if you do not work. So I did some minor work and I received some leads for a few weeks ahead of this time.

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Now that is where demographics take place, I went and prospected an area of Detroit that population is Arabic. It is summer so therefore I was met with I say 98% of those drops where the owners are out of town. A lot of foreign Entrepreneurs here go back and forth from here to their Home Land. So I have a few follow-ups to complete in two weeks time. Even the business owners native to Africa here are away on vacation. Even though today I made no appointments it was still a good day because I still received times to follow-up with business owners. See, in this kind of business you have to search for the positive, for people like me who are naturally optimistic and upbeat that's no hard task at all. Put me in the middle of a hail storm and I will look around and the first thing to come to mind will be something positive. Life is all about what you choose to harp on and make it about. Life's to short to give away energy to the negative. Instead I like to feed off of positive energy, it makes life much more worth living.

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On the other hand I did close a business owner today. For those of you that aren't aware; close in the selling sense means the individual you were presenting to chose to purchase your product. See if I had never gone out I would not have an appointment on Tuesday at 1pm to go and write up the application. This client was and wasn't easy to come by. The client said that she needed three days which I told her, " that is perfect " I'd even give her four. She was apprehensive because business is slow and she needs her money from her  processing next day and not in 48 hours. She pondered and pondered and kept looking at my business card saying she would give me a call. This is where you have to learn to read people and judge the situation. I sat there watching her think at times looking out the window and listening to the gospel music she has playing in her establishment. She got up a few times walked away and came back. And then she told me okay I will go with you, I'll give this a try. Her reason, " You told me the truth, you didn't lie to me telling me like the others that I can get my money next day when I can't." This is very important, honesty, always be honest with your clients. On yesterday when I talked to her she kept saying next week next week you'll come back with the answers to my questions, I repeated to her no I will stop in tomorrow with what you want to know. And even though it was pouring raining this morning I went to her today as I said I would. I had all of her questions answered that I told her HONESTLY I didn't know the answers to on yesterday. And HONESTY got me my client, and HONESTY will keep her. I can't stress enough how vital it is to your business for you to be honest. Word of mouth is the fastest way for news to spread so don't mess up your name by being dishonest.

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Another tip for you, put a picture of yourself with your best smile on your business card. Every time she looked at my business card I saw her eyes venture over to my face which is the same picture on this profile. I have gotten very positive feedback from this business card. People love a bright smile. Plus another advantage I have with her is that she is old enough to be my grandmother and I am young and look young so I remind older Business Owners of their grand children and their children when they were my age. Entrepreneurs want to see others succeed especially young people trying to make a living. So know that that is one of your advantages given you are in your twenties and early thirties. If not your advantage is that you are more experienced in life and therefore may be more grounded. We all have advantages and when you find that you are at a disadvantage in a certain area then find someone with the advantage and pair with them. No one gets any where without team work.

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Also make it your business to take some friends to your clients to shop or eat depending on what kind of establishment it is. Business owners really like that of course :-).

I hope that this helps somewhat with your closing ratios and your business all together.

Have a very productive rest of your Thursday.

Adrienne Johnson
North American Bancard
ALJ.CreditProcessing@gmail.com
Subject Line: Processing Inquiry
facebook.com/aljscreditprocessing

Business Ceasing the Day August 8, 2012

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Good Afternoon Ladies and Gents it has been a few days. I hope that you all had a wonderful weekend and productive week thus far.

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Yesterday was a most lovely day here in Detroit, MI. The sun was shinning it was nice and warm but not too warm; a very good day to be outside making things happen.

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Be a happy bug

Business wise for me it was a good day, I did seven drops beyond my goal which is great. For those of you that do not know; drops are when you walk into a business while out prospecting. In this business unlike when I was in insurance sells even the no's are pleasant and the business owners are actually uplifting. So for those who may be afraid to hear the word no or may be afraid that you are bugging the people you are dropping in to see; know that a lot of times ( even when I was selling insurance now that I think about it ) business owners will thank-you for dropping by, wish you a good day or a blessed day, tell you you have a cute smile, and are genuinely thankful that you walked into their business offering them a service. Things in the business to business sells world aren't that bad, at least not in my demographic.

Also, one thing to remember is, as I am running into this quite a bit, to make a note of all the Entrepreneurs that share with you that they just switched and that you should check back in a year or two or three when their contract might be up. These owners are saying when the time is right I will consider you, this means you also need to set a reminder that in half of a year or half of two years send a flyer with your business card  reminding them of you. Don't let yourself be forgetable because when the time comes if you have been doing what they call a drip campaign when the person is ready to look at other companies you will be one of the first people to come to mind. We must not only prepare our schedules and income for next week but also for next year and further on down the line.

My results of yesterday

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• I procured 5 appointments.
• 7 Follow-ups
• 2 to 3 I just switched but get back to me in a year or closer to when my new contract will expire.
• 1 I just renewed again check with me in three years when my contract is up. Now am I going to wait a full three years? Of course not. As previously mentioned for such potential clients I will be doing a drip campaign so that they will remember me.
• 3 Are processing with family members. For such responses just offer the free analysis and let them know that you will give them your rate for their agent to match. Let them know that if they can not match the rate that you would be willing to talk to them about coming over to your processing company as an agent so that they can get the lower rate. Now is all of this in vain? Of course not, if the merchant decides they want to do so then you ask for two referrals and that is it. You make a good name for yourself and get business still out of the deal. It's a win win.
• All of the other merchants simply weren't interested and that's perfectly fine.

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That is 17 good responses out of 27 drops. That's not bad at all.

A word for you to remember is; look at the positive and feed off of that energy. Never let unfriendly merchants get you down and remember that even a no CAN be positive. Also, ALWAYS ALWAYS be kind and smile. AND ALWAYS DO WHAT YOU SAY YOU ARE GOING TO DO!

That's all for now have a productive Thursday Afternoon.

Adrienne Johnson
North American Bancard
ALJ.CreditProcessing@gmail.com
Subject Line: Processing Inquiry
facebook.com/aljscreditprocessing

Business August 2,2012- Conquering Your Fears

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Good Evening Ladies and Gents,

I hope that you all had a wonderful Thursday.

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Today I got off to a great start. I woke up at 6am on the dot just as planned and was 22 minutes ahead of  schedule the whole morning. I got out of the house on time, I got into my car, I started up my car and drove off. At this point going through my mind is, " wow I'm actually about to do this." Well about half way to my first destination my broken car window decide to fall down. Now the fear of having my car stolen while I was out prospecting made it all too easy to turn back around, well at least that is what I would choose to believe if I believed in lying to myself. Honestly my fears are; stumbling over my words, or being choked up saying nothing at all, and bugging the business owners. These are things that will just have to be conquered by just walking in and blurting it out, then telling my mouth to slow down so my mind can catch up, and going oh that wasn't that bad, lol. Now have I done this before yes a few times but just like when I started singing in front of medium sized to large size crowds the fear was always there. That fear I did conquer so I know that this one I will conquer too.

How do I plan to do this??? Prayer and Denouncing those demons. We all fear something. Business owners fear people like me whose job it is for a living to walk into their businesses and offer them better services and prices. The fear is not us, it's the fear of making the wrong decision and being taken for a ride to victim-ville.

In other news...

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I had a training today at 1pm that I attended that taught us how to make a Marketing Campaign using Google Documents. This training was awesome and I learned how to do something I've been wanting to learn how to do since the beginning of this week, how to put formulas into a spreadsheet. In this campaign lies four different campaign types; Walk-In Campaign, Telemarketing Campaign, E-mail Campaign, and a Website/Blog Campaign. In these campaigns you have preset numbers which are your goals, under the presets you have Actuals. Actuals are the fields where you put in what you have actually done. The Campaigns also predict your sells outcome. Of course you have to put in the formulas to do this, your formulas are your closing ratios. When starting out you can make a prediction of this, once you have been out for an entire week you can change the formulas to fit what your actual ratios are. As can be seen on my blog regarding Goals my campaign was extremely aggressive. I shared my Marketing Campaign with my Sells Mentor who has been in this business for years and told him to make changes where he sees fit and I would adhere to them since he knows what he is talking about. He did make changes and he explained them in a very encouraging manor. Here is exactly what he said

 "I always love an ambitious plan!  Let me give you a few numbers that may help you to develop numbers that are more achievable.  First of all, you can usually make a maximum of 3 good quality contacts per hour and there 9am to 4pm is about the only time you can make these contacts since most business owners are either unavailable or not interested in speaking after 4pm.  So, that leaves you with 7 hours per day to do prospecting.  If you use the early morning and evenings to do your organization and administration tasks as well as do your installs and follow up with clients, this means you can meet roughly 20 new business owners per day.

The other two adjustments you will need to make is that first of all, since you are starting from scratch and have to build up your pipeline it may take 3 to 4 days to get your first sale and then after that it will be more steady and also, if you are making a sale every day, keep in mind that this will take some of your prime prospecting time away from you which means less hours and less contacts as your customer base grows. 

I made a few revisions so let me know what you think of these.  If you can acheive these goals you will be one of my top agents, probably in the top 2 or 3 for the month.  I just changed the daily tracker tab so you can make adjustments on the other tabs as needed.

Thanks for sharing this and I hope you have a great day!"

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As I previously stated he's been in this business a lot longer than I have so I am going to listen. That's one thing that will make you an outstanding business owner, your ability to listen.

I want to thank-you all for taking the time out to listen to me.

My Strengths: Negotiating the best deal for you that I can, Giving you great Savings on your services and providing you with more knowledge than you might care to know but need to know.

So if you would like to request a FREE Credit Card Statement Analysis please do not hesitate to contact me.

Adrienne Johnson
ALJ.CreditProcessing@gmail.com
Subject Line: Processing Inquiry
facebook.com/aljscreditprocessing

 Receive a free phone swipe for credit card processing at www.phoneswipe.com/?source=21970.2

August 1, 2012 - Taking time to Gear up for August

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Good Afternoon,

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I hope everyone reading this had a most wonderful day.

My day started out really late. I had a lot of problems sleeping last night. The animals kept waking me up and then people getting up for work at 3:30am didn't help the situation either. But though I woke up late I was able to get some things accomplished.

I will be very honest with you, the hardest thing to do is work for yourself. Much discipline is needed to work for yourself and I am taking steps to add more discipline to my life. Ways that I do that is by scheduling. Now lets be honest when discipline is something you lack it's hard to follow a schedule that you are responsible for putting together yourself. I am doing good with adding structure to my days and discipline to my life in this area.

Like today for instance. I had a 9 o'clock phone appointment this morning that I kept and called at 9 o'clock on the dot. Now that is always something I have been good with, keeping appointments. Getting up and out to schedule appointments to be able to keep lol, not so much. But that's okay. We all have things that we need to work on and there are many ways to improve in these areas.

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• One way, accountability. Make yourself accountable to someone else. I am making myself accountable to the world by this blog.
• Two, find out what motivates you. What motivates me options, no money means no options, have money and you have a myriad of options.
• Three, find out what distracts you and "CUT IT OUT."  {For instance, Me, I put my friends over anything besides a scheduled business meeting, so if I get a phone call or a text and end up in a conversation ( which we know for us women and some men can be lengthy lol ) it throws my whole day off. So I am making during the day no personal text or calls time. I'm very easily distracted. It's a bad thing but it's a good thing to know this about myself so I can do what I need to do to make sure I don't get distracted. I am a person that is very easy to talk to so people get caught up with me on the phone, so I have this problem even when I'm talking to the people at corporate lol. Which is why I am not going to be talking to them until after 7 pm as well. Which is great because they are in the office until 9pm mostly and whatever is not addressed by phone I can shoot an e-mail. I have time scheduled for every morning Mon-Fri to check and respond to e-mails.}

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Now I know in my previous blog post, posted the very last day in July, I said that I would be working two weekends out of every month. Well after making my calendar today and having no personal time at all during the week starting August 2, 2012, I decided that my time on the weekend is best spent catching up with friends and family, this includes spending time with my Fiance. I'm getting married July 2014 :-). Don't worry I have time scheduled at the end of each day, even on the weekends to come here and talk about my day as well as some other things that I think you should know or that I just would like to share.

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To better my chances of getting out and "pounding the pavement" as we say in business to business sells, I have made a very anal schedule. My schedule tells me everything I need to do from the time I wake up until I lay my head back down. Yes that means when I shower, brush my teeth, put on clothes, even making breakfast, a certain time to eat it, and yes I have the time scheduled to throw away the contents from breakfast. Seems extreme, IT IS EXTREME. Desperate times call for desperate measures and I need to fix me lol. I use google calendar and have all scheduled times set to send a reminder to my telephone via text from anywhere between 1 and 3 minutes within me having to switch tasks. My relax days and time all to myself during the weekend is also in my schedule.

You know they say it takes 21 days to form a new habit. I am going to be on this tight schedule for the next six months. Lets just say I have a lot of things I need to take care of. After six months I will relax my schedule, which just means cutting down my business hours to about 6, 7 hours a day; right now there are 13 hours in my day that I will be working; 8 hours and 15 minutes of those hours are business meetings and prospecting; the other 5 hours and some change are for paperwork and organization of my days and week. The hours I will be cutting from in six months are the hours I am out prospecting and holding business meetings. Of course if my clients need to schedule time in my off hours during the day I don't mind and I will accommodate; but my time will be much more relaxed other than that.

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My other goal besides the ones listed in the previous blog: Make my business my addiction; to always always be building.

My Ultimate Goal: To be a self made USA 1%.

Now will I get there doing just credit card processing? lol. Any thing is possible but I have other business ventures that I have plans for and will be getting off the ground soon. But this blog is only about one of them; Credit Card Processing.

May we all have a Productive end of the Week and a Productive August,

Adrienne Johnson
ALJ.CreditProcessing@gmail.com
Subject Line: Processing Inquiry
facebook.com/aljscreditprocessing

 Receive a free phone swipe for credit and debit card processing at www.phoneswipe.com/?source=21970.2

Durbin Amendment and How it Impacts Your Business

What Is The Durbin Amendment? In July of 2010 President Obama signed into legislation The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Included in this Act is the Durbin Amendment named after Senator Dick Durbin (R-IL) who authored this piece of legislation. Prior to the Durbin Amendment, Visa and Mastercard had been free to set debit card interchange fees as they wished. Senator Durbin felt that these fees were unfair to merchants and consumers. His Amendment directs the Federal Reserve to lower debit card interchange fees to a more reasonable amount. Prior to this legislation debit card interchange fees were set at around 1% to 5% of the sale amount. The Durbin Amendment has reduced these fees by a considerable margin. How does it impact my business? Debit cards account for over 50% of all Visa and Mastercard transactions processed by merchants across the country. If your business accepts Visa and Mastercard, you could see a drastic reduction in fees. However, your merchant account must be setup properly to receive the benefits. Do Credit Card Processors and Merchant Service companies have to pass along the reduced fees to merchants? No. If your business is not setup correctly, you will not see the savings. The legislation does not require that Processors pass on the reduced  interchange fees. When does the Durbin Amendment go into effect? Oct 1st, 2011

Copyright © 2011. All Rights Reserved.

This article has come from Durbin Amendment

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Adrienne Johnson
ALJ.CardProcessing@gmail.com
Subject Line: Processing Inquiry
 facebook.com/aljscreditprocessing