Do You Know Who I Am? Find Out Before You Sign!

As a merchant service provider, we meet with a lot of business owners and hear the same theme time and time again. As a business owner, you are presented with a sales pitch, some pricing, maybe a competitive analysis and then asked to make a decision. Insert social media! If you are a business owner who is responsible for signing contracts, social media is a godsend.

Think about it, no matter what services you are looking for, the odds are they will come knocking on your door at some point. Now you have Social Media on your side. With the proliferation of social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google Search you now can look up your vendors and/or sales people by name. If you’re not doing this today, start tomorrow!

Today many businesses have Facebook pages which show their products and services and some even provide feedback from their customers. You can even look for the various contacts and sales people you deal with and find them on Facebook. These days many professionals are on LinkedIn with their resumes and employment history. These tools enable business owners to obtain a better understanding of who they are dealing with. No longer do you have to base your business decisions from a short sales presentation and some pricing. Armed with Facebook and LinkedIn you can request to be friends and see what kind of posts they share to their friends and contacts. With LinkedIn, you can see their current length of employment, if they are currently looking for other employment, their group affiliations or if they have any business recommendations.

Why is this important? When it comes to the credit card processing industry, I have found that many people have horror stories for one reason or another. When I listen to their stories, I find the root cause of the problem is typically the representative who sold and set-up the account. Either the representative didn’t understand their account needs, didn’t know what they were doing, or just didn’t care about the business because they were looking to make a quick dime. As in all industries, there are good and bad sales people who represent both good and bad companies. But how do you tell? Do your homework prior to signing another contract! Every email from our business has links to LinkedIn, Facebook, our Website, and Twitter accounts so that you can see who we are and what we stand for as individuals and as a company. Take a few minutes to learn how to use social media to your benefit - you’ll never know how much it could have saved you until it’s too late!

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Digital Financial Group
www.merchantserviceaz.com

This story, written by Chris Damron, is part of the Chamber's monthly Business Driver email newsletter. To sign up for any or all of the Chamber's newsletters, click here.