We must admit that the title of this article is a bit clickbait-y as this conversation actually played out with several POS dealers we talked with. If you’re wondering why so many solutions providers are raising money and selling directly to merchants, what follows should explain it perfectly.
Us: Tell us about products you’re educating merchants about to keep them competitive in a saturated market
Dealer: I’m just selling POS and getting the payments residuals
Us: So you’re not making sure your customers – who we all agree do zero self-discovery – are aware of the latest tools to make them more successful?
Dealer: Nope
Us: Uh, why?
Dealer: Well, as soon as I make contact with my account they’re going to ask me for more things, and I don’t want that headache
Us: What do you mean you don’t want that “headache”? Aren’t you in business to support your customers?
Dealer: I’m in business for myself. That means I do the minimum required to live the lifestyle I want
Us: Are your customers aware that once they’ve signed up to be your customer that they’re instantly falling behind the market?
Dealer: Nope
Us: And you have zero qualms about this?
Dealer: Sorry, this conversation has gone on too long. I need to go on my 7th vacation this year
Us: Okay, one last question before you go: how many accounts are you losing to cloud competitors?
Dealer: Pretty much all of them. But I don’t know why…
Der der der.
As much shit as we give payments companies for sodomizing merchants after the merchant signs a multi-year agreement without knowing how payments processors make money, we think it only fair to provide the same warning to merchants choosing a reseller that prevents the merchant from succeeding.
Merchants: if you choose a reseller you need to be absolutely, 100% sure that the reseller has your best interests in mind. If they can’t answer some basic questions you will unequivocally get better value from customer success representatives at a cloud POS company.
What types of questions should you ask?
For starters, get a list of all the solutions the reseller sells. Are these solutions modern? If you visit the solution provider’s website does it look like they were born before Jesus Christ and have no idea how the internet works? Do these solutions solve real problems? Don’t believe the lie that the POS solves all of a merchant’s problems. POS systems have many, many deficiencies, and it’s imperative to examine third party tools to learn how to best solve business problems.
Ask your dealer what solutions they offer for :
- Labor
- Inventory
- Marketing, including loyalty, review management, email marketing, and digital marketing
- Online ordering
- Analytics and reporting
Then ask your dealer who they’ve helped use these solutions before and why. Is your dealer adequately analyzing your business to determine if you have problems, and are they then suggesting solutions to those problems?
Our heuristic is that 95% of dealers are not only useless, but detrimental to their own customers, refusing to bring forward solutions that could help the merchants be more successful. There should probably be a list of these dealers so merchants can do a quick search before getting too far down the path with a bad one. We’d be inclined to take it up as a side project but we all know merchants conduct zero research, so it would all be for naught.
I am a reseller and have been for 25 years. The person you talked with should not be in this business. We put our customers first, for without them, I do not have a company. This is probably why we lose a small amount of customers to other POS companies.
I was raised in the restaurant industry and understand the importance of good customer service. Our saying in the office is, “Let’s take care of our customers and our pocketbooks will take care of themselves.”
We cover all the things you said to ask for when we talk with prospective customers and more.
Great to hear, Keith
I’m grateful for all the dysfunction in the industry. It makes sales so easy for someone who is willing to care even a little about helping merchants be successful. Hooray for lifestyle resellers!
What a chump! We, as a dealer/reseller, care so much about keeping up with our client’s needs that we have our own full-time developer specifically to build things that our POS SW provider doesn’t already offer / aren’t on their roadmap and we can’t easily get elsewhere. This has been particularly helpful this last year with Covid stuff really rocking the industry. We built some pretty cool Covid-centric things last year that will still be very useful after things “return to normal” and were able to get our POS SW provider to quickly add some custom Covid-centric stuff to the core POS SW as well.
Onward to a great 2021!