Episode 046 Get the winning hands with cards… credit cards….
Maximizing your sales with merchant services
If you’re not taking credit cards now you’re creating a disservice for yourself!
Hey everyone, Sonya Paz here with the Rockstar Mentor podcast and it is a bright and beautiful day out here with our California weather is bringing us fabulous sunny and warm weather!
A couple of quick things that I want to talk about first of all is that due to the crazy holiday season I am going to consolidate the fan mail Friday Q&A to our regular episode that occurs every Tuesday, I just have such a crazy busy schedule in the studio and we are in full production with ornaments, jewelry, gifts and online orders right now that doing two episodes a week has proven to be a bit much at this time. We will revisit after the first of the 2017 year.
The time is just swooshing on by and I cannot believe that we are already five weeks until Christmas or maybe it’s 41 days something like that, but it is crazy the days are going by so fast that it’s nutty!
It didn’t take long for the Art and wine’s festival season to conclude before we started embarking on all of the holiday shows, craft shows, bead and jewelry shows you name it it’s out there already and people are selling and people are buying!
I will say that I have been in this business a long time, and I say that gracefully, a looooong time! I remember when getting a merchant account to take credit cards used to be a painful and agonizing process with all kinds of business references needed and personal references and paperwork up to Yazooo and then there was a point where some people didn’t even take credit card so you had to have a business check, or get your items ordered via COD, (COD, somebody you don’t even know what that is) it was when you had to have a purchase order for items, you ordered them with a wholesale minimum, the company you were ordering from didn’t take credit cards, they only took certified check or money order, and then if all went well you would have your order shipped to you and you would have to pay the driver and intern UPS would turn around and pay the manufacturer, now if that doesn’t sound like a lot of hassle, it certainly was. And that’s how it was done back in the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s.
One thing I can say for sure is that taking credit cards now and excepting merchant payments and paying for items is far easier than it has been ever in all of my years in business.
As of recently I have noticed that there were a couple of merchants at some of the craft and art shows that did not take credit cards, they took only cash or checks. And I know everyone has a reason for doing things and they are set in their ways or they are maybe have personal reasons for not taking credit cards.
I cannot think of one person other than my parents or the older generation that actually still carries a checkbook around, I’ll carry one or two checks in my wallet in case I have to have a check but I won’t carry a Checkbook around, I don’t know a lot of folks who still do this other than the older generation, however everyone carries around a credit card, it’s easy to carry around the instantaneous ability to purchase something is quick and easy.
Well, I say that unless you take credit cards you’re probably eliminating a lot of sales, yes, I will say that, because it’s true. But like I said maybe there’s a personal reason that somebody doesn’t want to take cards. A good friend of mine was still taking cash or checks and I asked her why she wouldn’t take credit cards, she said she didn’t like the fact that they took a percentage.
This is one of the things about having to there are fees with having a business and this is one of them and it is not a big one. The fact that you can lock in the sale quicker and sell more product is evident when somebody has the ability to pay on their terms. PayPal and Square range somewhere between 2.74% to 3.50% ish.
It all depends on if your hand entering in the transaction or if you are swiping the card directly from the customer, don’t quote me on those percentages but it’s a ballpark range).
When I tell you that that percentage is so reasonable I’m telling you that because I have been in the full retail component module, aka Brick and Mortar store where I’ve had a credit card swipers and I had to pay $40-$50 a month just for the service, AND THEN spent hundreds of dollars on the actual terminal which is also an additional cost. The fact that PayPal and square when you sign up gives you a free swiper to use with your smart phone.
Oh my goodness, Rockstars, this is nothing I’m telling you this small percentage and how this can help secure your sales and really take you a step above and legitimize your business is a huge deal.
If you’re on the fence and you’re not quite sure what you want to do check out PayPal.com they have so many different ways accept payment methods from different sources, set up buttons and shopping for your website etc., square also has a variety of different merchant services. And the beauty of it all is that the reports that you can generate from these are amazing. Add a click of a button or two you can get reports that will easily import into most bookkeeping programs.
I’m going to step off my soapbox right now and I’m going to allow you to go and check those out, if you are already doing this then I congratulate you and you were rocking and rolling and getting your business and your customers in line hopefully to produce more sales.
As I mentioned, we’re going to hold off on Fanmail Fridays for now and consolidate the Q&A into the weekly show. I hope you all have a great rest of the week if you want to learn more about me, Sonya Paz your Rockstar Mentor teaching you how to rock your inner entrepreneur with your art business, check out RockstarMentor.com
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We have I have an amazing collection of podcasts that are free to you with great advice, experiences that I have endured as an artist for over two decades and have experienced so much and I’m here to help you.
If you want to learn more about me, your host Sonya Paz then visit my website at SonyaPaz.com as well as our Facebook page Facebook.com/Sonya Paz gallery to see what other creative things that I’m working on.
That is a wrap for today everyone, keep Rock in your inner artist entrepreneur and don’t forget to send in your questions for anything that you’d like to have answered on the air.
Peace out everyone!
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