Do What You Do… But Do It Better
Ballentine Rule #1: Do What You Do — But Do It Better
An Excerpt from the forthcoming book by Jay Ballentine.
“Ballentine Rules: The Merchant Cash Advance Brokers’ Bible.”
Question: Is it better to get as good as everyone else in getting leads 5 different ways, or is it best to be the better than everyone else at getting leads in only 1 way?
Recently, as is common, a newcomer to the industry reached out to me to pick my brain. Normally, I deflect such encroachments on my time, but this young man was different — a born winner.
He had established a successful merchant processing brokerage and was looking to jump into the merchant cash advance business. Prior to sharing my thoughts with him as to how he could make money as a merchant cash advance broker, I asked him about his business, how it ran, and how he had managed to grow it so quickly.
He told me that he had a solid group of guys in whom he could rely to consistently meet the mark. He was extremely process driven which impressed me. However, when I asked him of his plans to make money this game, he said he would use the money from his merchant processing business to invest in marketing to generate leads for merchant cash advance.
On the surface that may make sense, but, there is a steep learning curve for those entering the merchant cash advance business. I told him that I felt that it would make the most sense for him to focus solely and exclusively doing what had already been working for him, while installing the merchant cash advance product offering into his follow up / relationship building processes. I then suggested that he dedicate maniacal focus to getting those customers to bring him more customers.
My rationale was that the learning curve in merchant cash advance can be so steep that it may make sense to “take your lumps” on folks you already have relationships with as the risk of losing a deal due to ineptitude is very real. Focusing on doing what he already does but doing it better will make the learning curve less painful at the very least. Learning the merchant cash advance business is hard enough without having to learn how to get leads — if you don’t have to.
The industry moves fast, and sometimes the temptation to “hop on the bandwagon” of the fast moving train can be too much for some to pass up. We have experienced this ourselves. However, we have decided that we will focus on two things, a) providing a customer experience second to none and b) being the best in the world at generating deal flow derived of face-to-face interactions.
Consequently, we don’t invest time and energy into SEO, paid search, and other internet marketing strategies. We have taken this approach because we know what we are doing is as hard, if not harder than doing all the things that everyone else is doing. So, when we nail it we will have gained a significant lead over the competition when they’re ready to compete. We also know that when it comes to higher ticket B2B sales — there will almost always be humans involved. We’re betting that the better and more efficient the overall user experience, the easier it will be for the humans to not only convert more leads, but also get through quality sample sizes faster.
When you work towards finding one way of getting leads, and you start getting them by focusing on doing what you already do — or have done, but doing it better, your business starts to become defensible.
The more defensible your business, the greater it’s potential long-term value. If you’re looking to buy an ISO, which would you buy; the ISO with 5,000 clients in category A, or an ISO with 10,000 clients in categories B — Z? Going back to the gentlemen I referenced earlier, he stayed in “Category A” and had a “trade secret” of sorts that kept his processing clients “sticky.” Meaning, he made it tough for you to poach on his customers based on the overall value of the package he was offering. Thus, any road to a Visa / MC deal being done on any of those customers — goes through him.
Summary: Do what you already do… But do it better. For example, do you get business from attending trade shows? Have you measured your ROI? Is it attractive? Is your performance better than that of your peers (that you know of?) If the answer is yes to the above questions then you should probably invest time in figuring out how to get more out of your trade show attendance while working to scale up your overall trade show attendance.
