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We Hate Telemarketing, Everyone Hates It, We Investigate How To End It
Are you ready to get off of those annoying call lists? We are too. But in order to solve a problem, we have to understand the problem first. Read on....
Here is the situation...
If you have been in business for longer than a month, you may have noticed an increase of sales calls that are made to you that target business owners. From funding to fax machines, they call, email, and mail you solicitations for products and services. Robocalls and script readers that you cannot understand push you to surrender information in hopes that you will get the funding or product you were searching for online in the first place. But the issue is that long after you have completed a transaction that you notice the calls and emails get more intense and more frequent. Keep reading because we are going to explore how it works!
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(Metroplex Marketplace Merchant)
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Do you remember that little email banner?
Everyone has dropped an email address, scanned a Q.R. code, or googled something. Most of the time, the people dropping the banners are not the brokers, they are not the funders either. The truth is, most of the funders that are good at funding, don't know how to get their business in front of the potential client, so they hire independent sales organizations to assist them, there is nothing wrong with that practice either. The Independent sales organization, or as we will call the " ISO" will often buy leads from lead providers, they are the ones placing the banners everywhere. This gets better, now we find lead providers that want to become ISO shops and they start working with the funders. That is also not a bad practice, no one can be upset with a business that realizes the potential they have.
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(Metroplex Marketplace Merchants)
Rated most popular at The Metroplex for the first week of December!
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But if that was only the case, As for the leads that are not going anywhere, they try selling to the smaller ISO shops. Some of the funders in the funding space caught on to the tricks when they saw the same submissions coming in from a different shop. Most funders in the alternative funding space would not entertain the practice either. The reason why they don't is that they find the cost of underwriting files that have been declined recently makes their overhead costs go up. But recently, there have been a few funders that try selling the files back to the lead providers as leads to remarket to another ISO shop
It's messy
We started with our own direct ads on social media, and have been a stand-alone ISO shop that has an in-house financing division for web services in Indiana. In the summer of 2019, I started looking for a leads provider that I could generate additional leads for my new sales representatives that I had started training. The first time I did this, I was an idiot and went on Facebook to find one, I found one in Illinois, and wasted a couple thousand. I dusted it off and replaced that company (it was A K ad or something) with some other company we found on a google search. That cost me another 5K, and I was able to convert enough to cover the cost, I am not in business to break even. It was Christmas time 2019, and I was off to my third company, a NY-based lead shop, the guy was persistent and contacted me for almost a year, I paid the 2K retainer and he disappeared. Well, as you can expect, that made me mad. We go into 2020, and it became a realization that we needed to only focus on our brand, and that is what changed the company. All was fine and dandy until that idea of trying again crossed my mind in 2021 when I bought Doug on. His wife was about to birth their firstborn child, and it was late May of 2021. I try it again with an outfit I found online to buy leads, and these lists were just not converting. The second time, in June of 2021 I tried a Merchant cash advance live transfer company I found in the Daily Funder, and I noticed that many of these leads they sent over were already in my system. These were literally the same exact merchants the other shop in 2019 sent over. I have not told you the names of these folks because some of them we are going after for a full refund. In July of 2021, we were approached by another ISO shop about a deal and they wanted us to see if any of our contacts could help their merchant, I was blown away to see that the file had been sent by several lead providers in the past. I contacted this merchant and asked how did you get here again? It's my shop and I can ask that, the merchant told me about his experience as his file went on an adventure through 15 ISO shops and was seen by over 10 funders by each shop.
He understood the assignment
If you have met me in person, you probably know I lose interest in people that do not have good intent in the funding space. It is not my place to tell you who the ISO shops and funders were, I am going to have him on a future episode of The Funded Project and I will simply let him show you what he has shown me because we took a different direction at Metromedia.
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(Metroplex Marketplace Merchants)
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We understood the assignment too.
After trying 14 different lead provider companies, here is what we discovered, no one wants to be on a list where they get called constantly. We sure the H*ll don't want to be one, I couldn't expect you to enjoy that either. This is why we are ending the telemarketing program at the end of 2021. Here is what we discovered, no one has shown the public how to use a merchant cash advance in a beneficial way for a business, challenge accepted, We are changing to a 100% content-driven concept that will be full of educational resources, free tools, and money-generating tools for your business. We discovered a long time ago that when we focus on business development that we, as a company do better because you do better. What we have not done before is to try to educate an industry.
Here are some helpful tips
Want to break the cycle? Here is how!
When you need funding, seek out an ISO shop and only work with them. When you apply at multiple shops, your file will get submitted to the same round of funders.
Avoid sites that take you application to application.
Never accept a call that says that they are "transferring you to a funder" that language is a lead provider and that means they only linked you to an ISO shop, not the funder, even if they say they are the funder, they are not.
If you are on the phone with a funder, even if you have been working with them for a long time, if they tell you to deal only with them and not to call your ISO shop again, we need you to know that is a warning sign of your information being sold and you should immediately call your ISO representative, if you could do it with the funder on the line and merge the calls that is even better.
Never agree to pay a third party fee sheet, remember that those funds usually pay the parties who sold your information
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Here is the funding button if you need funding, its free to apply, no obligation to take funding either.
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I am always open to a brainstorming session on ideas to help you grow your business, there is not a cost to this and it's a way to explore the whole Metromedia Brand! Use the button below to explore that , or pick the phone up and call us at 317-649-0110
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