Canada has a “Code of Conduct” that applies to any selling merchant services to small business owners and while this is a very important regulatory document for you to understand as an industry professional, it is also a tremendous sales tool if you gather some basic information from your prospects.

I have a video you can watch but let me outline the first three elements of the Code of Conduct breifly and then explain how you can use the code of conduct to make sales.  First of all, if you want the official code of conduct, please CLICK HERE I will be paraphrasing in the article that follows.  This is not legal advice and I am not an attorney, this is simply an overview of the conditions contained in the code of conduct and how you as a sales professional can benefit from them.

Element #1 deals with the right of every merchant to get a clear representation of their processing fees.  In short, the processor must make available all information to the merchant showing what fees they are being charged for the transactions they process.

Element #2 provides sufficient notice to the merchant when fees will be changed.

Element #3 allows a merchant to cancel their merchant services without penalty, meaning without any cancellation fees on their existing contract within 90 days after a processor increases the rates or fees.

So, how can you use this information to your benefit when selling merchant services in Canada?  Here is what you need to do:

Step #1 – As you are prospecting and you run across those that are not interested and specifically those who are not interested because they are locked into a contract, ask them who they are processing with and keep that information in a CRM database.  We use Podio for our sales team and make it available to them for free.

Step #2 – Every time you collect a statement from a merchant who would like a free cost analysis, you can look at the bottom of the statement and see if there are any notifications of an upcoming fee increase.

Step #3 – If you find an upcoming fee increase from a processor, for instance if TD Canada Trust bank is doing a rate increase in 30 days, you know that you can go back to your database and find every merchant currently using their services and stop back by.  Let them know that you remembered they were with that processor and you were just made aware of a rate increase which means they would be paying significantly less if they switch to you and that this increase will give them a 90 day window to switch to your service!

I hope this short tip is a help to you!

James Shepherd