International Bancard Corp. is looking for ISOs and agents throughout the country to call on and close deals for card-acceptance services with “warm” prospects referred by its new nationwide referral network.
The Clawson, Mich.-based ISO, on its way to becoming a processor, started the UCaughtMyEye.com network in early September, CEO David Iafrate tells ISO&Agent Weekly. By the end of the month, the network’s site was attracting new referral associates daily and generating sales leads from New York to Hawaii.
Unable to contact the far-flung prospects with just the company’s inside sales force and its established ISO and agent sales channel, Iafrate is issuing a call to outsiders for help.
“We need folks to call on those leads,” he says. “Each of these is a real, true, warm referral.”
The overload of sales leads is resulting from a referral machine unlike any Iafrate previously had seen. It started when International Bancard began contacting companies that sell goods and services to small merchants–from telecommunication-service resellers to someone offering “knick knacks to C-stores,” Iafrate says.
The company also reached out for leads from charities, college fraternities and sororities, the underemployed, displaced workers and part-time salespeople. They then began to spread the word about the program.
Referral associates sign up online and submit leads. When Bancard International accepts a referral, the person who submitted it receives a $100 upfront bonus.
If the merchant signs on for services, the individual who made the referral receives 10% of residuals. The company or other entity that alerted the individual to the network receives 5% of the residuals.
Finding ISOs or agents to follow up on those referrals makes sense because about half of prospects prefer face-to-face communication, Iafrate says.
Besides generating leads, the network may provide a training ground or testing venue for companies and salespeople attracted to the acquiring industry but reluctant to take on the expense or make the commitment, Iafrate says.
“We’ve had people flown in and put into training and, after a few days,” they say this is not for me,” he says of bringing in new salespeople. “That’s expensive. We can get them started (with the network), and sometimes this may turn out to be a career path.”
