ISOs no longer have to rely on dog-eared Xeroxes of training materials "borrowed" from competitors. Two new online resources have emerged to help sales agents and ISO employees learn to navigate the increasingly complex acquiring industry.
Field Guide Enterprises LLC began offering a customizable, 10-lesson online training course in October, about the same time two industry veterans went public with news of Merchant University, their virtual repository for training materials.
The two new entities could augment other industry education efforts that include the Electronic Transactions Association University, Merchant Warehouse University, and the plethora of proprietary training regimens that ISOs, processors and banks have developed in-house.
The new resources are arriving on the scene at a time when agents want more training than ever before, say observers, who also generally agree that the promise of effective training can help ISOs attract agents.
Most industry players can benefit from some book learning, says Mike McCormack, managing director of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Palma Advisors. New agents generally seek out the quickest insights into the industry's inner workings, but established salespeople can benefit from ongoing training to keep up with stiff competition, new federal regulations, twice-a-year changes in interchange rates, changing PCI requirements, growing sophistication among merchants and a burgeoning list of value-added services, he says.
In tough economic times, the industry wants to hold down the cost of delivering that training, which helped convince Mark Dunn to develop new versions of the in-person courses he offers through Field Guide Enterprises, a Hartland, Wis.-based consultancy.
Dunn, a 21-year industry veteran, has been teaching what he has learned about acquiring for nearly 15 years, often during in-person whiteboard "chalk talks." About three years ago, he completed a 60,000-word training manual-about the length of a short novel-only to discover the public's growing reluctance to sift through printed material in the digital era. "Nobody wants to read," Dunn observes.
So a little more than two years ago, he began translating his opus into a visually oriented 10-hour online course with 32 videos.
Dunn calls the offering, which he recommends for small and midsize ISOs, his Version 2.0 because the print version and the in-person appearances represent 1.0. Dunn stars in all of the videos but expects to accept some of the offers he has received from experts eager to teach guest sessions.
A new platform comes into play for Version 2.1, expected to arrive in March, Dunn says. With the new release, added storage capacity will accommodate lessons with more graphics and animation, he says.
Everyone's Different
A quiz follows each lesson, and an electronic learning platform can field students' questions, Dunn says, noting more than 30 million students in 25 countries are using the system.
In creating the curriculum to cover on that platform on Version 2.1, Dunn drew upon his three years of teaching experience at Indiana University.
The course consists of 10 lessons, beginning with "Bank Card 101," in which Dunn discusses the industry's origins, development and importance. In Lesson 2 he describes the industry's cast of characters, including the card brands, banks, ISOs, merchant-level salespeople, third-party processors, nonbank financial institutions, merchants and vendors.
In Lesson 3 Dunn covers transaction types, including credit, signature debit, PIN debit, and electronic checks processed over the automated clearinghouse networks. Lesson 4 involves interchange, which he calls the foundation of pricing.
Lesson 5 introduces the other two elements of pricing-pricing programs and merchant discounts-while teaching students how to analyze statements and explaining who makes money as the payments process unfolds.
Lesson 6 not only covers risk and underwriting but also shows how those factors relate to the application form, Dunn says. Lesson 7 is devoted to terminals, platforms, personal computers-anything that processes a transaction, he continues.
Prospecting comes to the fore in Lesson 8. Dunn explores the "takeaway sale," using statement analyses to create and present pricing proposals that entice merchants to switch ISOs. In Lesson 9, Dunn teaches how to base closings on making a case for better value instead of relying on price.
Lesson 10 shows sales agents the setup, customer service, deployment and training that agents manage after merchants sign up for card acceptance.
The core curriculum accounts for 70% to 80% of the material Dunn expects to present in a typical course. He bases the remaining 20% to 30% of the content on material the ISO chooses, he says.
That customization represents one of the "foundation stones" of the Field Guide course, Dunn says. "Everybody wants to train their own way," he says. "I found in doing live training with people, they come up to me and say, 'We don't do it exactly that way here. Here are our favorite trial closes.'"
Customization makes the course much more palatable to ISOs with their own ways of accomplishing tasks, says consultant Mary Winingham, who operates Greenville, Wis.-based Mirror Consulting. "They're trained on exactly what you want and your methodology and your marketing strategy, which may be different from mine," Winingham says of the Field Guide course.
Customized lessons also could incorporate an ISO's own appointment-setting script that it wants salespeople to use when contacting prospects, Dunn says. "Or let's say you have a dynamite wireless program. Then we can construct a lesson or a module based on that," he says.
ISOs pay a licensing and customization fee that varies according to their size, Dunn says. Prices come in "small," typically for an ISO with five agents; "medium," for organizations with perhaps 50 agents; and "large," for those with 150 or more agents, he says.
"The basic sales course for somebody new costs less than $600 dollars for a year," Dunn says, including full access to the evolving curriculum.
Unbiased Material
That sort of continuing access to a changing cache of industry information also drives the new Merchant University launched by long-time industry players Ian Wynne and Ted Svoronos.
Wynne once was director of merchant services at Findology Merchant Services and served as a fraud specialist at Blizzard Entertainment, maker of World of Warcraft. Svoronos once was vice president of business development/strategic partners at Group ISO, an Irvine, Calif.-based ISO.
The duo started brainstorming the virtual university about a year ago and began publicizing it heavily in October in channels ranging from trade magazine articles to Twitter, Wynne says. The website went up at about the same time, he says.
Merchant University is starting with free, basic industry information posted on the site, the two founders say. They intend to keep posting data, courses and classes themselves, while also enlisting other industry experts to contribute material. Plans call for using visual aids as the site gains momentum.
Although Wynne and Svoronos anticipate expanding the university's offerings in the first months of this year, Wynne emphasizes that they will never complete the project because changes in the industry will necessitate frequent updates.
The goal is to attract students from every niche in the acquiring business, including merchants, and Wynne and Svoronos are soliciting material from every corner of the business. "We're not sticking to a single conduit," says Wynne. Their mantra in choosing contributions is that the material must be objective, Svoronos says. "It's an absolute requirement that it's unbiased; that's a sticking point for us," says Wynne.
Good Training
Too much of the information now available from other sources is designed to sell a product or service, says Svoronos. That may constitute a valid business model, he concedes, but it does not align with the goals of the university.
The teaching materials many ISOs use amount to little more than photocopies of sales pitches "borrowed" from competing ISOs or other industries, observers say.
But Svoronos and Wynne aim to change that.
Besides offering formal classes, courses, quizzes and Q&A's, the university will work with associations to sanction certifications for students who meet specified requirements, Wynne says. Simultaneously, the university will serve as a resource for anyone who wants to log on and learn informally, says Svoronos.
Wynne and Svoronos intend to keep presenting the university's basic lessons for free, but they plan to charge what they consider nominal fees for more advanced material. A Web seminar that might cost $300 elsewhere would require $20 or $25 from Merchant University students, the founders say.
"Our goal is to charge lower dollar figures to a larger audience," says Wynne. "That allows smaller companies-the masses, if you will-to get into our system."
Tiered pricing also is likely. Once the university expands sufficiently, access to all of the site's information on charge-backs would carry a certain specified cost for users, says Svoronos, citing an example.
However, tapping only a subset of that information, such as the lessons on how to combat charge-backs, would cost less than using the whole category, he notes.
Want To Succeed
As the university grows online, it could move into the physical world, too, says Svoronos, envisioning the possibility of trade shows and in-person training.
Whether online and off, the ability to offer sound training could help ISOs recruit and retain sales agents, observers say. Good training simply sets ISOs apart from their competitors, they note.
"It's difficult to recruit when paying commissions only in a complex industry," says Dunn of Field Guides. "Selling for a living is a brutal job; it's emotionally draining. You have to really want to succeed."
Training continues to grow in importance because competition and complexity are reducing the margin for error in the acquiring business, says Winingham, the Wisconsin-based consultant.
"You can't fall short on any of it," she says of the industry's intricate workings. "The answers all have to be right now. In the past you could have a flaw in one thing if you were strong in another. I don't think that's the case anymore."
The industry's challenges are reaching a critical juncture, according to Svoronos.
"2011 is a monumental year," he says. "It will drastically separate the haves from the have-nots. They will realize they have to expand upon their offerings and add more value. Education is literally the pinnacle of value."
And with the help of these new training tools, industry observers say, ISOs can educate their agents better and more easily than ever before.
