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I think that everyone can agree that the United States of America is in a world of hurt right now.  We are seeeing American power fade, our economy stagnate, and the U.S. get saddled with crushing debt as our current President deals with a horrible economy he inherited and then made much, much worse through bad policies.  President Obama, although he may mean well, did not have the experience or the economic understanding to be a good President for America in this critical time in our history.

Now on the Republican side people are excited about a canidate named Herman Cain, former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza.  He has no experience dealing with government, politics, or even more importantly no experience dealing with macro-economic issues – he instead did a good job running a pizza company.  Note I said he did a GOOD job running a pizza company, if you want to see the story of a GREAT job running a pizza company – look at Papa John’s.  I digress, so essentially he has no real reason as to why he is qualified to be President of the United States.  Now add to that, Herman Cain has a history of sexually harassing women and I ask you, why should he be president?  Because he sounds good when he talks?  I think its time for the Republicans to find a new front runner!

I would not hire Herman Cain to work at Choice Merchant Services, not alone to be President of the United States.

I recently read Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play, a great book about how to improve sales – especially business to business sales. The authors argue that the key to making your close rate and your sales increase is to really know the pains and opportunities of your prospect.  In other words, simple get et to really understand their business.  Literally you should be doing about 30% of the talking and your prospect should be doing 70% of the taking.  When you ask questions and really understand your clients, and their bosses, pains and opportunities you can then develop a solution that is built to specifically solve their pains and solutions.

This is a great win-win becuase it enables you to give your prospects something that they really want and in so doing you get to close the sale more, faster, and usually bigger.  It also enables you to save time because if you realize, early in your question asking process that your solutions can not solve your prospects problems – then you should end the conversation and move on.  What is the end result?

You spent more time on the right opportunities and less time spinning your wheels.  So you sell more.  In addition, a you sell something of great value to your prospects, in return, they are much more likely to be your happy and loyal customer forever.

On October 31st CNN broke an alarming news story…..peanut butter prices are going up 20 to 40%.  Why?  The price of peanuts is up sharply following one of the worst peanut harvests in decades.  After going trick or teating with my kids and wife tonight, it was great to come home and sink my teeth into a nice and tasty Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.  Yet, as I ate the peanut butter cup little did I know that it was actually worth more due to peanut butter inflation.  It seems that with the economy being what it is all food prices have been on the climb.

The good news is that something is actually getting less expensive – merchant services processing.  We can thank the Durbin Amendment for making it possible.  Yet the fact is merchants all accross the USA are cutting their payment processing costs since October 1st.  This is just one way we can combat the rising costs of peanut butter becuase who in their right mind would ever want to say no to a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup!

76% of American voters are dissatisfied with how things are going in the country, according to a Fox News poll released Thursday, October 27th.  With unemployment at 9.1%, a stagnant economy, and Europe on the brink of economic collapse, why would anyone be excited about the future?

We’ll a winning breed of entrepreneurs and CFO’s are making lemons out of lemonade.  How you ask?

They are driving down costs for their business by getting merchant services at a great rate.  This can save their business about 30%-40% in merchant services processing costs every month.  Merchant services processing rates have recently taken a huge dip due to the Durbin Ammendment, which took effect October 1 of this year.

With the money saved in merchant services processing costs companies are increasing their profits, gaining market share by cutting their prices, or taking that extra profit and reinvesting it back into their business.  It’s a good time to get a merchant services processing quote.

Here are some nuggets of wisdom I have discovered over the course of my business career concerning.  These 6 simple facts will help you help your employees succeed and love working for you at the same time!

1) Take employees out to lunch regularly…build repor during the lunch…Then near the end of lunch ask, “Is there anything else that I should know?”  Then don’t say ANYTHING until they have given an answer.  This is when you get the juicy info, after you have built relationship and built trust.

2) If you can paint a picture for people, they want to be part of it.  Show them what the future may look like (e.g. what the company may look like in 10 years),

3) When there is uncertainty people will always assume the worst – eliminate uncertainty.

4) Challenge people to do great things, don’t tell people to do things.

5) Take math out of review and personalize it.  Don’t tell people “you are a B player or an A player.”   Never use the word player, instead say “Your performance right now puts you as a B performance, yet you are so good at X, Y, & Z.  Let’s talk about how to get your performance to A+, because I know your performance can be better than anyone.  I’ve seen it when you have done x, y, and z….”

6) When talking with employees there are commitment goals and stretch goals.  Talk about the KPI that is speaks to the individual, for most people that is the stretch goal.  If your company culture is right, that is also the stretch goal.

7) Know every person’s personal drivers and use them to help them achieve their goals and aspirations.  Note, most A performers usually have their goals written down.

We use these techniques at Choice Merchant Services to help our employees make us the best merchant services company.

On October 1, 2011, a new Federal law took effect that can affect the bottom line of just about every business In America. Download our new guide entitled Merchant Services, The Durbin Amendment, & The Money Your Business is Losing and find out how you can avoid rising merchant services fees and actually save your company a lot of money in merchant services costs.

Unless you act, your company can’t take advantage of the huge savings you could be getting – your merchant services rates could actually go up and you could pay more instead of less!

Download our new guide entitled Merchant Services, The Durbin Amendment, & The Money Your Business is Losing

What do Apple Computers, The Wright Brothers, & Martin Luther King Jr. have in common that made them inspire others? Find out how to be a great leader who inspires action.

Chip Heath & Dan Health sure hit the nail on the head in their book Made to Stick, Why Some Ideas Survive & Others Die.  They did a lot of research and then condensed it into a simple message.  So how do you get your marketing message to stick?  How do you get your employees to get fired up about a remember the new idea you are pushing?  How do you make people understand what you are talking about and be engaged and excited about it?

Follow the S.U.C.C.E.S. Method.

Make sure your ideas is:

Simple
Unexpected
Concrete
Credible
Emotional
Storied

What to know more?  I’d love to tell you more, yet I’d be cheating you. I highly suggest you read the book.

While I am at it, using the above method do you have any ideas on how to communicate that Choice Merchant Services offers merchant services processing at rates of 1.05% with free merchant equipment?  We can save our merchants a lot of money every year and give them free merchant servics equipment and software that will make running their business easier.  Yet, I am trying to figure out how to package that.  Any ideas?  Let us know.

How do you not only get new customers, but enchant them with you?  

How do you get your employees to love your company and love what you are doing for them? 

How do you grow your personal network?

Watch Guy Kawasaki give you some simple truths that will make all of the above possible for your business if you put them into place.

Here is a hint: Be Sincere.

Well the news broke this afternoon, that due to the United States economy, in all appearances heading for a double dip recession, the Federal Reserve would have to do another drastic measure to try to jolt the economy back into recovery:

4:30 pm : A negative response to the Fed’s “Operation Twist,” so labeled by market participants, stirred sellers to action today. Their conviction made it impossible for tech stocks to provide leadership after trading with strength for so much of the session.

The FOMC announced this afternoon that in order to support a stronger economic recovery it intends to purchase $400 billion of Treasuries with maturities of six years to 30 years, while selling an equal amount of Treasuries with remaining maturities of three years or less, by the end of June 2012. Many market pundits had anticipated such a plan, and had already designated it “Operation Twist” to reflect the Fed’s focus on selling shorter term Treasuries and buying longer term issues.

To little surprise, the FOMC also reiterated that it expects economic conditions to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate at least through mid-2013.

A knee-jerk response to the Policy Statement made for some whipsaw action among stocks, but the major equity averages eventually broke down and descended deep into negative territory. The Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq Composite all closed at session lows.

Although nothing slight, the Nasdaq’s loss wasn’t quite as severe as that of its counterparts. The Nasdaq had been propped up for the better part of the session by tech plays following better-than-expected quarterly reports and forecasts from Oracle (ORCL 29.82, +1.47) and Adobe (ADBE 24.93, +0.29). Autodesk (ADSK 28.71, +0.60) also attracted buyers after analysts at JPMorgan upgraded the stock.
Source:  http://finance.yahoo.com/marketupdate/overview?u

What President Obama, the Democrats & the Republicans  in congress don’t get is that in order to grow the economy we need a few basic things:

1) Low Tax Rates & A Simpler Tax Code
2) A Reasonable Fiscal Situation
3) And a pledge to keep government out of our lives and out of health care – this includes a full repeal of Obamacare

The Republicans get the the key points above, what what many of them don’t get is that in order to get a reasonable fiscal situation, a tax overhaul will need to include a form of higher tax revenues, this will come from actually cutting tax rates but eliminating loopholes in the tax code.

Sadly, I don’t think we are going to solve our economic problems as a nation and allow for businesses to grow again until we have a new President and a Congress that is willing to follow and work with that President.  It will be great to see if Rick Perry or Mitt Romney will be able to lead the nation towards doing this as they campaign for President.

Only once elected they must deliver the goods, and then business can beging to grow and prosper in a strong way again.  Then, I can expect to see that Choice Merchant Services will see that on average our clients will be processing about 5% more sales in 2013 than they did in 2012. When that happens, we can expect to see unemployment drop, this will solve the housing market problems, and then our nation will prosper once again.