[mbradford101]

mbradford, know that while there is plenty of room for growth in this business, it is in many ways already very saturated. Consistently good lead sources are scarce and usually sell the same lead to multiple parties at once. These leads are then recycled and sold as aged leads later on, keeping constant pressure on your existing portfolio. Many qualified merchants aren't just funded by one lender, but by two, three, four, and even five at a time. Part of the problem is that there really aren't UNLIMITED fish in the sea so when a small business signals they need capital, everyone jumps on top of each other (stacking) to fund it.

Everyone is sending out mail, cold calling, voice broadcasting, mass texting, mass e-mailing, PPCing, and everything else. You might get some smug answers on here, but part of the reason is that to teach a newbie means grooming the competition. Margins are shrinking, marketing is becoming more expensive, and the payment processing residual model is dwindling because of the rise of ACH.

You can go door to door, but they probably get 10 calls per day already and a piece of mail every other week with an offer, and solicitations from their OWN payment processor included with every monthly statement. This doesn't mean you can't do well, it's just a really tough time for a newbie to get started. This is a 15 year old industry that is on the verge of crossing over from a relatively small niche market to a mainstream corporate sector of finance.

You can work very hard for 10 deals and all 10 can get declined in 15 minutes. You need volume and lots of it. In some cases, these deals are a multilayered close. You're not selling them 20k, getting them to sign a contract and then walking away. You need to close the merchant on how expensive this is relative to a bank loan, for split deals close them on changing their merchant account and a new rate plan, close them on new POS technology if their current technology isn't PCI compliant, close them on your service fee (if you're going to charge one), close them from not going with the 4 other companies they're talking to at the same time, close the underwriter on doing the deal, possibly close the payment processor on boarding the account if they have a history of chargebacks, close them on the fact that they may have to actually make 2 payments BEFORE they even get the money deposited in their bank account, close them on not taking a stack deal no batter how badly they want money later on, and close them on never going with a competitor instead of you in the future when 100 of them will make contact with your client in the first few months.

Some deals that are on ACH are easier, but the other competitive pressures are still there. That's the reality of this field right now. It's a bit of war zone.

Jesus Christ almighty. Just kill me now