[jotucker1983]

To follow up on this discussion, a couple of additional points.

1.) In terms of consolidation, when this term is thrown out there do you guys mean that you would find a funder that would do a full approval, pay off all of the remaining balances, and then the merchant nets the remains? If that's the situation, what if there's nothing for the merchant to net or what if the net is below 40%? Is that a good deal? Or, are you going to have the merchant net 0% - 40% but you are going to somehow provide a longer term which reduces his payment? Why wouldn't you be concerned that the merchant (who just took out 3-4 advances at one time) won't turn around and do the same thing again? I mean after all, you would now have him on a longer term which increases his time to renew with you, so why wouldn't that same merchant stack 3 or 4 times again?

2.) I also agree that Stacking isn't our only issue in this industry, I have touched on the low quality recruiting that is done that mirrors how it's done on the merchant services sales side of things. In terms of Self-Regulation, here's a good starting list of issues that we can tackle:

- Not stacking past a 2nd position

- Not taking more than a certain percentage of a merchant's monthly gross to payback the advance

- Properly disclosing what type of financial product you are offering, if it's an advance you would indicate the purchase of receivables, if it's a loan you would indicate the structure of said loan.

- Not recruiting people who have no prior sales experience, marketing experience, B2B experience, etc. to sell the product without properly training them on the product if they are W-2. If they are going to be 1099, then questions should be addressed on their business plan, prior experience in running their own business, their plan to finance their office, their legal resources, their accounting resources, their marketing resources, etc. This helps to reduce down the amount of people coming into the industry that are ill-prepared. Competition is good, but when your "competition" can't spell "merchant cash advance," and do nothing but flood a merchant's telephone line trying to sell a product they can't spell, all that does is stop the merchant from taking calls from anybody. This hurts the growth of the industry, hurts the growth of your office, and the person doing the sales call is wasting their time as they won't be making hardly anything. They would be MUCH better off working at Burger King to be quite honest with you.

- Making sure to be in compliance with Telemarketing Laws, Can-Spam Laws, Fax Marketing Laws, the TCPA Law, the regulations of your Partners, the regulations of your Vendors/Suppliers, etc.

- Promoting Ethics.

- Establishment of some sort of major Association that would help to promote these ideals, the NAMAA is "okay" but they apparently need either more funding or more people to become a major player in the space similar to how the ETA is for the bankcard side.

[Chambo]

- Not recruiting people who have no prior sales experience, marketing experience, B2B experience, etc. to sell the product without properly training them on the product if they are W-2. If they are going to be 1099, then questions should be addressed on their business plan, prior experience in running their own business, their plan to finance their office, their legal resources, their accounting resources, their marketing resources, etc. This helps to reduce down the amount of people coming into the industry that are ill-prepared. Competition is good, but when your "competition" can't spell "merchant cash advance," and do nothing but flood a merchant's telephone line trying to sell a product they can't spell, all that does is stop the merchant from taking calls from anybody. This hurts the growth of the industry, hurts the growth of your office, and the person doing the sales call is wasting their time as they won't be making hardly anything. They would be MUCH better off working at Burger King to be quite honest with you.

- Promoting Ethics.

.

This would eliminate 3/4 of the reps out there currently. Heck, half the folks out there never went to college, and another chunk barely got through high school! Throw in the ext mortgage and stockbroker exiles.....