An ISO’s profitability depends on having a large portfolio of top-quality merchants. Acquiring those merchants is no easy task in an industry as competitive as payments, making it extremely important that ISOs look for any advantage they can get. Customer resource management systems represent a powerful and cost-effective way for ISOs to gain that all-important competitive advantage by improving the sales process. An ISO CRM reduces costs and improves portfolio growth by helping ISOs work smarter – automating many of their most important tasks, from lead management to onboarding and beyond. 

The following is a quick breakdown of how ISOs can use CRM software to improve their processes, enable their independent agents, and supercharge portfolio growth. 

 

ISO CRMs Enable Smarter Lead Acquisition

The first step in merchant acquisition is lead generation. The only way to maintain steady portfolio growth is to keep the top of the sales funnel full. Unfortunately, lead generation is often either time-consuming or expensive. Many ISOs save time by turning to purchased lists of leads, which can be hit-or-miss from a quality perspective and represent arguably one of the lead cost-effective ways to prospect possible. Luckily, an ISO CRM has the power to make organic lead collection automatic.

Top ISO CRMs enable new lead accounts to be created automatically through a variety of actions. Any time an interested prospect fills out an information form on the web, clicks a custom link in an email, scans a QR code on promotional materials, or even makes an inbound phone call, the system can automatically enter them into the database and begin tracking them immediately. Automatic lead account creation helps turn every single one of an ISO’s marketing and advertising initiatives into a powerful lead generation tool.

 

ISO CRMs Enable Smarter Lead Management

Getting a lead into the system is only the beginning. The way a lead is nurtured throughout the lead management and sales process plays a huge role in determining whether they’ll turn into a signed merchant or not. Traditional lead management is inefficient, hinging on manual interventions from sales agents, resulting in many qualified leads slipping through the cracks. A good ISO CRM plugs those leaks with automation, ensuring as many fresh leads as possible make it all the way to close.

IRIS CRM’s lead management suite uses automation to help ISOs work smarter when classifying lead accounts. Lead classification is important because it ensures agents always know what a lead’s status is in the sales funnel, when leads have gone too long without contact, and much more. Top ISO CRMs like IRIS CRM enable users to create as many custom lead categories as they want and automatically reclassify leads based on custom triggers, including link clicks, meetings being set, documents being uploaded, elapsed time since last contact, and much more. There is almost no limit to how an ISO can configure their lead categories and triggers, making IRIS CRM an incredibly powerful way to ensure no good lead gets lost or ignored. 

 

 Smarter Sales Process Delivery

In the end, the difference between signing a new merchant and a lead going cold is the quality of the sales process delivered by an ISO’s agents. There is a lot of competition in the payments industry, and merchants have no shortage of choice when selecting a processing partner. An ISO’s ability to deliver the most targeted, most personalized sales process possible is a key determining factor in convincing a merchant to sign on the dotted line rather than going with a competitor. 

An ISO CRM enables agents to deliver the best sales process possible by putting the entirety of an ISO’s stored customer data at their fingertips. In the case of IRIS CRM, the system automatically tracks each interaction between a lead and an ISO and logs it to the notes section of the lead’s account. The system can track phone calls, emails, meetings, and more. As a result, the key details of all lead interactions are automatically captured, so no information slips through the cracks. IRIS CRM can even tell an agent which parts of an ISO’s website a lead has spent the most time browsing. And because that treasure trove of customer data is always accessible in seconds from anywhere within the ISO CRM, including the built-in power dialer, agents always have instant access to the information they need to tailor, target, and elevate the sales process. 

 

More Efficient Merchant Onboarding

With a merchant ready to partner, the final step in the acquisition process is onboarding them to a payment processor for approval. Onboarding is an incredibly important process that must be performed for every new merchant, but it’s also extremely time-consuming and riddled with opportunities for human error to creep in. Boarding a single merchant can take 30 minutes or more for even the most experienced ISO operations staff, and a single error in the data entry process could result in lost revenues or an outright denial. 

IRIS CRM enables smarter onboarding through TurboApp – the industry’s top automated boarding tool. TubroApp automatically pulls data from a digital merchant processing agreement (MPA) and prefills most of the boarding application on its own, eliminating the vast majority of manual data entry and cutting the process from 30 minutes down to five. And because TurboApp eliminates the need for manual data transfer, the potential for human error is all but eliminated, ensuring each new merchant application is perfectly formatted and has the highest possible chance of success. 

 

The lead management, onboarding, sales, and productivity tools included in top ISO CRMs enable independent sales organizations to streamline and enhance the most important aspects of merchant acquisition, along with many other areas of the payments business. By utilizing a CRM to work smarter, ISOs can save a significant amount of time and boost sales, all while reducing the overall cost of merchant acquisition. 

To find out more about how an ISO CRM can improve your company’s lead management, sales, and administration, schedule a free guided demonstration of IRIS CRM today.