An introduction to the magical world of billing
I’ll inform you right away that I am planning an article in two parts. In the first part I plan to touch on the topic of the current development of the mediation market in the field of banking, payment and processing services, as well as the causes of failures on it. Despite the fact that he intends to be completely neutral, I will immediately make a reservation about the possible evaluation of the article, since personal experience with the topic comes with experience. In any case, I will offer precisely those development mechanisms that, in my experience, will be effective, and I will also try to tell you why I consider others to be ineffective.
Years of experience in the payment market and banking processing have led me to form an idea of the insufficient saturation of the financial services market with qualified intermediaries (they are sometimes called aggregators or distributors within payment services). It would seem a paradoxical fact: there is demand, there is no supply.
Indeed, at the moment, this area of activity is filled with small organizations, mainly engaged in the development of adapters for information systems and various kinds of integration solutions. Typically, these are adapters for GIS (like GIS utilities or GIS GMF), interaction with which is required at the legislative level, as well as platforms for managing information kiosks and payment terminals. Often offered a different level of functionality laying between banking systems, 1C and federal payment services. These companies offer entire sets of services that are usually aimed at creating such a model of relationships in which their decision will indeed prove to be mandatory.
An analysis of the history of some of these companies shows that their products were formed as satellites for projects of larger organizations. Then these satellites were no longer needed. Such freed up information solutions enter the free market to find a new project for themselves or, if you're lucky, projects.
I do not see anything reprehensible in the fact that the already implemented solution, automating any business processes, is embedded in other information systems and continues to demonstrate a useful result. This is a fairly rational approach to the use of already created intelligent products. At the same time, I am aware that only experts in their fields can fully utilize these works fully, understanding which of their needs will be covered by the acquired solution and how much the purchase and integration will be more profitable than development. Consulting and intermediary activities of such adapter organizations, which are often claimed, are aimed exclusively at the formation of "necessary" needs. Consultation, in other words, is carried out only in order to sell a ready-made solution. In addition, the terminological apparatus of these companies and their ideas about current problems in the payment and processing market usually reflects not the ideas of the potential consumer, but their own, which they are trying to impose as “correct”. The perversity of this approach will become clear later.
At the same time, on the other side of the business community, enterprising individuals are studying materials distributed on the Internet about ways to start a business. It is no secret that start-up blogs, websites and groups that produce business ideas or even business plans as content often offer their audience a mediation model as a way to “start a business from scratch without costs”. Of course, it is possible to start a business both “without costs” and “from scratch” according to their guidelines, but this business will not bring any benefits or significant benefits to anyone. And the reasons, by the way, are obvious.
The tips that can be obtained on such channels usually require the following action plan:
1. Log in to the ad sites and study the ads;
2. Create a database of offers;
3. Create a base of needs;
4. To bring suppliers of goods with consumers of goods;
5. Periodically repeat paragraphs 2, 3, and 4.
If the reader’s logical apparatus is properly organized, this procedure really looks like a convincing business model. I think that there is no need to address all the reasons for the guaranteed failure of such an event. The main, in my opinion, the reason lies in the lack of expertise or, if you will, professionalism, in this work. What can we talk about if all the functions of this kind of intermediary are successfully implemented by standard filters on the above sites.
The modern business community, which is ready to work with intermediaries, has already formed an idea of what such an intermediary should do. You can find dozens of ways to find a phone number, email address or even a full-fledged offer about the desire to deliver or receive goods. On the Internet, there are entire platforms for finding partners and all kinds of directories of legal entities. Gourmet companies can receive more specialized services on a commercial basis, and everyone else does not even have to pay for these services.
Obviously, the intermediary in this case is an extra link. And any managed system seeks to get rid of unnecessary links. Not only and not so much because an extra element requires extra costs. The main reason is that such a mediator significantly hinders the building of organic relations between partners, although he should, on the contrary, regulate them and heal them. It just introduces extra entropy. Such an intermediary cannot be contacted for a “solution to a problem”. Meanwhile, I often heard similar phrases from people involved in the financial sphere:
“Who needs to give money to make it work?”
This, of course, is not about a “bribe” to a public servant, but about an informal bonus to some specialist of a partner company, who will devote additional time and control the resolution of the issue. Outside of formal job responsibilities. And by the way, they paid.
Is it possible to conclude from this that intermediary business cannot be embodied in real market conditions? No. Realize and damn necessary!
It is worthwhile to understand that advice on organizing an intermediary business is usually given by people who have nothing to do with this business, and comprehend it from the point of view of the show exchange, which spins the channel. Usually these are conclusions and decisions based on intuition and artistic materials. The fact is that bloggers are experts in the media, not in business. Similarly, a good soccer player on a game console is completely unsuitable for the role of a real football team coach.
From the above facts, completely different conclusions should be drawn, namely:
1. An element that does not perform a useful function burdens any system;
2. All business groups focus on increasing profits and optimizing costs.
It can be noted that these conclusions are common truths characteristic of any field of activity, they are not specific to mediation. It turns out that mediation is not burdened with its special qualities that impede work at a fundamental level. It turns out that the reasons for the failure of beginning intermediaries in another? This is true.
Both on the part of organizations implementing ready-made solutions, which I spoke about at the very beginning, and on the part of freelancers who try themselves in the market of intermediary services based on low-quality materials from the Internet, there is one single contradiction to the goals of the intermediary. One, but determining success or failure in this matter.
The average player in this market completely does not take into account the real needs of partners, the interaction between which he mediates. At this stage, I will depart from the well-known commonplace and give an example from real experience.
I, as a payment service specialist, organize, inter alia, work to attract partners. Among such partners, a separate category is represented by companies that, by their type of activity, have the ability to massively receive state duties, taxes and fines. In my eyes, such companies (mostly entrepreneurs) earned money on receiving payments, which allowed them to completely move away from direct work in the field and hire a couple of cashiers. We are talking about tens of thousands of rubles per month for one POS. The average figure is more modest, but still tangible, if not by Moscow, then by regional standards - for sure.
When the work on attraction was just beginning, but the examples and calculations were prepared, we came across an interesting fact. Target companies did not cooperate. Moreover, the work was carried out not only by our manager, but also by the distributor company, which actually acts as an intermediary between our service and the agents organizing the service on POS.
Our model of relations with a distributor was organized as follows: they attract a partner agent to the service on the basis of a tripartite agreement, and they receive a percentage of turnover. Everything was executed reliably, each participant was protected by the terms of the contract, but the matter did not go. Neither our managers nor the distributor.
If we did not carry out separate work, each according to his own methods, we could conclude that someone alone implements the wrong strategy. But we used different strategies, and the result is the same. For a couple of years of this work, we have tried cold calling, and landing pages, and advertising in communities and investment sites, and newsletters. Calls were recorded and analyzed, scenarios were developed, seminars were held, we upgraded the qualifications of specialists, but there was no result.
We were approached only by those organizations that were puzzled by the targeted search for a payment service. The distributor went to the same companies. Our partners in the person of banks and large agents who, on occasion, also connected participants to the joint service, also only those enterprises that independently realized their need for this service came out. Characteristically, at this point, the novice agents did not even have an idea of the costs and potential benefits of receiving payments.
In our materials, in the materials of the distributor, in all kinds of advertising of banks and our other partners, there was no reflection of our expertise. That is, "our expertise in the field of partner." And the obvious expertness in our own sphere of activity of the partner was not at all worried. We offered a common service, a common product, talked about the benefits, made calculations, gave examples. For us, the benefits were obvious. As a payment service provider engaged in payments and processing, we did not understand why a partner refuses an obviously advantageous offer. After a monthly analysis, endless adjustments, development of the text of the proposal and presentation, draft contracts, all kinds of FAQs, schemes and other representative mukulatura, we had an ideal proposal from the point of view of any company: with an amazing balance of details and brevity. It was everything. And SPIN, and FAB, and the development of flexible call scenarios for managers, and modern standards for processing objections, and the methods of “persistent manager”. Speaking sincerely, our manager was not just “persistent”. He, like a bath sheet, stuck to the victim and did not leave her alone day or night. The offer was perfect in terms of modern sales methodology. But it did not work.
They supposedly understood us, but immediately refused any substantive negotiations. As the saying goes: "I caught individual words, the phrase as a whole - no." Feedback went only when we replaced just one phrase in the greeting of the decision maker in the script. And the first successes began, negotiations began, interesting projects. People began to talk, be interested, offer counter solutions, their conditions. I'm not talking about the fact that we suddenly became a transnational corporation, but the “dead point” was overcome, and then things moved on, since our project was initially beneficial to partners.
On this key note, I will stop, as the rest of the article requires editing. In the next part I will touch on the solution that helped us overcome the “dead point”, as well as try to give an analysis and highlight useful information for potential intermediaries.
Years of experience in the payment market and banking processing have led me to form an idea of the insufficient saturation of the financial services market with qualified intermediaries (they are sometimes called aggregators or distributors within payment services). It would seem a paradoxical fact: there is demand, there is no supply.
Indeed, at the moment, this area of activity is filled with small organizations, mainly engaged in the development of adapters for information systems and various kinds of integration solutions. Typically, these are adapters for GIS (like GIS utilities or GIS GMF), interaction with which is required at the legislative level, as well as platforms for managing information kiosks and payment terminals. Often offered a different level of functionality laying between banking systems, 1C and federal payment services. These companies offer entire sets of services that are usually aimed at creating such a model of relationships in which their decision will indeed prove to be mandatory.
An analysis of the history of some of these companies shows that their products were formed as satellites for projects of larger organizations. Then these satellites were no longer needed. Such freed up information solutions enter the free market to find a new project for themselves or, if you're lucky, projects.
I do not see anything reprehensible in the fact that the already implemented solution, automating any business processes, is embedded in other information systems and continues to demonstrate a useful result. This is a fairly rational approach to the use of already created intelligent products. At the same time, I am aware that only experts in their fields can fully utilize these works fully, understanding which of their needs will be covered by the acquired solution and how much the purchase and integration will be more profitable than development. Consulting and intermediary activities of such adapter organizations, which are often claimed, are aimed exclusively at the formation of "necessary" needs. Consultation, in other words, is carried out only in order to sell a ready-made solution. In addition, the terminological apparatus of these companies and their ideas about current problems in the payment and processing market usually reflects not the ideas of the potential consumer, but their own, which they are trying to impose as “correct”. The perversity of this approach will become clear later.
At the same time, on the other side of the business community, enterprising individuals are studying materials distributed on the Internet about ways to start a business. It is no secret that start-up blogs, websites and groups that produce business ideas or even business plans as content often offer their audience a mediation model as a way to “start a business from scratch without costs”. Of course, it is possible to start a business both “without costs” and “from scratch” according to their guidelines, but this business will not bring any benefits or significant benefits to anyone. And the reasons, by the way, are obvious.
The tips that can be obtained on such channels usually require the following action plan:
1. Log in to the ad sites and study the ads;
2. Create a database of offers;
3. Create a base of needs;
4. To bring suppliers of goods with consumers of goods;
5. Periodically repeat paragraphs 2, 3, and 4.
If the reader’s logical apparatus is properly organized, this procedure really looks like a convincing business model. I think that there is no need to address all the reasons for the guaranteed failure of such an event. The main, in my opinion, the reason lies in the lack of expertise or, if you will, professionalism, in this work. What can we talk about if all the functions of this kind of intermediary are successfully implemented by standard filters on the above sites.
The modern business community, which is ready to work with intermediaries, has already formed an idea of what such an intermediary should do. You can find dozens of ways to find a phone number, email address or even a full-fledged offer about the desire to deliver or receive goods. On the Internet, there are entire platforms for finding partners and all kinds of directories of legal entities. Gourmet companies can receive more specialized services on a commercial basis, and everyone else does not even have to pay for these services.
Obviously, the intermediary in this case is an extra link. And any managed system seeks to get rid of unnecessary links. Not only and not so much because an extra element requires extra costs. The main reason is that such a mediator significantly hinders the building of organic relations between partners, although he should, on the contrary, regulate them and heal them. It just introduces extra entropy. Such an intermediary cannot be contacted for a “solution to a problem”. Meanwhile, I often heard similar phrases from people involved in the financial sphere:
“Who needs to give money to make it work?”
This, of course, is not about a “bribe” to a public servant, but about an informal bonus to some specialist of a partner company, who will devote additional time and control the resolution of the issue. Outside of formal job responsibilities. And by the way, they paid.
Is it possible to conclude from this that intermediary business cannot be embodied in real market conditions? No. Realize and damn necessary!
It is worthwhile to understand that advice on organizing an intermediary business is usually given by people who have nothing to do with this business, and comprehend it from the point of view of the show exchange, which spins the channel. Usually these are conclusions and decisions based on intuition and artistic materials. The fact is that bloggers are experts in the media, not in business. Similarly, a good soccer player on a game console is completely unsuitable for the role of a real football team coach.
From the above facts, completely different conclusions should be drawn, namely:
1. An element that does not perform a useful function burdens any system;
2. All business groups focus on increasing profits and optimizing costs.
It can be noted that these conclusions are common truths characteristic of any field of activity, they are not specific to mediation. It turns out that mediation is not burdened with its special qualities that impede work at a fundamental level. It turns out that the reasons for the failure of beginning intermediaries in another? This is true.
Both on the part of organizations implementing ready-made solutions, which I spoke about at the very beginning, and on the part of freelancers who try themselves in the market of intermediary services based on low-quality materials from the Internet, there is one single contradiction to the goals of the intermediary. One, but determining success or failure in this matter.
The average player in this market completely does not take into account the real needs of partners, the interaction between which he mediates. At this stage, I will depart from the well-known commonplace and give an example from real experience.
I, as a payment service specialist, organize, inter alia, work to attract partners. Among such partners, a separate category is represented by companies that, by their type of activity, have the ability to massively receive state duties, taxes and fines. In my eyes, such companies (mostly entrepreneurs) earned money on receiving payments, which allowed them to completely move away from direct work in the field and hire a couple of cashiers. We are talking about tens of thousands of rubles per month for one POS. The average figure is more modest, but still tangible, if not by Moscow, then by regional standards - for sure.
When the work on attraction was just beginning, but the examples and calculations were prepared, we came across an interesting fact. Target companies did not cooperate. Moreover, the work was carried out not only by our manager, but also by the distributor company, which actually acts as an intermediary between our service and the agents organizing the service on POS.
Our model of relations with a distributor was organized as follows: they attract a partner agent to the service on the basis of a tripartite agreement, and they receive a percentage of turnover. Everything was executed reliably, each participant was protected by the terms of the contract, but the matter did not go. Neither our managers nor the distributor.
If we did not carry out separate work, each according to his own methods, we could conclude that someone alone implements the wrong strategy. But we used different strategies, and the result is the same. For a couple of years of this work, we have tried cold calling, and landing pages, and advertising in communities and investment sites, and newsletters. Calls were recorded and analyzed, scenarios were developed, seminars were held, we upgraded the qualifications of specialists, but there was no result.
We were approached only by those organizations that were puzzled by the targeted search for a payment service. The distributor went to the same companies. Our partners in the person of banks and large agents who, on occasion, also connected participants to the joint service, also only those enterprises that independently realized their need for this service came out. Characteristically, at this point, the novice agents did not even have an idea of the costs and potential benefits of receiving payments.
In our materials, in the materials of the distributor, in all kinds of advertising of banks and our other partners, there was no reflection of our expertise. That is, "our expertise in the field of partner." And the obvious expertness in our own sphere of activity of the partner was not at all worried. We offered a common service, a common product, talked about the benefits, made calculations, gave examples. For us, the benefits were obvious. As a payment service provider engaged in payments and processing, we did not understand why a partner refuses an obviously advantageous offer. After a monthly analysis, endless adjustments, development of the text of the proposal and presentation, draft contracts, all kinds of FAQs, schemes and other representative mukulatura, we had an ideal proposal from the point of view of any company: with an amazing balance of details and brevity. It was everything. And SPIN, and FAB, and the development of flexible call scenarios for managers, and modern standards for processing objections, and the methods of “persistent manager”. Speaking sincerely, our manager was not just “persistent”. He, like a bath sheet, stuck to the victim and did not leave her alone day or night. The offer was perfect in terms of modern sales methodology. But it did not work.
They supposedly understood us, but immediately refused any substantive negotiations. As the saying goes: "I caught individual words, the phrase as a whole - no." Feedback went only when we replaced just one phrase in the greeting of the decision maker in the script. And the first successes began, negotiations began, interesting projects. People began to talk, be interested, offer counter solutions, their conditions. I'm not talking about the fact that we suddenly became a transnational corporation, but the “dead point” was overcome, and then things moved on, since our project was initially beneficial to partners.
On this key note, I will stop, as the rest of the article requires editing. In the next part I will touch on the solution that helped us overcome the “dead point”, as well as try to give an analysis and highlight useful information for potential intermediaries.