May 27, 2025 • 35 mins
Episode 103 Revolutionizing Payments: Shaking Up the B2B Scene with Perryn Holtrop Frederick Dudek (Freddy D) Copyright 2025 Prosperous Ventures, LLC
Perryn Holtrop, the visionary CEO and founder of Pay Nation, is here to shake up the world of B2B payments. In our chat, we dive into how Pay Nation is not just about making transactions easier but also about transforming how businesses think about payments altogether. With a focus on sectors like manufacturing and e-commerce, Perryn shares insights on how his team is tackling real-world challenges, from cutting credit card fees to enhancing transaction security.
He emphasizes the importance of automating outdated processes, which not only saves time but significantly boosts profitability for businesses. Get ready for an engaging discussion that goes beyond the numbers, as we explore what it truly means to innovate in the payment space.
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In a world where payment processing can often feel like a necessary evil, Perryn Holtrop of Pay Nation is on a mission to change that perception. This episode brings to light the transformative power of innovative payment solutions, particularly for B2B companies that struggle with outdated practices. Perryn shares his journey from the comedy industry to the fintech realm, illustrating how his unique background has shaped his approach to sales and customer relationship management.
The discussion centers on the substantial inefficiencies embedded in traditional payment methods, such as checks, and how Pay Nation is addressing these issues with a focus on customization and automation. Perryn explains how the company works closely with clients to optimize their payment processes, thereby reducing costs and increasing security. By integrating with existing systems like QuickBooks, Pay Nation helps businesses transition away from manual entry and towards a more streamlined, digital-first approach.
Listeners gain valuable insights into the nuances of choosing a payment partner, with Perryn advocating for a consultant-like relationship rather than a transactional one. He emphasizes that the right partner will guide businesses through the complexities of payment processing, enabling them to focus more on growth and less on managing outdated systems. This episode is rich with practical advice for business owners looking to enhance their operational efficiency and create advocates through exceptional service.
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Takeaways:
- Perryn Holtrop shares how Pay Nation is revolutionizing B2B payments by simplifying and securing processes for businesses.
- We discuss the importance of integrating payment solutions seamlessly into existing systems for maximum efficiency.
- Pay Nation focuses on reducing credit card fees while boosting transaction security and profitability for clients.
- The episode highlights the significance of understanding a client's payment flow to provide tailored solutions that enhance their business operations.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(01:37):
Today on the Business heysuper fans.
Superstar Freddie D. Here inthis episode 103, we're joined by
Perryn Haltrop, CEO andfounder of Pay Nation, a forward
thinking fintech company basedin Southern California. Under Perryn's
leadership, Pay Nation istransforming how B2B companies handle
payments, offering customizedomnichannel solutions that make payment
(02:02):
acceptance simpler, moresecure and highly scalable. With
a sharp focus on industrieslike manufacturing, distribution,
e Commerce and SaaS, Perry andhis team are solving real world challenges.
Not only reducing credit cardfees with interchange optimization
and helping businessesintegrate payments seamlessly while
(02:24):
boosting security, but also inmany instances, increasing throughput
and driving overallprofitability. Get ready for an insightful
conversation on innovation,growth and a future of payments.
Welcome, Perryn to theBusiness Superfans podcast.
Hey, thanks for having me.This is awesome.
(02:46):
Yeah, we're really excitedabout you. It's an important topic
of payment systems. There's alot of them out there and I'm excited
to dive deep into that so thatour listeners can understand the
benefits of the services youprovide compared to some of the other
platforms.
Yeah, there's a lot ofcompanies out there in the payment
space. We specifically focuson B2B companies that are selling
(03:07):
goods and services to otherbusinesses. A lot of manufacturer,
distributor, wholesale was alittle bit of a more sophisticated
sale. It's not just saying,let me walk in, grab your statement,
lower your price. A lot ofsolution. Selling is what we do.
Sure. So per, let's go back tothe backstory. What were we doing
(03:27):
before Pay Nation came about?I mean, there's a whole story of
how you ended up getting to berunning Pay Nation.
Well, it's an interestingstory. Before I got in the payment
space, I was in the comedybusiness managing some developmental
act comedians booking for thecasino here in California. Was involved
(03:47):
in comedy as a hooker, as amanager. Wasn't making any money.
It was a fun gig trying tohelp some guys that I thought were
really good and funny make alittle bit of money in comedy, but
not a ton. At a friend whoworked at a payments company and
hey, you're really good atsales. I had several sales jobs before
and all my own businesses wasan entrepreneurial type of sale or
company. He's like, hey, youcan build up a residual and make
(04:10):
some money. And I was like,that's what I need. I wanted to make
some money while I was workingthe Tommy gig. I needed a little
bit of income to supplement myincome and so I got involved in it.
I loved it. I was like, man,this is a great business. You kind
of work at your own leisure.When I first started in the payments
industry, everyone was workingrestaurants and hospitality and that
(04:31):
was kind of the low hangingfruit. And so I did that for the
first year. My background wasin the manufacturing space before
I was doing comedy. I hadseveral patents and worked with a
lot of manufacturers anddistributors. That was my network.
My first year in payments, Ineed to get more into the B2B space
where a lot of people starteddoing that, moved to another company,
(04:53):
did very well. Still sales,commission type of role. During the
pandemic in 2020, everybodywas very scared and uncertain and
I kind of wasn't. I was reallyfocused and I was like, hey, this
is a perfect time for me tostart a company. So we started our
company, Pay Nation in June of2020 in the middle of the pandemic.
(05:14):
We had honking stink growth.Everybody wanted a digital payment
more. People were leery abouttaking cash and check and other kinds
of form of pay. And we wereright in the heart of all of that.
I had a really good book ofbusiness prior to starting my company,
so it wasn't like I had tostart from scratch. By the time I
started PayNation, I had areally large book where I could have
(05:35):
been okay and relax, butthat's just not how I'm wired. So
2020 started PayNation andwe're growing exponentially every
year. That's kind of the longand short of it. I was in the comedy
industry before I didpayments. So completely 180 degree
change there.
What a great story. But youknow, comedy and humor is very important
in sales because, you know, Iwant to emphasize that because that
(05:59):
was one of my successes insales, getting people to laugh.
Absolutely.
It loosens, it takes thestress out and it's a huge icebreaker.
I can't agree more. I had thisconversation with a buddy of mine
when I first got into more ofa sales role and working with larger
companies. I have always beensomewhat of an extrovert. I'm very
(06:20):
social, but when I go intonetworking meetings, I didn't really
know how to work a room. Maybe2010, I wasn't really that good at
it. It was kind of awkward.I'm not really good with small talk.
I was really, really kind ofawkward. People see me now and like,
that's true because I'm veryoutgoing. But the comedy, being around
comedians and being around alot of guys that are really funny
(06:41):
off the cuff, it reallyallowed me to learn one liner, say
little zingers Say somethingfunny. The timing. I notice in networking
meetings, conference rooms orwhatever, finding that one time to
say something slick, where youget everybody loosen up. It just
changes the whole dynamic ofthe meeting. I can't agree with you
more, Freddie. It's absolutelyhelps. Even in meetings, serious
(07:05):
meetings, where there's a lotof money on the line, there's a lot
of things going on andeverybody's super tense. You got
a bunch of accountants andCFOs in the room and bean counters.
You need that ability. Lightenup the room.
Right.
Be able to do that is help in sales.
Yeah, I can relate because Iused to be an engineer. I happen
to progress to where I'm aleft brain, right brain guy. Now
(07:25):
you remind me of going tonetworking groups. I used to go,
and people say, you need to goto a networking group. When I got
out of the software business,I'm going, why do I want to go to
a networking group? What am Igoing to do there? Who am I going
to meet? Because I was used toit. The manufacturing space tool.
And I have it burned into mybrain is 35, 44. I looked up, those
are the companies. That's thepresident, vice president of engineering,
(07:46):
vice president ofmanufacturing. That was my market.
Or I would go to theassociation, which was the same people
in the market going to anetworking group. I'd be like, I
was the guy that bought thedrink, sat in a corner and go, okay,
now what do I do?
I was kind of the same way.You never know who anyone knows.
For me, talking about comedy alittle bit more. Before I was involved
(08:07):
in the comedy business, I hada very low tolerance for small talk.
I was able to get to thepoint. I noticed that. But, you know,
in the comedy world or even inthe entertainment world, you never
really know who anyone knows.So you kind of have to be a little
bit more tolerant to whatpeople tell you because you don't
know who anyone knows. Andthat really helped me in the networking
(08:27):
world because I was reallymore focused on really listening
to what a person, what theydo. I used to have this. I read this
book about body language andwhen you're talking to people, you
know, not have your handcrossed or your hands in your pocket.
You got to kind of show themyour heart and be interested. I noticed
that I would always be annoyedwhen I would talk to certain people.
(08:49):
They would ask me a questionand I could tell they weren't engaged.
Like, why'd you ask me thatquestion if you don't care my answer?
But I Noticed I was that sameguy doing that.
Right.
So I changed that and Istarted really caring about what
people are talking about,really care, listening to what their
business is, what theirindustry is, what their discipline
is, and really care. And whenI started to really care about what
(09:11):
people do, networking becameso easy for me.
Game changer.
Yeah.
So total game changer.
Total game changer.
So let's go back to Pay Nationhere and talk about how do you guys
compare? And I'm going to justthrow some names out there like square,
stripe, PayPal.
I mean, those are what most people.
Are familiar with, especiallysmall SMBs, which is our target market
(09:33):
for this podcast show. So whatdifferentiates Pay Nation from those
platforms?
So Those platforms, Square,PayingPal, Stripe, those companies
are what's called paymentfacilitators, a kind of software
wrapped around the ability totake payment. Stripe has done a really
good job with the integration.They have a really good tech stack.
(09:55):
Their stuff is more related toE commerce business and those kinds
of things. A lot of ISVs, alot of fintech companies that have
software want to integratepayments really quick. There's a
need for that. We do some ofthat. Our focus is more middle market,
lower middle market, B2Bcompanies. A lot of manufacturers,
distributors, wholesalers,companies that are using some type
of accounting software or ERPsoftware where they want to integrate
(10:19):
accounts receivable withintheir software natively. A lot of
our conversation is reallyjust explaining to them the time
value of money financing yourown receivables in a traditional
term environment. Net 30 netsick fee. Sometimes doing a payment
account receivable with acredit card is a lot cheaper and
gets paid quicker. So a lot ofwhat we do is really focusing on
(10:41):
those companies that are doingbusiness with other companies. The
Stripes and paypals of theworld are more focused on smaller
companies, more like mom andpops. I'm not saying they don't have
bigger companies, of coursethey do. But they're really focused,
like Square. I think thenumber is like 90% of their customers
or businesses doing like 10grand or less in volume per month
(11:02):
or per year. They're focusedon more smaller companies. A lot
of what we're focusing on aremiddle market companies that want
to be like Big BrotherEnterprise, a little bit more coachable.
They're more open to thingsthat we're able to bring to the table
and consult with. Maybethey're graduating from a Quickbook
and moving into something morehigh power like NetSuite or SAP.
(11:24):
We're going to be in themiddle of that to make sure we're
connecting with the rightpartner, we're going to connect all
of the payments piecenatively, make a more seamless environment.
Rather than being a paymentprocessor, we're more of an ADP automation
company. We're helping withthe automation of getting payments,
receiving or paying paymentsmore frictionless, if that makes
(11:45):
any sense.
Oh totally. It totally does.Because for example, I was working
with a interpreting andtranslation company dealing with
government agencies. So theywere using QuickBooks but trying
to get payments online wasvery difficult. The company ended
up getting lots of checks.QuickBooks is limited and then you
have the fee and could onlyuse QuickBooks payment system. So
(12:08):
what you guys are doing, fromwhat I understand, you're teaming
up with a company, changingout their accounting platform to
a better one that enables morecustomers pay through the payment
platform versus mailing out anold fashioned check.
Yeah, you know, our goal is toget people off a check or at least
at minimum digitizing thatprocess. There's still people that
(12:29):
want to pay with check, butrather than waiting for the proverbial
check in the mail, we candigitize it. Do you know an E check
online or ACH online? We havea lot of clients that use, but we
have an integration forQuickBooks that allows you to automate
the QuickBooks invoicing andstill be able to use a third party
(12:50):
service like us. So you're notmarried to the service that books
users. So there's a myriad ofdifferent ways. What I always say
in the B2B space, especiallyin the payments world, but there's
no magic bullet. There'salways some kind of nuance. Everybody
has a different pain point,different issue that they have. Our
goal is to find out what theirpayment flow is, find out what the
(13:10):
North Star for them and try toget closer to getting to that North
Star for that business andjust make them efficient. I had a
client a few years ago thatwas still accepting checks. They
found out later that thepostman was on the tape and they
had a $500,000 check deliveredto their office. It never got there.
I don't know if the postmangave it to somebody or whatever,
(13:32):
but the criminals were able tocash it and get that money and the
company never was able torecoup that 500 grand. This happens
all the time, $26 billion incheck fraud every year. So there's
just no reason to check. Westill have clients that write credit
card numbers on a piece ofpaper. Everything is digital now.
And that's what we try toreally Speak to our clients. I know
(13:52):
you have a way of doing thingsthat you're used to, but let's show
you how to do it in the 21stcentury. Safer, probably cheaper,
more secure, and get paid quicker.
When, when to go back to thefraud with the company I worked with,
it was clever. They hadrequested. It was with the interpreting
and translation company. Theyhad requested a translation project
(14:13):
and they said, okay, we'llsend out a cashier's check. That's
more than the amount that youquoted. But we're going to have a
second project coming tofollow up the first project. So that
should cancel out the overageof the cashier's check. I was running
the company for a bit and Ididn't know any of this was being
handled. You delegate andpeople take care of it. All of a
(14:35):
sudden, what happened? Thefraud flew a flag with my accounting
guy. He came to talk to me. Hesays, we did the project and now
they're canceling and wedelivered it and they're asking for
a refund. And we. Fortunatelywe didn't do a refund, but the cashier's
check bounced because it wasfraudulent. And so we were out the
(14:58):
money because we had to paythe translators to do the work. And
so it was. We lost only about750 bucks. It wasn't disastrous,
but it was a clever scam. Andthat's where your system comes in,
because that can't happen.
No, that's one thing aboutpayments. This isn't simply credit
cards. If the money's notthere, it's not going to get approved,
(15:19):
Right? So if you run a cardfor, let's say $100,000 and it's
approved, you get anauthorization number, you know that
money is as good as yours. Nowthere's still obviously risk and
chargebacks and it could havebeen a fraudulent car. There's kind
of a myriad of things there,but there are things that put in
place and certain fraud toolsin place that could mitigate a lot
of that stuff. So fraud andchargebacks are a very big problem
(15:42):
in our industry, specificallyin the B2B space. Majority of the
clients that our clients workwith are reoccurring customers. You're
not dealing with the consumerwhere it's one offs. You're dealing
with people that are buyingstuff from you on a regular basis.
So you pretty much know allthe clients they paying you. The
biggest hurdle that we comeacross is everybody talks about the
(16:04):
fees, everybody wants to save,not to pay what they need to pay.
But moving money Isn't free.Trying to get money, one account
to another, not free. Even inthe crypto world, moving money to
another wallet, sometimes afee. People need to understand that
moving money isn't free if thecustomer knows the default method
of payment for their clientsis a digital payment, credit card
(16:26):
or achievement. You know, 70,80, 90. Sometimes a percent of your
income is coming from adigital payment. Factor in the cost
of taking that payment likeanything else, right? Your insurance,
your employees, any of thestuff that is their cost of doing
business. Moving money shouldbe a cost of doing business like
anything else, right?
So Perryn share a story of howPay Nation worked with a client who's
(16:50):
having payment challenges. Andyou guys stepped in and transformed
their whole operation withwhat you guys do. That in turn led
them to becoming a super fanof Pay Nation and become your advocate,
attracting you more business.
Yeah, I have lots of storieslike that. One particular that always
comes to mind and a story Itell quite a bit. We went into a.
(17:12):
This is actually not a B2Bclient, but they were a pretty large
gymnasium that had a bunch ofmemberships for a young gymnast and
all kinds of different eventsthat they would do at their event.
Really good business. Theowner was great. And every single
month they had I think sevenor 800 members. Every single month
(17:34):
they had somebody in theoffice going in, having the cards
on file or on a piece of paperand they would go in and hand key
the card number for thecustomer every month a process of
payment for that month.Because every month it was a different
amount, wasn't always the sameamount. So there wasn't a way to
do.
It on a systematized.
Right. And so we were able togo in and tokenize a lot of these
(17:58):
cars, put all the information,create profile for each customer
and really help it. I thinkthat number was something like 10
hours a month or some crazynumber. 20 hours a month to do this.
And we were able to do itwhere it took them 10 minutes every
month. Eventually weimplemented some software for them
and it made it a littleeasier. But they were able to alleviate
(18:20):
so much extra time from allthis data entry. The gals that were
working the office werebasically hired to do other stuff,
but they were resulted to dataentry people because of this. It
was a very big problem andalleviated it. They became a super
fan. We got tons of businessfrom them. We got so much referrals
from a customer. This is acustomer of ours to this day. We've
(18:44):
had this client for eightyears now. We have lots of Stories
like that, where people arejust doing things the way they've
been doing it for years, noone really ever came in there and
say there's a better or easierway to do it. You know, the biggest
thing for us as humans is wedon't like change.
And that's hardest thing.
Yeah, this thing. And so if wecome in and we can show them the
change is very seamless. It'snot really going to change much.
(19:07):
It's going to make your lifeeasier a lot of times there's some
pretty good adoption there. Weget the pushback from time to time.
But overall, eventually whenthey do it, they say go, this is
much better. So it's alwayshindsight 2020 in that regard.
Sure. And the ROI that you puton that investment. Yeah, it took
you time to get that set upfor that gymnasium. However they're
(19:30):
spending, let's just keep themath simple. Let's just say 20 hours
because they're not sittingthere every minute doing so. 20 hours
over several days. The ROI onthat is dramatic because now those
people can be productive doingsomething else. Attracting more members
to the gymnasium, et cetera,versus spending 20 hours sitting
(19:51):
in data entry.
Yeah. Not to mention humanerror. You got people typing in stuff
wrong, the wrong amounts, thewrong card, you get declines. Whatever
the situation is, you'reassuming that all these cards that
were entered was entered.Right the first time.
Well, yeah. And then theproblem would be in the recipient.
If the car's been declinedtwo, three times because they made
a mistake, the customer isgetting an alert. They're going,
(20:14):
what the heck is going on withthis place? And so that's creating
a negative. So if you look atthe whole gamut of everything, you
guys really transformed thatwhole operation.
Yeah, we did. And the owner tothis day always sings our praises.
Was on the phone with hermaybe a couple months ago, just checking
in on her. She's like, heyman, how you doing? Just amazing.
(20:37):
It's been years and years andshe's still thankful. So, you know,
we have lots of stories likethat. Another one, it always feels
good. We had another account,a pretty large shoe manufacturer.
They've since moved on. Theygot acquired stunning account of
ours anymore. This was a shoemanufacturer and they had kind of
the same situation. A verylarge company, they did about 50
(21:00):
million a year and had accountall of their customers that they
sold shoes to. All of theircredit card information in a three
ring binder written down. Andthey had a person in the office every
month or every day for theiraccounts. Receivable that was hand
keying the cards into aterminal in their office with all
(21:22):
of these cards on file. Theyhad about three large three ring
biters of card data from alltheir customers.
That's insane in today's world.
An absolute nightmare, themhand keying the cards. It was a non
cost issue, There was a dataentry issue there, error issues there.
And so when we, we went in andwe helped them create customer profiles
(21:44):
for each one of thosecustomers, put all their car data
in, tokenize it, encryptedthose cards, they were able to shred
all those paperwork and nowevery time they had a customer that
wanted to pay, they just putin the amount and pay. Eventually
they went to a ERP system. Ican't remember what they had, but
we were able to integrate itinto our payment platform to where
(22:06):
the invoice automaticallyingested into their system and it
would automatically processthe card. But we have this concept
that we say here we talk aboutsoft money and hard money. The hard
money is go in, we save you onsome fees. Maybe you're overpaying
the traditional thing that yousee with payments. But the soft money
is what you alluded to earlierabout someone spending 20, 30, 40,
(22:29):
50 hours a month on dataentry, that we're able to automate
that process. And now thatbusiness owner can put that employee,
if they're on a salary, usethem and be more efficient putting
them somewhere else ratherthan them doing a data entry job.
So this is a very commonthing. You would think that in the
21st century more companiesare automated with so much technology
(22:50):
out there, but it's just notthe case. This is why you see so
many fintech companies openingup every single week. There's a new
company solution for someproblem because there's so much inefficiencies
out there, especially in themiddle market space. You got small
businesses, mom and pop shopsdoing their thing. You know, enterprise
has done it well. They gottheir systems in place and their
(23:12):
processes in place. But themiddle market are those companies
are trying to be like BigBrother. A lot of people are not
helping those middle marketand we feel like we can help that
middle market, especially mein the payment space later in my
career.
That's your market. Really?
Yeah.
And your thing that you'redoing is really important. You're
(23:33):
minimizing if not eliminatingtheir liability for sure. If you
stop and think about havingthree ring binders of credit cards,
you're talking about a majorproblem. If the federales know about
that, that's big Problems.
And the thing is, some peoplejust don't know any better or their
incumbent processor at thetime or payment provider just didn't
(23:56):
know any better. Or that's howthey did it. There's a lot of bad
actors in our space. Theclient is only going to know what
they know. It takes a specialperson to come in a bit more polished
or savviness. Focus on thosetypes of clients where we can share
stories or experiences thatsome of our other clients have seen
or done. They're like, ohyeah, I like that, or oh yeah, I
(24:17):
want to do the same thing.We're able to share. We were talking
off air about how your clientsbecame a salesforce for you and your
clients were referring you toother business. That's what happens
with us, Right.
Once you build thatrelationship and solve the problems,
they become super fans andthey're more than happy to promote
you. You can't buy that kindof PR ads like Google, Facebook,
(24:41):
LinkedIn ads can't compare toa super fan promoting you because
now it's more of anintroduction. It's not even a referral.
Introductions are everything.
Yeah, that's how we work. Wework on introductions in the payment
space, especially in the B2Bspace, specifically middle market
or even enterprise. You're notwalking off the street and opening
(25:02):
a door and talking to theowner. The decision maker is more
likely not in the office ornot able to talk to. You have to
get introduced by their cfo,accounting department or IT guy.
It's going to be anotherbusiness owner, his buddy, right?
And they're talking aboutfinancial stuff and he says, oh man,
you got to reach out to mybuddy Perrin. He hooked me up and
(25:23):
here's what he did. He's goingto be telling them all the transformation
that you did for theircompany. That's a super fan selling
on your behalf. Because John,the other guy is going to pick up
the phone, says, hey, Perrin,Charlie said I needed to talk to
you and that's it, it's done.
You're in a lot of times. Whathappens too is some of these CFOs
of these companies or thesecontrollers move around so you'll
(25:46):
have a relationship with them,you'll do really solid with them
at the company that theyrepresent at that time. And they
move on to another company andthe first thing they see is, oh,
we have some problem with ourpayments piece. Or I got a guy, a
guy called that we used beforeand that happens a lot with us as
well.
Sure. Share some tips, Perrin,on what an SMB should look for to
(26:10):
identify an ideal paymentprocessing partner.
It's kind of a tough questionto answer because there's so many
nuances there.
But I would say summary inthree bullet points.
Any company that's really justfocused on price, that's typically
not a client we want to engagewith because they only care about
the best costs. They're notreally looking at the value we're
(26:32):
bringing. And if you sell onprice, you'll lose on price. The
same thing goes for the guyselling it. The guy that just coming
in and say, I can save you abunch of money and that's his only
way of selling. We gotta beleery of those kinds of people. There's
only so much money you cansave. If I go into a business and
they were getting overchargedand I'm able to save them some money
because they were gettingovercharged and I save them $1,000
(26:54):
a month, let's say the nextguy comes in and said, I can save
you $2,000 a month as well,when I just saved you a thousand
and your fees are only fifteenhundred dollars a month. So I would
say for a business owner, findsomebody who's going to consult you.
What I say a lot of times iswhen you're a business owner, especially
(27:14):
an up and coming businessowner, you take advice from a lot
of people. Maybe you're anaccountant, maybe a lawyer, maybe
a business coach, some type ofprofessional that's helping you with
your business. If you're afranchisee or talking to the franchisor,
that's going to help you and70, 80, 90, 100% of your income is
coming from a digital payment.You should probably take advice from
(27:37):
a payment professional likeus, not a sales guy or gal that's
just selling you something.Someone that's going to hold your
hand and consult you and walkyou down the potential pitfalls of
taking a digital payment. Inyour business, it's not just about
who gives the best price. It'sabout the best technology, the best
solutions, the best paymentflow for your business. There's not
(27:59):
a one size fits all in thisindustry as much as everyone thinks
that. Let me sell this persona point of sale or a counting service,
or put a terminal on theircounter and they're going to work.
It's not that easy anymore.There's too many nuances here. So
I would say work with someonethat's a payments professional that
has the ability to consult youin your business. Taking a digital
(28:19):
payment as opposed to just asales guy who knocked at your door
to say, hey, I can save yousome money.
Very good point. And I'm goingto emphasize the following, and that
is the fact that, you know,what you did with that gymnasium
wasn't about saving the moneyon the processing aspect of it. It
was really about transformingtheir business and their efficiency
(28:42):
of their business.
So when you're playing at that level.
For anybody that's asalesperson, this is a sales tip
as well. You look at strategyand helping the business achieve
their objectives, because whatyou're providing is just a tool.
At the end of the day, it's atool. But if you focus on that strategy,
(29:03):
the cost of the tool becomesminimized. Because now you're achieving
business goals, you transformthat business, you put money back
into their pocket. From aproductivity standpoint, everything
else, they're not going toworry about a quarter percent here
or there, because that's notthe conversation. The conversation
is you put money back in theirpockets through productivity. More
(29:25):
efficiency, better customerengagement with their customers.
Complete game changer.
Absolutely. We usually try tomake price tertiary to the conversation.
When we walk into a choir andwe're engaged with the client, the
first question we ask is, walkus through your payment flow. How
are you currently processingpayment? What does that look like?
(29:45):
Show us a demo on how you'retaking a payment, how you're receiving
a payment. If you had a magiclamp and a genie and you were able
to have three wishes, whatwould those three wishes be? What
keeps you up at night? Whatare the things that you improve?
We can dig into those kinds ofthings. We can really dig into some
of the efficiencies. Price isthe easiest part of our job. If there's
money to save, we're going tosave it. Right? But if we're just
(30:07):
coming in to save you money,and I can save you a ton of money,
but there's no way for us tointegrate into your system or the
process is going to be.
Doesn't matter.
Doesn't matter. You know, amillion dollars a year, but it takes
you three times as long toprocess a payment that's not worth
it to some.
The other thing is now you'realso having the conversation about
business growth.
Correct?
Because so now you've changedthe direction of the conversation
(30:31):
to where do they seethemselves in two, three years? That
was one of my sales styleswhen I was selling to the manufacturing
spaces. My software. Mymanufacturing software. There's three
or four other platforms thatdo the same stuff. But I changed
the conversation not about thetechnology, but about the business,
it was a business conversationand that's what you're doing as well.
PayNation is a platform, butwe're helping you from a business
(30:53):
perspective.
Absolutely. You know, we haveour own technology too, so we're
able to leverage techsometimes that I have a changes to
this scenario, but everybody'sgot tech, everybody's got a partner
that has good tech. You canhave the greatest tech in the world,
but the person selling itdoesn't know how to articulate to
that customer to get them tounderstand the value. And that's
(31:15):
kind of why we like middlemarket business, because a lot of
those folks are usually verysavvy business owners that know what
needs to be done. Not to saythe small businesses aren't savvy,
but they're a little bit morepolished. A lot of times they're
less focused on cost and moreabout efficiency. Because at the
end of the day, we all knowthat when you get to the middle market
(31:36):
or enterprise level, money'sbeing made and money is being spent.
But the inefficiencies iswhat's draining profit.
Margin to net income.
Absolutely. If we can improveefficiency, the savings is going
to come. Exactly, exactly.
Well, as we come to the endhere, Perryn, how can people find
you PayNation us?
We're on YouTube, Twitter,Facebook, LinkedIn. If you go to
(32:01):
our Pay Nation page onLinkedIn, we post a lot of articles,
newsletters. You can subscribeto our newsletter. We put out something
twice a month. A lot of goodinformation about B2B and the trends
in B2B. If you type the PayNation into Google come up. We're
very prominent in all spaces and.
I'm sure you offer a freeconsultation assessment of the organization.
(32:21):
Right.
The client is interested inengaging our services. We typically
get on a discovery recall,find out what their needs and wants
are, what their North Star is,and then try to get close to that
North Star as possible.Sometimes we don't have a direct
solution, but we can find aworkaround. Sometimes the solution
that they currently have isbetter than what we can offer. And
we tell the client, stay whereyou're at, things change, give us
(32:44):
a call. We don't have aproblem walking away from business
if current solution is betterthan what we have to offer at that
time.
And that's an important salestip because you just created a super
fan out of that customer forbeing authentic. Even though your
solution is not viable forthem, they may know somebody else
that could utilize yourservices and they're going to recommend
(33:06):
your services because of theway you handled it. But I had that
happen to me many times whereI'd say, I don't have the right solution.
You should really look at thatproduct for what you're specifically
looking at. And they werelike, wow. And I would get a referral
from them or an introductionto somebody else two, three, four
months down the road.
Absolutely. I can't agree more.
(33:27):
So we'll make sure all that'sin the show, notes Perryn. And it's
been a great conversation,great insights for our listeners,
and we could go on this for acouple hours, I'm sure.
Yeah, we could probably do awhole bunch of shows like this.
So we'll definitely lookforward to having you on the show
and continue the conversation.
Sounds good.
Thanks for your time.
Thanks for having me.
(33:50):
Hey superfans. SuperstarFreddie D. Here. Before we wrap,
here's your three A playbookpower move to attract ideal clients,
turn them into advocates andaccelerate your business success.
Here's the top insight fromtoday's episode. You don't win in
business by saving pennies.You win by eliminating inefficiencies
(34:11):
that bleed dollars and burypotential. So here's your business
growth action step. Audit yourcurrent payment process and identify
one manual outdated step youcan automate this week to free up
time and boost profitability.If today's conversation sparked an
idea for you or you know of afellow business leader who could
(34:32):
benefit, share it with themand grab the full breakdown in the
show notes. Let's acceleratetogether and start creating business
superfans who champion your brand.
Today on the Business heysuper fans.
Superstar Freddie D. Here inthis episode 103, we're joined by
Perryn Haltrop, CEO andfounder of Pay Nation, a forward
thinking fintech company basedin Southern California. Under Perryn's
leadership, Pay Nation istransforming how B2B companies handle
payments, offering customizedomnichannel solutions that make payment
(02:02):
acceptance simpler, moresecure and highly scalable. With
a sharp focus on industrieslike manufacturing, distribution,
e Commerce and SaaS, Perry andhis team are solving real world challenges.
Not only reducing credit cardfees with interchange optimization
and helping businessesintegrate payments seamlessly while
(02:24):
boosting security, but also inmany instances, increasing throughput
and driving overallprofitability. Get ready for an insightful
conversation on innovation,growth and a future of payments.
Welcome, Perryn to theBusiness Superfans podcast.
Hey, thanks for having me.This is awesome.
(02:46):
Yeah, we're really excitedabout you. It's an important topic
of payment systems. There's alot of them out there and I'm excited
to dive deep into that so thatour listeners can understand the
benefits of the services youprovide compared to some of the other
platforms.
Yeah, there's a lot ofcompanies out there in the payment
space. We specifically focuson B2B companies that are selling
(03:07):
goods and services to otherbusinesses. A lot of manufacturer,
distributor, wholesale was alittle bit of a more sophisticated
sale. It's not just saying,let me walk in, grab your statement,
lower your price. A lot ofsolution. Selling is what we do.
Sure. So per, let's go back tothe backstory. What were we doing
(03:27):
before Pay Nation came about?I mean, there's a whole story of
how you ended up getting to berunning Pay Nation.
Well, it's an interestingstory. Before I got in the payment
space, I was in the comedybusiness managing some developmental
act comedians booking for thecasino here in California. Was involved
(03:47):
in comedy as a hooker, as amanager. Wasn't making any money.
It was a fun gig trying tohelp some guys that I thought were
really good and funny make alittle bit of money in comedy, but
not a ton. At a friend whoworked at a payments company and
hey, you're really good atsales. I had several sales jobs before
and all my own businesses wasan entrepreneurial type of sale or
company. He's like, hey, youcan build up a residual and make
(04:10):
some money. And I was like,that's what I need. I wanted to make
some money while I was workingthe Tommy gig. I needed a little
bit of income to supplement myincome and so I got involved in it.
I loved it. I was like, man,this is a great business. You kind
of work at your own leisure.When I first started in the payments
industry, everyone was workingrestaurants and hospitality and that
(04:31):
was kind of the low hangingfruit. And so I did that for the
first year. My background wasin the manufacturing space before
I was doing comedy. I hadseveral patents and worked with a
lot of manufacturers anddistributors. That was my network.
My first year in payments, Ineed to get more into the B2B space
where a lot of people starteddoing that, moved to another company,
(04:53):
did very well. Still sales,commission type of role. During the
pandemic in 2020, everybodywas very scared and uncertain and
I kind of wasn't. I was reallyfocused and I was like, hey, this
is a perfect time for me tostart a company. So we started our
company, Pay Nation in June of2020 in the middle of the pandemic.
(05:14):
We had honking stink growth.Everybody wanted a digital payment
more. People were leery abouttaking cash and check and other kinds
of form of pay. And we wereright in the heart of all of that.
I had a really good book ofbusiness prior to starting my company,
so it wasn't like I had tostart from scratch. By the time I
started PayNation, I had areally large book where I could have
(05:35):
been okay and relax, butthat's just not how I'm wired. So
2020 started PayNation andwe're growing exponentially every
year. That's kind of the longand short of it. I was in the comedy
industry before I didpayments. So completely 180 degree
change there.
What a great story. But youknow, comedy and humor is very important
in sales because, you know, Iwant to emphasize that because that
(05:59):
was one of my successes insales, getting people to laugh.
Absolutely.
It loosens, it takes thestress out and it's a huge icebreaker.
I can't agree more. I had thisconversation with a buddy of mine
when I first got into more ofa sales role and working with larger
companies. I have always beensomewhat of an extrovert. I'm very
(06:20):
social, but when I go intonetworking meetings, I didn't really
know how to work a room. Maybe2010, I wasn't really that good at
it. It was kind of awkward.I'm not really good with small talk.
I was really, really kind ofawkward. People see me now and like,
that's true because I'm veryoutgoing. But the comedy, being around
comedians and being around alot of guys that are really funny
(06:41):
off the cuff, it reallyallowed me to learn one liner, say
little zingers Say somethingfunny. The timing. I notice in networking
meetings, conference rooms orwhatever, finding that one time to
say something slick, where youget everybody loosen up. It just
changes the whole dynamic ofthe meeting. I can't agree with you
more, Freddie. It's absolutelyhelps. Even in meetings, serious
(07:05):
meetings, where there's a lotof money on the line, there's a lot
of things going on andeverybody's super tense. You got
a bunch of accountants andCFOs in the room and bean counters.
You need that ability. Lightenup the room.
Right.
Be able to do that is help in sales.
Yeah, I can relate because Iused to be an engineer. I happen
to progress to where I'm aleft brain, right brain guy. Now
(07:25):
you remind me of going tonetworking groups. I used to go,
and people say, you need to goto a networking group. When I got
out of the software business,I'm going, why do I want to go to
a networking group? What am Igoing to do there? Who am I going
to meet? Because I was used toit. The manufacturing space tool.
And I have it burned into mybrain is 35, 44. I looked up, those
are the companies. That's thepresident, vice president of engineering,
(07:46):
vice president ofmanufacturing. That was my market.
Or I would go to theassociation, which was the same people
in the market going to anetworking group. I'd be like, I
was the guy that bought thedrink, sat in a corner and go, okay,
now what do I do?
I was kind of the same way.You never know who anyone knows.
For me, talking about comedy alittle bit more. Before I was involved
(08:07):
in the comedy business, I hada very low tolerance for small talk.
I was able to get to thepoint. I noticed that. But, you know,
in the comedy world or even inthe entertainment world, you never
really know who anyone knows.So you kind of have to be a little
bit more tolerant to whatpeople tell you because you don't
know who anyone knows. Andthat really helped me in the networking
(08:27):
world because I was reallymore focused on really listening
to what a person, what theydo. I used to have this. I read this
book about body language andwhen you're talking to people, you
know, not have your handcrossed or your hands in your pocket.
You got to kind of show themyour heart and be interested. I noticed
that I would always be annoyedwhen I would talk to certain people.
(08:49):
They would ask me a questionand I could tell they weren't engaged.
Like, why'd you ask me thatquestion if you don't care my answer?
But I Noticed I was that sameguy doing that.
Right.
So I changed that and Istarted really caring about what
people are talking about,really care, listening to what their
business is, what theirindustry is, what their discipline
is, and really care. And whenI started to really care about what
(09:11):
people do, networking becameso easy for me.
Game changer.
Yeah.
So total game changer.
Total game changer.
So let's go back to Pay Nationhere and talk about how do you guys
compare? And I'm going to justthrow some names out there like square,
stripe, PayPal.
I mean, those are what most people.
Are familiar with, especiallysmall SMBs, which is our target market
(09:33):
for this podcast show. So whatdifferentiates Pay Nation from those
platforms?
So Those platforms, Square,PayingPal, Stripe, those companies
are what's called paymentfacilitators, a kind of software
wrapped around the ability totake payment. Stripe has done a really
good job with the integration.They have a really good tech stack.
(09:55):
Their stuff is more related toE commerce business and those kinds
of things. A lot of ISVs, alot of fintech companies that have
software want to integratepayments really quick. There's a
need for that. We do some ofthat. Our focus is more middle market,
lower middle market, B2Bcompanies. A lot of manufacturers,
distributors, wholesalers,companies that are using some type
of accounting software or ERPsoftware where they want to integrate
(10:19):
accounts receivable withintheir software natively. A lot of
our conversation is reallyjust explaining to them the time
value of money financing yourown receivables in a traditional
term environment. Net 30 netsick fee. Sometimes doing a payment
account receivable with acredit card is a lot cheaper and
gets paid quicker. So a lot ofwhat we do is really focusing on
(10:41):
those companies that are doingbusiness with other companies. The
Stripes and paypals of theworld are more focused on smaller
companies, more like mom andpops. I'm not saying they don't have
bigger companies, of coursethey do. But they're really focused,
like Square. I think thenumber is like 90% of their customers
or businesses doing like 10grand or less in volume per month
(11:02):
or per year. They're focusedon more smaller companies. A lot
of what we're focusing on aremiddle market companies that want
to be like Big BrotherEnterprise, a little bit more coachable.
They're more open to thingsthat we're able to bring to the table
and consult with. Maybethey're graduating from a Quickbook
and moving into something morehigh power like NetSuite or SAP.
(11:24):
We're going to be in themiddle of that to make sure we're
connecting with the rightpartner, we're going to connect all
of the payments piecenatively, make a more seamless environment.
Rather than being a paymentprocessor, we're more of an ADP automation
company. We're helping withthe automation of getting payments,
receiving or paying paymentsmore frictionless, if that makes
(11:45):
any sense.
Oh totally. It totally does.Because for example, I was working
with a interpreting andtranslation company dealing with
government agencies. So theywere using QuickBooks but trying
to get payments online wasvery difficult. The company ended
up getting lots of checks.QuickBooks is limited and then you
have the fee and could onlyuse QuickBooks payment system. So
(12:08):
what you guys are doing, fromwhat I understand, you're teaming
up with a company, changingout their accounting platform to
a better one that enables morecustomers pay through the payment
platform versus mailing out anold fashioned check.
Yeah, you know, our goal is toget people off a check or at least
at minimum digitizing thatprocess. There's still people that
(12:29):
want to pay with check, butrather than waiting for the proverbial
check in the mail, we candigitize it. Do you know an E check
online or ACH online? We havea lot of clients that use, but we
have an integration forQuickBooks that allows you to automate
the QuickBooks invoicing andstill be able to use a third party
(12:50):
service like us. So you're notmarried to the service that books
users. So there's a myriad ofdifferent ways. What I always say
in the B2B space, especiallyin the payments world, but there's
no magic bullet. There'salways some kind of nuance. Everybody
has a different pain point,different issue that they have. Our
goal is to find out what theirpayment flow is, find out what the
(13:10):
North Star for them and try toget closer to getting to that North
Star for that business andjust make them efficient. I had a
client a few years ago thatwas still accepting checks. They
found out later that thepostman was on the tape and they
had a $500,000 check deliveredto their office. It never got there.
I don't know if the postmangave it to somebody or whatever,
(13:32):
but the criminals were able tocash it and get that money and the
company never was able torecoup that 500 grand. This happens
all the time, $26 billion incheck fraud every year. So there's
just no reason to check. Westill have clients that write credit
card numbers on a piece ofpaper. Everything is digital now.
And that's what we try toreally Speak to our clients. I know
(13:52):
you have a way of doing thingsthat you're used to, but let's show
you how to do it in the 21stcentury. Safer, probably cheaper,
more secure, and get paid quicker.
When, when to go back to thefraud with the company I worked with,
it was clever. They hadrequested. It was with the interpreting
and translation company. Theyhad requested a translation project
(14:13):
and they said, okay, we'llsend out a cashier's check. That's
more than the amount that youquoted. But we're going to have a
second project coming tofollow up the first project. So that
should cancel out the overageof the cashier's check. I was running
the company for a bit and Ididn't know any of this was being
handled. You delegate andpeople take care of it. All of a
(14:35):
sudden, what happened? Thefraud flew a flag with my accounting
guy. He came to talk to me. Hesays, we did the project and now
they're canceling and wedelivered it and they're asking for
a refund. And we. Fortunatelywe didn't do a refund, but the cashier's
check bounced because it wasfraudulent. And so we were out the
(14:58):
money because we had to paythe translators to do the work. And
so it was. We lost only about750 bucks. It wasn't disastrous,
but it was a clever scam. Andthat's where your system comes in,
because that can't happen.
No, that's one thing aboutpayments. This isn't simply credit
cards. If the money's notthere, it's not going to get approved,
(15:19):
Right? So if you run a cardfor, let's say $100,000 and it's
approved, you get anauthorization number, you know that
money is as good as yours. Nowthere's still obviously risk and
chargebacks and it could havebeen a fraudulent car. There's kind
of a myriad of things there,but there are things that put in
place and certain fraud toolsin place that could mitigate a lot
of that stuff. So fraud andchargebacks are a very big problem
(15:42):
in our industry, specificallyin the B2B space. Majority of the
clients that our clients workwith are reoccurring customers. You're
not dealing with the consumerwhere it's one offs. You're dealing
with people that are buyingstuff from you on a regular basis.
So you pretty much know allthe clients they paying you. The
biggest hurdle that we comeacross is everybody talks about the
(16:04):
fees, everybody wants to save,not to pay what they need to pay.
But moving money Isn't free.Trying to get money, one account
to another, not free. Even inthe crypto world, moving money to
another wallet, sometimes afee. People need to understand that
moving money isn't free if thecustomer knows the default method
of payment for their clientsis a digital payment, credit card
(16:26):
or achievement. You know, 70,80, 90. Sometimes a percent of your
income is coming from adigital payment. Factor in the cost
of taking that payment likeanything else, right? Your insurance,
your employees, any of thestuff that is their cost of doing
business. Moving money shouldbe a cost of doing business like
anything else, right?
So Perryn share a story of howPay Nation worked with a client who's
(16:50):
having payment challenges. Andyou guys stepped in and transformed
their whole operation withwhat you guys do. That in turn led
them to becoming a super fanof Pay Nation and become your advocate,
attracting you more business.
Yeah, I have lots of storieslike that. One particular that always
comes to mind and a story Itell quite a bit. We went into a.
(17:12):
This is actually not a B2Bclient, but they were a pretty large
gymnasium that had a bunch ofmemberships for a young gymnast and
all kinds of different eventsthat they would do at their event.
Really good business. Theowner was great. And every single
month they had I think sevenor 800 members. Every single month
(17:34):
they had somebody in theoffice going in, having the cards
on file or on a piece of paperand they would go in and hand key
the card number for thecustomer every month a process of
payment for that month.Because every month it was a different
amount, wasn't always the sameamount. So there wasn't a way to
do.
It on a systematized.
Right. And so we were able togo in and tokenize a lot of these
(17:58):
cars, put all the information,create profile for each customer
and really help it. I thinkthat number was something like 10
hours a month or some crazynumber. 20 hours a month to do this.
And we were able to do itwhere it took them 10 minutes every
month. Eventually weimplemented some software for them
and it made it a littleeasier. But they were able to alleviate
(18:20):
so much extra time from allthis data entry. The gals that were
working the office werebasically hired to do other stuff,
but they were resulted to dataentry people because of this. It
was a very big problem andalleviated it. They became a super
fan. We got tons of businessfrom them. We got so much referrals
from a customer. This is acustomer of ours to this day. We've
(18:44):
had this client for eightyears now. We have lots of Stories
like that, where people arejust doing things the way they've
been doing it for years, noone really ever came in there and
say there's a better or easierway to do it. You know, the biggest
thing for us as humans is wedon't like change.
And that's hardest thing.
Yeah, this thing. And so if wecome in and we can show them the
change is very seamless. It'snot really going to change much.
(19:07):
It's going to make your lifeeasier a lot of times there's some
pretty good adoption there. Weget the pushback from time to time.
But overall, eventually whenthey do it, they say go, this is
much better. So it's alwayshindsight 2020 in that regard.
Sure. And the ROI that you puton that investment. Yeah, it took
you time to get that set upfor that gymnasium. However they're
(19:30):
spending, let's just keep themath simple. Let's just say 20 hours
because they're not sittingthere every minute doing so. 20 hours
over several days. The ROI onthat is dramatic because now those
people can be productive doingsomething else. Attracting more members
to the gymnasium, et cetera,versus spending 20 hours sitting
(19:51):
in data entry.
Yeah. Not to mention humanerror. You got people typing in stuff
wrong, the wrong amounts, thewrong card, you get declines. Whatever
the situation is, you'reassuming that all these cards that
were entered was entered.Right the first time.
Well, yeah. And then theproblem would be in the recipient.
If the car's been declinedtwo, three times because they made
a mistake, the customer isgetting an alert. They're going,
(20:14):
what the heck is going on withthis place? And so that's creating
a negative. So if you look atthe whole gamut of everything, you
guys really transformed thatwhole operation.
Yeah, we did. And the owner tothis day always sings our praises.
Was on the phone with hermaybe a couple months ago, just checking
in on her. She's like, heyman, how you doing? Just amazing.
(20:37):
It's been years and years andshe's still thankful. So, you know,
we have lots of stories likethat. Another one, it always feels
good. We had another account,a pretty large shoe manufacturer.
They've since moved on. Theygot acquired stunning account of
ours anymore. This was a shoemanufacturer and they had kind of
the same situation. A verylarge company, they did about 50
(21:00):
million a year and had accountall of their customers that they
sold shoes to. All of theircredit card information in a three
ring binder written down. Andthey had a person in the office every
month or every day for theiraccounts. Receivable that was hand
keying the cards into aterminal in their office with all
(21:22):
of these cards on file. Theyhad about three large three ring
biters of card data from alltheir customers.
That's insane in today's world.
An absolute nightmare, themhand keying the cards. It was a non
cost issue, There was a dataentry issue there, error issues there.
And so when we, we went in andwe helped them create customer profiles
(21:44):
for each one of thosecustomers, put all their car data
in, tokenize it, encryptedthose cards, they were able to shred
all those paperwork and nowevery time they had a customer that
wanted to pay, they just putin the amount and pay. Eventually
they went to a ERP system. Ican't remember what they had, but
we were able to integrate itinto our payment platform to where
(22:06):
the invoice automaticallyingested into their system and it
would automatically processthe card. But we have this concept
that we say here we talk aboutsoft money and hard money. The hard
money is go in, we save you onsome fees. Maybe you're overpaying
the traditional thing that yousee with payments. But the soft money
is what you alluded to earlierabout someone spending 20, 30, 40,
(22:29):
50 hours a month on dataentry, that we're able to automate
that process. And now thatbusiness owner can put that employee,
if they're on a salary, usethem and be more efficient putting
them somewhere else ratherthan them doing a data entry job.
So this is a very commonthing. You would think that in the
21st century more companiesare automated with so much technology
(22:50):
out there, but it's just notthe case. This is why you see so
many fintech companies openingup every single week. There's a new
company solution for someproblem because there's so much inefficiencies
out there, especially in themiddle market space. You got small
businesses, mom and pop shopsdoing their thing. You know, enterprise
has done it well. They gottheir systems in place and their
(23:12):
processes in place. But themiddle market are those companies
are trying to be like BigBrother. A lot of people are not
helping those middle marketand we feel like we can help that
middle market, especially mein the payment space later in my
career.
That's your market. Really?
Yeah.
And your thing that you'redoing is really important. You're
(23:33):
minimizing if not eliminatingtheir liability for sure. If you
stop and think about havingthree ring binders of credit cards,
you're talking about a majorproblem. If the federales know about
that, that's big Problems.
And the thing is, some peoplejust don't know any better or their
incumbent processor at thetime or payment provider just didn't
(23:56):
know any better. Or that's howthey did it. There's a lot of bad
actors in our space. Theclient is only going to know what
they know. It takes a specialperson to come in a bit more polished
or savviness. Focus on thosetypes of clients where we can share
stories or experiences thatsome of our other clients have seen
or done. They're like, ohyeah, I like that, or oh yeah, I
(24:17):
want to do the same thing.We're able to share. We were talking
off air about how your clientsbecame a salesforce for you and your
clients were referring you toother business. That's what happens
with us, Right.
Once you build thatrelationship and solve the problems,
they become super fans andthey're more than happy to promote
you. You can't buy that kindof PR ads like Google, Facebook,
(24:41):
LinkedIn ads can't compare toa super fan promoting you because
now it's more of anintroduction. It's not even a referral.
Introductions are everything.
Yeah, that's how we work. Wework on introductions in the payment
space, especially in the B2Bspace, specifically middle market
or even enterprise. You're notwalking off the street and opening
(25:02):
a door and talking to theowner. The decision maker is more
likely not in the office ornot able to talk to. You have to
get introduced by their cfo,accounting department or IT guy.
It's going to be anotherbusiness owner, his buddy, right?
And they're talking aboutfinancial stuff and he says, oh man,
you got to reach out to mybuddy Perrin. He hooked me up and
(25:23):
here's what he did. He's goingto be telling them all the transformation
that you did for theircompany. That's a super fan selling
on your behalf. Because John,the other guy is going to pick up
the phone, says, hey, Perrin,Charlie said I needed to talk to
you and that's it, it's done.
You're in a lot of times. Whathappens too is some of these CFOs
of these companies or thesecontrollers move around so you'll
(25:46):
have a relationship with them,you'll do really solid with them
at the company that theyrepresent at that time. And they
move on to another company andthe first thing they see is, oh,
we have some problem with ourpayments piece. Or I got a guy, a
guy called that we used beforeand that happens a lot with us as
well.
Sure. Share some tips, Perrin,on what an SMB should look for to
(26:10):
identify an ideal paymentprocessing partner.
It's kind of a tough questionto answer because there's so many
nuances there.
But I would say summary inthree bullet points.
Any company that's really justfocused on price, that's typically
not a client we want to engagewith because they only care about
the best costs. They're notreally looking at the value we're
(26:32):
bringing. And if you sell onprice, you'll lose on price. The
same thing goes for the guyselling it. The guy that just coming
in and say, I can save you abunch of money and that's his only
way of selling. We gotta beleery of those kinds of people. There's
only so much money you cansave. If I go into a business and
they were getting overchargedand I'm able to save them some money
because they were gettingovercharged and I save them $1,000
(26:54):
a month, let's say the nextguy comes in and said, I can save
you $2,000 a month as well,when I just saved you a thousand
and your fees are only fifteenhundred dollars a month. So I would
say for a business owner, findsomebody who's going to consult you.
What I say a lot of times iswhen you're a business owner, especially
(27:14):
an up and coming businessowner, you take advice from a lot
of people. Maybe you're anaccountant, maybe a lawyer, maybe
a business coach, some type ofprofessional that's helping you with
your business. If you're afranchisee or talking to the franchisor,
that's going to help you and70, 80, 90, 100% of your income is
coming from a digital payment.You should probably take advice from
(27:37):
a payment professional likeus, not a sales guy or gal that's
just selling you something.Someone that's going to hold your
hand and consult you and walkyou down the potential pitfalls of
taking a digital payment. Inyour business, it's not just about
who gives the best price. It'sabout the best technology, the best
solutions, the best paymentflow for your business. There's not
(27:59):
a one size fits all in thisindustry as much as everyone thinks
that. Let me sell this persona point of sale or a counting service,
or put a terminal on theircounter and they're going to work.
It's not that easy anymore.There's too many nuances here. So
I would say work with someonethat's a payments professional that
has the ability to consult youin your business. Taking a digital
(28:19):
payment as opposed to just asales guy who knocked at your door
to say, hey, I can save yousome money.
Very good point. And I'm goingto emphasize the following, and that
is the fact that, you know,what you did with that gymnasium
wasn't about saving the moneyon the processing aspect of it. It
was really about transformingtheir business and their efficiency
(28:42):
of their business.
So when you're playing at that level.
For anybody that's asalesperson, this is a sales tip
as well. You look at strategyand helping the business achieve
their objectives, because whatyou're providing is just a tool.
At the end of the day, it's atool. But if you focus on that strategy,
(29:03):
the cost of the tool becomesminimized. Because now you're achieving
business goals, you transformthat business, you put money back
into their pocket. From aproductivity standpoint, everything
else, they're not going toworry about a quarter percent here
or there, because that's notthe conversation. The conversation
is you put money back in theirpockets through productivity. More
(29:25):
efficiency, better customerengagement with their customers.
Complete game changer.
Absolutely. We usually try tomake price tertiary to the conversation.
When we walk into a choir andwe're engaged with the client, the
first question we ask is, walkus through your payment flow. How
are you currently processingpayment? What does that look like?
(29:45):
Show us a demo on how you'retaking a payment, how you're receiving
a payment. If you had a magiclamp and a genie and you were able
to have three wishes, whatwould those three wishes be? What
keeps you up at night? Whatare the things that you improve?
We can dig into those kinds ofthings. We can really dig into some
of the efficiencies. Price isthe easiest part of our job. If there's
money to save, we're going tosave it. Right? But if we're just
(30:07):
coming in to save you money,and I can save you a ton of money,
but there's no way for us tointegrate into your system or the
process is going to be.
Doesn't matter.
Doesn't matter. You know, amillion dollars a year, but it takes
you three times as long toprocess a payment that's not worth
it to some.
The other thing is now you'realso having the conversation about
business growth.
Correct?
Because so now you've changedthe direction of the conversation
(30:31):
to where do they seethemselves in two, three years? That
was one of my sales styleswhen I was selling to the manufacturing
spaces. My software. Mymanufacturing software. There's three
or four other platforms thatdo the same stuff. But I changed
the conversation not about thetechnology, but about the business,
it was a business conversationand that's what you're doing as well.
PayNation is a platform, butwe're helping you from a business
(30:53):
perspective.
Absolutely. You know, we haveour own technology too, so we're
able to leverage techsometimes that I have a changes to
this scenario, but everybody'sgot tech, everybody's got a partner
that has good tech. You canhave the greatest tech in the world,
but the person selling itdoesn't know how to articulate to
that customer to get them tounderstand the value. And that's
(31:15):
kind of why we like middlemarket business, because a lot of
those folks are usually verysavvy business owners that know what
needs to be done. Not to saythe small businesses aren't savvy,
but they're a little bit morepolished. A lot of times they're
less focused on cost and moreabout efficiency. Because at the
end of the day, we all knowthat when you get to the middle market
(31:36):
or enterprise level, money'sbeing made and money is being spent.
But the inefficiencies iswhat's draining profit.
Margin to net income.
Absolutely. If we can improveefficiency, the savings is going
to come. Exactly, exactly.
Well, as we come to the endhere, Perryn, how can people find
you PayNation us?
We're on YouTube, Twitter,Facebook, LinkedIn. If you go to
(32:01):
our Pay Nation page onLinkedIn, we post a lot of articles,
newsletters. You can subscribeto our newsletter. We put out something
twice a month. A lot of goodinformation about B2B and the trends
in B2B. If you type the PayNation into Google come up. We're
very prominent in all spaces and.
I'm sure you offer a freeconsultation assessment of the organization.
(32:21):
Right.
The client is interested inengaging our services. We typically
get on a discovery recall,find out what their needs and wants
are, what their North Star is,and then try to get close to that
North Star as possible.Sometimes we don't have a direct
solution, but we can find aworkaround. Sometimes the solution
that they currently have isbetter than what we can offer. And
we tell the client, stay whereyou're at, things change, give us
(32:44):
a call. We don't have aproblem walking away from business
if current solution is betterthan what we have to offer at that
time.
And that's an important salestip because you just created a super
fan out of that customer forbeing authentic. Even though your
solution is not viable forthem, they may know somebody else
that could utilize yourservices and they're going to recommend
(33:06):
your services because of theway you handled it. But I had that
happen to me many times whereI'd say, I don't have the right solution.
You should really look at thatproduct for what you're specifically
looking at. And they werelike, wow. And I would get a referral
from them or an introductionto somebody else two, three, four
months down the road.
Absolutely. I can't agree more.
(33:27):
So we'll make sure all that'sin the show, notes Perryn. And it's
been a great conversation,great insights for our listeners,
and we could go on this for acouple hours, I'm sure.
Yeah, we could probably do awhole bunch of shows like this.
So we'll definitely lookforward to having you on the show
and continue the conversation.
Sounds good.
Thanks for your time.
Thanks for having me.
(33:50):
Hey superfans. SuperstarFreddie D. Here. Before we wrap,
here's your three A playbookpower move to attract ideal clients,
turn them into advocates andaccelerate your business success.
Here's the top insight fromtoday's episode. You don't win in
business by saving pennies.You win by eliminating inefficiencies
(34:11):
that bleed dollars and burypotential. So here's your business
growth action step. Audit yourcurrent payment process and identify
one manual outdated step youcan automate this week to free up
time and boost profitability.If today's conversation sparked an
idea for you or you know of afellow business leader who could
(34:32):
benefit, share it with themand grab the full breakdown in the
show notes. Let's acceleratetogether and start creating business
superfans who champion your brand.
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