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There are many different ways you can accept payments from customers. The different payment options you offer can help increase the number of sales you make. Each payment option however comes at cost and it varies greatly between features, providers and whether you have a retail presence or only online.

1. Choices, Too Many Can Confuse

Too many choices can confuse users. This comes in to play far more in the on-line world. If a user has to spend even 5 seconds trying to look through a list of 30 payment options, then trying to figure out which one would be the most cost-effective for them, you are going to see a drop off in sales.

How many choices is the right amount. I would ideally say 2-4 choices. Any higher than this will cause

2. The Right Choices Improve Sales

Making things easy for consumers is the most obvious way to improve sales. Credit cards are a must for any store as they are the most common form of payment. Visa and MasterCard are the most commonly used, yet you may decide to offer AMEX (American Express). If your business deals with other businesses AMEX may be a great option as it does seem more common with business owners or high wealth individuals. However it costs more to process an AMEX card for your business. If your business is high volume, low-cost goods, AMEX generally is not a good option.

NFC and Wallets are also being released by companies such as Google and Square. They allow very easy and quick payments. The faster the payment, the less queues, the greater the shopper experience and more sales.

On-line you can also see many different options. Which ones would I choose?

A merchant account with a payment gateway and regrettably PayPal. While PayPal can be a nightmare for merchants, many people use it to buy. An interesting psychological point, is that some people purchasing with such systems as credits or PayPal don’t actually view the money as “real”. It isn’t money out of their bank account and hence people are a little more relaxed about it.

In Store Options

Many in store options exist and we are just witnessing some great changes. Listed below are some of the most commonly known methods.

Name	Description	Costs (updated 09/09/2012)
	A small credit card scanner is attached to an iPhone or Android. You can take credit cards moving around in store. US Only at this point in time. Square is also providing mobile payments. Pay via a mobile app, no credit card or contact required. [https://squareup.com/]	2.75% per transaction (all credit cards)
	Normally associated with online payments, PayPal now offers PayPal Anywhere. US Only at this point in time. This is similar to how Square operates. [https://www.paypal-promo.com/anywhere/desktop/]	2.9% per transaction and 30 cents. Decreases with higher volumes of transactions.
Merchant Account	Requires a POS terminal and a Pin Pad from a bank. This is your standard credit card and EFTPOS reader you would see in most stores today. You will need to speak with your bank to organise this.	For Visa and MasterCard it ranges from 0.9% – 1.5% for low volume merchants and normally a monthly fee of $20. For AMEX and Discover you can expect 1%-2% higher.
Wallet	Using NFC (near field communication) this technology is set to be the future of payments. Store your account details on your mobile phone and pay for things by tapping your mobile phone on a special NFC reader. Still in its early stages you will see more of this in the coming years. [http://www.google.com/wallet/]	Unknown at this time.

There are many other options that are appearing, particularly in the NFC space.

On-line Options

If you are an on-line only merchant or accept payments on-line here are some of the ways you can do this.

Name	Description	Costs (updated 09/09/2012)
Merchant Account with Payment Gateway	You must contact your bank for a merchant account. When you have one you will need a payment gateway. A payment gateway sits between your merchant account and your website. Your website will communicate with the Gateway for all it’s processing requirements. [https://www.authorize.net] [https://www.eway.com.au or https://www.eway.co.uk plus more]	Merchant Details: See above Gateways Costs: Normally $10-$30 per month and 10 cents to 50 cents per transaction. Gateways charge per transaction and not a percentage of sale.
	[Future]: Facebook payments I can say with a lot of confidence is eventually going to come. I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw a A Pay With Facebook button appearing on shopping carts. Currently there are Facebook Payments, but this is for Facebook applications at the moment.	N/A
	Stripe is essentially a better version of PayPal for processing credit cards. It is mainly for developers to integrate at this stage but it offers its service with no branding needed on your site. Meaning you can take credit cards without people leaving your site and no merchant account required. US Only at this point in time. I highly recommend it if you are developer. [https://www.stripe.com]	2.9% per transaction + 30 cents.
	On-line payment service for Credit Cards and Bank Transfers. I don’t think I need to explain this one further. Caution: While I use them, their support is the worst I have ever encountered. [https://www.paypal.com]	2.9% per transaction + 30 cents. Decreases with transaction volume.
Wallet (formerly Google Checkout)	You just provide a link and Google will perform the Checkout. A similar method to PayPal. [https://checkout.google.com]	2.9% + 30 cents. Decreases with transaction volume.

Hopefully this has provided some good insight into the realm of offline and on-line payment options. Feel free to ask any questions below or on Facebook.

5 Conversion Upgrades

1. Mobile Ready

2. The Aura Of Trust

• Security Symbols
• Return Policies / Money Back Guarantees
• Delivery Times / Shipping Details
• Contact Details (of a real person)
• Professional Site
• Correct spelling and grammar
• Clear and large product pictures
• Plenty of information and videos on the product
• And more

3. Easy To Buy And Ship

4. Bountiful Information

5. Social Proof

4 Ways To Increase The Shopping Cart Order

1. The Cross Sell

2. Free Sample

3. The Bonus Cross Sell

4. The Up Sell

Part 1 How To Pass The Conversion Tipping Point (Available)	Part 2 How To Determine Buyer Types To Increase Conversions (Available)	Part 3 5 Ways To Boost Your Conversion Rate And 4 Ways to Increase Order Size (Available)

<< Part 1 – How To Pass The Conversion Tipping Point

The Easy Sell

These people know you and/or have bought from you before and are happy with your product. They will come and purchase from your website regardless of how bad the sales person is (unless the sales person makes it really difficult for people to purchase, such as hiding buy buttons, not helping them find the product or not accepting certain types of payment).

The other easy sell is a desperate buyer. They are someone who needs a problem solved yesterday and is willing to buy the solution now. They require a bit more trust building but they are still a very easy sell for your online sales person.

But you may notice these people alone can not sustain your business, they are just aren’t enough of them. (Exception they could be enough desperate buyers if you have the right product).

More Work Required On The Sell

Next you will probably get a lot more people coming to your site looking for a solution to their problem but not in a desperate mood to buy. They may come from an advertisement or a recommendation. They want one of your products but are determining whether you will deliver and if it is the best value for money.

As you will see you will get more visitors from people coming from recommendations or advertising you have put out than people who have bought from you in the past. If you have a good online sales person you can convert these people

The Hard To Impossible Sell (but it’s an opportunity)

People who happen to stumble across your site or are just looking to see what you and your company are all about are among the hardest people to sell, as you can imagine. Not even the best online sales person would try. These people are most likely not even in the need of your product at this moment in time and it is unethical to sell something to someone who will not benefit from it.

But this IS an opportunity. Give them lots of useful information, show them you are trust worthy and you will leave them with a good impression of your company, making it easier for you to sell next time and for them to recommend people who might be in need of your product or service.

Unfortunately these people also tend to make up a lot of visitors to most shopping carts not making much money.

These people have such a high level conversion tipping point that you will most likely never convert but only hope to increase the trust for when they next visit your site.

Stay tuned for our other 2 parts in this series.

Part 1  How To Pass The Conversion Tipping Point	Part 2  How To Determine Buyer Types To Increase Conversions	Part 3  5 Ways To Boost Your Conversion Rate And 2 Ways to Increase Order Size

The point of every online store is to make sales. An obvious statement but one most people fail to grasp the full implications of. You don’t put up a site and then try to get as much traffic to it as possible to make more sales, that is missing the point.

Your website is a sales person and it needs to be trained as one, then you go to work on getting lots of traffic while your online sales person (your website) works to convert them to sales.

The benefit of the online sales person is you have to put a lot of work into them at the beginning but then they work for nothing for the rest of their lives. (quite a good deal if you ask me). Though they do require continuous training and upgrading as anyone in any job does.

But no one takes time to train them and as such they are really bad at making sales and costing you a fortune.

The Conversion Tipping Point

The amount of people who visit your website that convert into a sale depends on 2 factors and how they work together.

1. Existing Trust - Are they an existing customer, coming from a recommendation or coming from an advertisement. The trust they have before coming to your website will determine how much your online sales person must work to get the sale.
2. How Good Is Your Online Sales Person - Do they instill trust, give the customer the information they need to make the sale, provide easy checkout and shipping options?

I refer to the conversion tipping point as the minimum point at which all trust and sales factors will result in a sale. As described above it is a mixture of those 2 points.

For every visitor you get to your site, you need to get them to that conversion tipping point to generate a sale. Some visitors require a LOT of work and others a little.

A huge point you need to understand is that if you get it 30% right for a visitor, you don’t get 30% of the sale. If you get it 90% of the way for a customer you don’t get 90% of the sale. It’s 100% or nothing.

You may even get 100% of it right in certain sections of the sales funnel but then in 1 step, something small and insignificant to you raises concern in the visitor. Their trust disappears and the sale is gone. Just from 1 thing, even as small as a spelling or grammar mistake.

Every conversion upgrade you make to your site will result in getting closer to a customers conversion tipping point. You will encompass more and more customers as you progress in your online sales person training and make it easier on your online sales person the warmer the leads are, coming to your site.

Stay tuned for our other 3 parts in this series.

Part 1  How To Pass The Conversion Tipping Point	Part 2  How To Determine Buyer Types To Increase Conversions	Part 3  5 Ways To Boost Your Conversion Rate And 4 Ways to Increase Order Size

When you make a sale, you have done all the hard work of attracting a customer, convincing them that you are trustworthy enough to purchase from and to finally part with their payment details. It is common knowledge that it is easy to sell to someone who has already bought or decided to buy from you.

There are 3 ways you can maximise your sales in this process.

1. The Up Sell

If they are already checking out or have agreed to buy from you, recommend them some products that might also benefit them. If your shopping cart allows it, you should set this option up so that at check out it will recommend other products they can add to their cart. However make sure it opens new windows and never distracts a customer from completing an existing sale.

2. Free Sample

Someone has just ordered something through you and this is a perfect time to WOW your customers by adding a few free samples of your product. Not only will they love the fact they can try something out for free, you will be able to sell more of your other product lines.

This opens the door to so many possibilities as you could then focus on selling your easiest and cheapest to market and sell item. Then sell them on other products with brochures and free sample packs along with follow-up messages.

Some great shopping sites allow you to choose 2 free samples of any product at checkout.

3. The Bonus Up Sell

Slightly different from just the plain up sell, at the checkout you can say order another $20 and receive free shipping or X% off the sale. Just spending that little bit more and you could receive extra rewards is a great enticement.

Again they get to sample more of your products and hence increase your chances of repeat sales.

How Does This Increase Sales?

Selling physical products on the internet can be very hard unless you have previous recommendations or additional reasons to trust a company. When you get a sale it is the best opportunity to increase the value of the sale and repeat business. Getting existing customers to try other product ranges can increase long-term sales drastically. A tiny little difference at this part of the sale can lead to huge and ongoing sales in the long run.

Last year I had one of those “aha” moments. You know the ones where information you have been collecting for years all of a sudden joins together to form a larger picture.

After watching thousand dollar online courses from big names such as Frank Kern, Eben Pagen you see them experiencing a lot of success. While I am not going to divulge any information from these programs (as that wouldn’t be nice ) it did lead me to discover a pattern, something used in every successful sales system online or offline.

Out of all the sales books and courses I have read and devoured none covered an extremely simple pattern that must be understood for any sales system to succeed or maybe they didn’t tell me in a language I understood.

Have you ever been to a workshop where you get really excited, see the results others have and then go away and create sub par results. Well there are 2 reasons for that, 1 is you don’t take action, the other is what I am about to show you now.

This isn’t the secret to success you need a lot more than this, I used to only teach this to my mastermind group but decided to share since it would help many more people. Plus you actually need the information, techniques and more to run on top of this.

1. There Are 3 Core Parts To A Sales System

This diagram hardly shows all the flows of customers but it does show the absolute core basics.

1. The List

This can be a Facebook page, email list, a business directory. Anything with a list of potential or existing customers. (Obviously the quality and usefulness of lists varies with each business).

2. Their Trust

How much does your list trust you. If you are reading names out of directory they are cold and have little trust with you compared to the trust of your existing customers. How to build warmth and trust can vary depending on your sales methods such as tele-sales, online marketing or face to face networking.

3. Sell Value

As a business you have value to sell. You need to be able to communicate your value effectively and in the language of your potential customers. The greater your abilities, skills and techniques on this the greater your sales will be, assuming the previous 2 parts are running well.

2. The Weakest Link Is Equal To Your Maximum Sales Capacity

If you have no list then it doesn’t matter whether your trust building works and you’re a great sales person, you will make no sales.

If you don’t build any trust with your list it doesn’t matter whether you have a huge list or are great at selling, you won’t make many sales.

If you aren’t great at selling all you will have is a big list that loves you and no cash to keep your business running.

What ever the weakest section of your sales system is, that is the amount of sales you can achieve.

3. Working Together Simultaneously

Now here is the part where millions can be made in weeks or business can have sustained and constant growth. Have you ever seen a product launch. Where you hear there is something new and exciting coming, you see it advertised or talked about in many places you visit online or offline. Then out comes a more structured communication by the company giving the ability for pre-orders or even launch dates. Then comes the big sales and launch. This, done well, can effectively drive millions in sales in a matter of a week. (I will return to this in just a moment)

The other method is advertising and building your list. As you do that you also communicate with your list and build trust as that trust grows you show them potential value you have to offer and make sales.

The secret here is you need to run all 3 core blocks simultaneously and constantly. Back to the first section of creating millions in a matter of a week, that is when you run the system in overdrive for a short period of time. This can only be done irregularly as otherwise you will burn out your list.

Now you are not going to create millions unless you know how to build a list, how to build trust with your list and how to sell to your list.

I now hope you understand the basics of sales and can fit in what you learn in books and workshops into the 3 sections above and realize that all 3 need to work together at the same time to create a successful sales system.

Please do this

You may read this and go wow that’s great then never actually do anything with it. Right now create 3 columns on a piece of paper or on your computer and enter in each section what you do to achieve each part above.

If you need more ways to do something research it and implement it. Look at how each section interacts with the next and create a plan to run all of your techniques and systems in sync. Plan the sections of your sales system and work each one together in harmony.

Oh, and if you want to share this article I would appreciate that too.