Welcome to Issue #010 of The Outerchange, the weekly newsletter for payment processing agents who want more leverage and more leads.

The goal every Friday is simple: Give you angles, outside the box ideas, tools, and ammo that help you close more deals without adding more hours.

In today’s edition:

Let’s rock n roll.

⚠️ The Friction:

You're in a crowded niche or city. Every merchant you walk into has had 8 reps in the door this month. Your business card looks like everybody else's. Your posts in fb groups get 3 likes (one is you). You're competing on rate and personality alone, which means you're competing with everybody.

Meanwhile the merchants you want to talk to? They're running their shop, complaining to their bookkeeper, and reading… nothing local. Because nothing local exists for them.

That's the gap. And kids these days are building massive businesses off of…
Localized (or niche) Newsletters.

✅ The Shift:

Stop trying to be louder than the other 50 agents. Become the one guy in your city who publishes to small business owners. Not about payments. About them.

Start a free local newsletter. I suggest Beehiiv and it’s what I use. 5-minute read. Your city/region only. The audience: small business owners in your area. The content: local biz news, deals you find at trade shows or wholesale, owner spotlights and interviews, an "ask the rep" section, a free tool of the week, an event happening downtown, etc. Maybe one tiny payments tip per issue (your subtle way to promote).

You're not selling. You're connecting the community. You become the guy that knows everyone, sees everything, and quietly happens to also do credit card processing.

🛠️ Build It:

This also has the added benefit of making your entry into doors muuuuuuuch easier. Instead of “Hey, whens the last time you looked into your payment processing?”. Ugh, lame. It becomes “Hey I run the community for all the small business owners in {CITY or REGION"}. Their tune changes. I know because I’ve pitched it. Never get booted early in a conversation.

⭐ The Outcome:

In 6 months you're the most known agent in your zip code without ever sending a cold DM. Merchants start replying to you asking about processing because they trust the publisher of the thing they read every week.

This is one of my favorite plays of 2026 going forward. Distribution wins. And local distribution that nobody else is building? That's a moat.

I have an idea for a SMB focused newsletter I’m going to start this summer, when I do, I’ll share all the details and updates on how it’s going with everyone here so you can see it work in real time as well :)

You've worked the merchant. They're 80% there. There's one objection left or something preventing them from signing today where they are kind of sitting on the fence (we used to close on 1st door knock rather than appt setting).

You don't just give them something to close the deal. That's a rookie thing to try and desperately go for a close. If you fold immediately the merchant thinks "oh, he had room the whole time, what else does he have room on?" Now they want more. The whole vibe of the close changes.

Instead, you call the manager.

"Honestly that's a fair ask. Let me call one of the big dogs real quick and see what I can do for you. One sec."

Pull up your phone IN FRONT OF THE MERCHANT. Have a 90-second conversation with… whoever. Your actual manager. Your business partner. Your wife. Your dog. Doesn't matter. The merchant doesn't know.

This next part is key: Say words to your manager that make you look good. For example: “Hey, I’m with Jim right now and he runs Jims auto. He’s getting crushed by Heartland charging him X Fee, Y fee and surprisingly, Z Fee. We’re probably going to switch him over but I was wondering, can I waive A Fee and B fee to help him out a bit more?”

Wait for manager response which is obviously yes.

"Okay perfect, I’ll let him know” HANG UP PHONE .

That's the show. That's why it works. Not because you couldn’t do the things without a manager. But because it looked good, especially if the merchant was listening to what you just said. You went to bat for him/her and helped more than you were originally going to without it looking slimy.

What's actually happening:

When to use it:

Don't overuse it. If you call the manager twice in one sit-down, the merchant smells the show and you look incompetent lol.

Drill this with your guys. Run it on every objection that comes up at the table. You'll close 20-30% more deals at the same pricing because you're giving them the feeling of a win, not just the dollars.

Quick perspective shift this week. Not a "go do this"… a "look what happens when you think outside the box."

There's a guy named William. 6 months ago he had no business. Last month he did $120K in revenue, $40K profit. What does he sell? Cake. Businesses and sales agent pay him to send cakes.

Not really. He sells attention. He sends branded cakes. Sometimes with QR codes baked into the topping linking to a Loom audit, a deck, a pitch to companies as a cold outreach play. One SEO agency he works with sends 50 cakes with QR codes that scan to a personalized SEO audit of the merchant's site.

The frame: in a world of AI-written emails and identical LinkedIn DMs, the only thing that cuts through is the physical thing showing up at the door.

He calls it Cold Caking 😂 People are calling the math ROCS - Return On Cake Spend (pun on return on ad spend). A $50 cake hits the receptionist's desk, gets photographed, posted on LinkedIn, forwarded around the office. The merchant calls you.

Now apply it to payments. 50 dream merchants. A sheet cake on their counter Tuesday morning, "This cake is sweet, but your savings will be sweeter" written in icing, QR linking to your booking page. 50 × $50 = $2500. Close 2 deals and the campaign pays for itself in month one. You’d do this for the big companies you want to prospect, not a mom and pop. This is a longer sales cycle type of move.

The point isn't cake. The point is the inbox is dead. Figure out what's not the inbox.

👉 Watch the full interview here

Before you go :