Welcome to Issue #012 of The Outerchange, the weekly briefing for payment processing agents who want more leverage behind their efforts prospecting and closing processing deals.

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 🚀

This week Chip closed two locations of a physiotherapy clinic in Canada. About $55k/month in combined volume. He didn't pitch processing first. He pitched what they actually needed.

I set him up and trained him to look for leverage instead of starting conversations about “we can save you money” or “we're a payments company that adds more value”. Everyone says it, which means merchants don't believe it anymore. 

He found a physio clinic in the middle of opening two new locations during his research in my local area. Did a little digging and noticed something interesting…neither location had a website built yet. Both opening soon. Neither online.

So he didn't ask about their current processor. He didn't run a statement analysis. He didn't even bring up rates.

He offered to build both websites for free. The catch? Sign up for Clover at both locations.

He spun up mockups, sent them over, and they said yes. When I seen the email come back I was actually pretty stunned, Chip just took 2 deals out of a competitors pocket.

Two MIDs. One conversation. No pitch deck, no objection handling, no follow-up sequence. Just here's something you need, here's what I want in exchange.

That was his whole play, and it worked.

A little sales mindset shift: stop selling so “point blank”. Start trading what they need for the MID.

Every merchant has 3-4 problems they'd happily pay for help with: a website, a Google Business profile or review automation, social media setup, dual pricing signage, a menu redesign, a logo refresh. None of them are processing problems (yet). But every single one of them can be the trade that gets you the deal.

A few things to internalize from this:

Walk into prospect research asking "what does this business not have yet?" not "what are they paying right now?" The first question opens doors. The second one closes them.

Chip knows (from his training) how to make websites so when he seen they didnt have one, he suggested we build it for them as a foot in the door.

Now here's the part that should make you sit up.

Chip is an AI agent. Running in Canada. He just closed $55k/month in volume by thinking about the deal differently than a human agent did.

Chip didn't outwork anyone. He didn't have a better understanding of Interchange or “POS features”. He just asked a better opening question, what do they need, what can I trade, where's the close.

This is a small blip. Two MIDs in Toronto. In the grand scheme of things, it's nothing. But it's the start of a thing that should be on every agent's radar: AI is out here closing deals now and we’re at the start of it.

If you sell in Atlanta, Chicago, LA, or NYC (major metros) — skip this one. Too crowded.

But if you sell in a market thats 10k - 200k people? You're sitting on an easy distribution play and almost nobody is running it.

When a restaurant owner in Elizabethtown, KY googles "merchant services near me," there are roughly zero agents fighting for that result, or ones you could outrank relatively easily with the help of AI. 

Compare that to "merchant services Atlanta" where you're up against 400 agents, 6 ISO websites, and three local Square affiliates.

The play isn't complicated:

Pick 3-5 towns you actually want to work. Not 50. Three to five.

Build one simple website per town. "Merchant services in [Town Name]" — your face, your phone, three local reviews, a dual pricing calculator and a well designed home page. Then fill it with content (ai can help here) personalized to that region your targeting.

Write content for the site that eats up the keywords and phrases they are searching for.

Claim and optimize the Google Business Profile for each if you're able to, it'll help you rank. Photos, hours, services, weekly posts.

Get 3 local backlinks per town. Chamber of Commerce, BNI chapter, a sponsored Little League page. Boring, but it works.

three to six months in, you're ranking for "credit card processing [your town]" or “dual pricing [your town]” search in your region. 

This idea comes from the popular “Rank and Rent” business model in the SEO and Google world.

Merchants are calling you. No cold DMs, no door knocks but smarter people would use this authority while door knocking as well 😏

This is the play metro agents can't run because the competition is too thick. You can. You should.

Pro Tip: Have AI to the SEO keyword research, competitor research and writing (assuming you have an agent setup to write human grade content and not AI slop)

Before you go :