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Thousands of businesses get a merchant cash advance (MCA) every year. Their numbers have been growing steadily since the inception of the merchant loan nearly 10 years ago. The reason they choose to get one is pretty simple; they need working capital for their business and they need it quickly.
Many of these businesses had tried to get a business loan from the bank but were either turned down or they weren't able to get funded in time to suit their needs.
I have seen almost every conceivable type of business apply for a merchant cash advance. Some of these businesses include; restaurants, grocery stores, beauty salons, garages, tires stores and franchises just to name a few.
What all these businesses have in common is that they all accept credit cards as a form of payment. The fact is; if they didn't accept credit cards, they wouldn't be eligible for a merchant loan.
What is a merchant cash advance?
What an (MCA) provider does is purchase a percentage of your future credit card sales. Those future credit card sales are paid back automatically each day through your credit card processor until the advance amount plus a premium are paid back. It is done in such a way that puts the least amount of strain on your business.
How do these businesses use their business cash advance?
I'll answer that question by asking another question; what would your business do with 10, 20 or 100 thousand dollars? Would you expand your marketing campaign? Get caught up on your bills? Would you purchase more inventory? Renovate your business? Unlike most bank loans; a business cash advance does not put limitations on how you spend your money. Nobody knows your business like you do. Most MCA providers know that. You need to understand that a business cash advance is not cheap; use that money wisely. It could be exactly what your business needs to really take it to the next level.
How to get a merchant cash advance
A merchant loan is very easy to get if compared to a bank loan. All you do is fill out a two page form, give 4-6 months of merchant statements, set up your credit card processor and that's it. They don't require great credit or collateral and most MCA providers can fund you in about a week.
Lead generation has been a constant partner to a number of companies and has proven time and time again that it is better if not the best marketing strategy there is. Lead generation has changed a lot since it was first conceived. Advancements always equate to something better and better is always a good thing especially for businesses.
Before, if businesses would want to have a lead generation campaign, they would either have it in-house campaign or if outsourced, would have to pay a merchant cash advance monthly fee as upkeep. Both campaigns have proven to be very costly and inefficient. Sometimes, the funds allocated for such campaigns are not justified by the slow and low increase in revenue. Some outsourcing firms also gave false promises to other businesses. This gave lead generation a bad name. Because of all of these, people became skeptical in terms of who to trust. People would sometimes scrap the idea altogether. Telemarketing firms have been battling this stigma for years. It's a lot harder for outsourced contact centers that battle the stigma of telemarketing and the inevitable discrimination from some people.
But all of these things have changed over the years. Telemarketers are slowly building up a better social profile with their changes in their work ethics. One of these changes that made an impact is the development of B2B or business to business telemarketing. Wherein agents no longer call homes, they call businesses during business hours instead. This reduced the amount of people getting frustrated with unwanted calls for unwanted things. Another advancement is the introduction of the pay-per-lead method. This method replaced the monthly payment method used before. Because of this, businesses would only pay for the leads they are going to use. No monthly dues and the leads are pre qualified to ensure conversion. Another important improvement is the introduction of the pay per appointment method, wherein instead of just buying leads, businesses can instantly get appointments with prospective clients. These methods cut the time allotted for marketing and sales by almost half or even more depending on the nature of the business.
Now merchant cash advance companies have a better start. And slowly it has gained momentum to reach where it is right now, a plateau. I say it's on a plateau because merchant cash advance firms nowadays are facing a problem. The everyday ordinary lending firm is having problems with its marketing strategies. Traditional marketing strategies are either ineffective of too costly to be of any help. So these lending firms are turning towards buying leads or appointments from telemarketing companies. Some of the advantages they enjoy from them are as follows:
Ease of operations-
Firms no longer need to go through the usual task of looking for people to contact. Then hope for them to be interested. Instead, as soon as they get the lead, they basically just need to close the deal
High conversion rate -
The leads and appointments that the cash advance firms purchase are all pre qualified. This means higher chances of closing the deal.
Firms will just have to focus on the closing of the deal -
Because all the leads and appointments are already gathered and generated or set by the telemarketing company, it means the company will just have to focus on its sales force. This in turn makes a good telemarketing partner and a well-trained sales force a very powerful combination
The advancements of telemarketing, specifically in lead generation, not only helps in convincing other people that it's a better industry. It also helps companies, like merchant cash advance companies in moving forward and soaring higher towards its goals.