Payment Training Programs: Every Fintech Needs It But No One Wants to Admit It

How would you rate your company’s onboarding program?

Chances are you’re at least somewhat satisfied with its performance — you may have an internal team training program, or you could facilitate meet-and-greet sessions to assimilate new members of your sales staff and product development teams. Perhaps your employees learn the ropes through online training materials outsourced from other fintech providers.

Regardless, your team performs their respective duties, so if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?

In reality, most companies inhibit growth as a result of inefficient and inconsistent onboarding programs. How? Because they rely on two misguided approaches to training their key talent:

1. Self-guided online programs
2. Internal team training from current directors

In the digital age, it’s no surprise that businesses rely on online courses. They’re convenient, cost-effective, seemingly eliminate the need for a formal training program. However, these courses have an inherent problem: they’re designed as one-size-fits-all solutions.

In other words, they fail to capture the nuances of a company’s unique processes, problems, solutions, and even positioning in the payment ecosystem. Hence why many companies employ the latter approach — tasking existing leaders with the role of “training instructors.”

Despite being qualified, fintech leaders typically lack an essential resource to adequately train their sales staff: time.

They’re still responsible for their primary position and must continue meeting their own target KPIs. As such, leaders must then determine the opportunity cost of training a team versus expanding customer relationships and winning new business. This conundrum places an inordinate strain on management and impedes the development of new employees.

While this is an all-too-common challenge, there is a middle ground between self-guided courses that lack specificity and makeshift internal programs that take precious time away from your leaders:

Personalized payment training from external payment professionals.

Is Payment Training Right For My Business?

We’ll assume you’re a fintech or payment service provider that’s had tremendous success acquiring customers — perhaps a payment service provider that’s connected with Visa, Mastercard, banks, etc. — so, you’re well-positioned to help facilitate transactions for various merchants.

However, reaching the next level of growth is a different animal altogether.

Your primary pain point migrates from finding the right customers to finding the right people — payment professionals who can drive sustainable growth by maintaining relationships and delivering unparalleled service. Many companies have leaders who know how to acquire customers, but they often lack experience issuing product (i.e., getting cards and payment capabilities to those merchants).

Part of the solution is developing new and existing talent. The challenge is doing so effectively and efficiently.

On average, it takes around 9-12 months for new salespersons to reach a point where they can confidently communicate with customers about payment problems and solutions.

Why? Because of the aforementioned training approaches — much time is squandered not only trying to figure out how to learn but also learning irrelevant material.

A comprehensive payment training program bridges this knowledge gap and opens the door to sustainable, long-term growth. Here’s how:

• Improve sales efficacy and efficiency. Outfitting your team with payment professionals improves customer acquisition and retention rates, as they can establish themselves as trusted authorities in the space.
• Expedite strategy implementation. Payment training reduces your team’s learning curve, which translates to rapid deployment of key talent and expedited KPI achievement.
• Accelerate product development. By better understanding your customers and the broader payment industry, your product developers can save time determining the most appropriate and desirable features.
• Streamline internal and external communication. When everyone has the same understanding and speaks the same language, your organization can reduce misinterpretations and unnecessary delays.
• Increase talent retention. Sales members quickly reach a point of confidence in their abilities, empowering them with the skills to succeed and higher work satisfaction.

What Is Gain the Lead’s Payment Professional Certified Training Program?

It is scientifically proven that strong product knowledge helps salespersons succeed, which is why most payment companies are currently overhauling their onboarding and payment education.

However, self-guided training, weekend workshops, and makeshift internal programs often lack depth, and, perhaps more importantly, a connection between learning and on-the-job application.

It’s akin to watching a video about how to swim before diving into the ocean. Over time, certain members of your team will gradually learn how to navigate your sales process, where to find information, and how to solve problems — but it’s a prolonged, inefficient undertaking. Others will struggle and potentially exit the company.

Fortunately, there’s an alternative: Gain the Lead’s Payment Professional Training program, which is taught by payment professionals to create payment professionals.

The program is the opposite of a one-size-fits-all solution — it’s crafted specifically for your business, while teaching all the necessary payment information to be a payment professional. In that sense, it’s created from both a big picture and an individualized perspective, giving your employees the best possible basis for success.

With a rigorous, multi-week training program that’s designed to your business’s exact operations, your employees can immediately apply lessons to their actual day-to-day responsibilities. As a result, it only takes new employees three to four months to assimilate into their roles and start working directly with customers. They’ll be authorities in not only the payment space but also the various industries in which your customers operate, allowing them to handle even the most intricate customer inquiries.

Companies receive a blueprint to internal talent development that can be applied to future new hires. Moreover, with the oversight of a program trainer, employees have a go-to resource for questions and support — preserving the precious time of your department leaders.

If you’d like to learn more about our expertise-based mentoring program and change management consulting, you can schedule a free consultation today.