Strategy

The game plan: the weekly numbers, the two kinds of deals, where to hunt, what to pitch, and when to bring the addons.

Weekly Numbers Small Game Medium Game Beating Toast Verticals What to Pitch Pricing Addons Enterprise Scorecard

What kind of week do you need?

Everything below this is how to think about the territory. This is where to point the car on Monday. Pick the week you need and you get the vertical, the play and what to have with you.

The Week, By the Numbers

150 doors into 10 FTAs is 1-in-15 overall, which only works if the two door pools are worked differently.

150 doors / week

130 cold-route doors

Route density is everything: plan in the Atlas map around Instant Approval MCC clusters (strip malls, auto rows, downtown squares).
A no-answer should cost 90 seconds, not a drive.
Expect about 1 FTA per 25.

20 Snowflake-qualified

Prepped doors

5 minutes of prep each: menu online, reviews, spot the current POS from the door or the ordering link, volume guess.
Walk in knowing the wedge.
Expect about 1 FTA per 4.

10 net-new FTAs

Set AND held

Set 2 per day, new businesses only.
Confirm the day before; an unconfirmed FTA with a busy owner is a coin flip.
Log each in Salesforce as a Task the moment it is set.

Day	Shape of the day
Monday	Regional call, then cold-route knocking for momentum.
Tue - Thu	Heavy days. Cold routes in the morning, Snowflake stops mid-morning and 2-4pm (restaurant owners are reachable between rushes), FTAs at the owner's chosen times. Wednesday adds the DM call and rookie call.
Friday	FTAs, follow-ups, installs, Como demos, Gong review of one medium-deal recording, referral asks, build next week's Snowflake 20.

Two things ride along with everything: log every FTA immediately (whoever logs first owns the prospect), and record every customer interaction in Gong. Both compound.

The Small Game: Owner In the Business

One gatekeeper at most, and the close can happen the day you walk in. Pizza shop, not sub shop: the difference is capacity to change.

The door approach, in order

1 Connect Find something real about the place before you pitch anything.

2 Bandwagon Name a nearby business you helped, then one discovery question with no pause after it.

3 Close for the FTA Ten to fifteen minutes, offered as two time options rather than an open question.

4 Or take the name Not the decision maker? Get the name and the card. That is a working door, not a failed one.

In the car, always

Charged demo gear or terminal

Atlas app, signed in

Quote template

Cash discount signage samples

Ask this early, every time

Grab your last processing statement and I will show you the real number while we talk.

The busy ones take four visits

Some owners need two to four short stop-ins before trust lands. Say hi, drop something useful, leave inside four minutes. That list is what closes next month, so the drop-in is the work rather than a wasted slot.

Can they absorb a change?

Before pushing a POS conversion, ask who would run the changeover. An owner working 14-hour days with no manager cannot absorb one no matter how good the deal is. Those get the terminal-only pitch or a park-and-drip.

Food trucks: terminal or Mobile Pay, 4% dual pricing, one-call close. Cluster them: commissary kitchens, event pods, and truck parks put five prospects in one stop.

The Medium Game: Owner On the Business

2-3 gatekeepers, a hard-to-reach signer, a longer cycle. The research says single-threaded deals stall when one contact goes dark, so the fix is structural.

Multi-thread from day one

Threads in a 2-5 location group: GM, ops or area manager, office manager or bookkeeper (they see the statements), kitchen or bar manager (they feel the POS pain).
Collect a name and a pain from every visit.

Find the champion, then test them

Usually the accessible higher manager. Three marks: real access to the owner, personally owns a pain you fix, gets a personal win from the change.
The action test: a champion puts the owner meeting on the calendar. Someone who takes brochures but never books is a coach, so keep them warm and thread elsewhere.

Arm the champion to sell without you

The owner decision happens in a room you are not in, so give the champion a one-page business case they can forward.
On it: current all-in monthly cost (processing + software + online ordering fees), the dual-pricing offset, the dealer migration plan in three lines, the Como math (48% purchase frequency lift, 41% ticket lift).

The 1-to-3 appointment arc

Appt 1, discovery with the champion: statements in hand, site walk, count stations, list the software stack and its costs. End by booking appt 2 with the owner present: "pricing decisions need the person who signs."
Appt 2, demo and proposal with the decision maker: outcomes first (turns, tickets, labor), all-in cost second, dealer white-glove migration third.
Appt 3 if needed: negotiate and close.
Never leave a meeting without the next one booked. Never accept "call me sometime."

Access and volume

Access, in order: referrals (the real foot in the door), champion-arranged intros, timing windows (owners 2-4pm Tue-Thu), intel-only visits ("who handles your payment systems, and when are they here?").
Volume: if half the qualified mediums disqualify on contact and the rest need 3+ touches, the Snowflake 20 is what turns this into a numbers game.
The first medium close converts the whole motion, because it creates the proof story and the referral chain that warms the second.

Taking restaurants off Toast

Toast holds most of the qualified restaurants in your territory, which makes it the biggest pool you have rather than the reason you lose. Every one of them is on a contract with an end date.

Their lock-in is real

Exclusive processing around 2.49-2.99% + $0.15.
2-3 year contracts with auto-renewal windows.
Financed hardware whose balance survives a switch.
A-la-carte software that stacks monthly: online ordering, loyalty, tables.

Their soft spots

Fee hikes with short notice, per-order online costs.
Feature overload most staff never use; long training curves.
Support waits at peak; no dealers, no local human.
Quality wifi required, no cellular backup, IT costs on the merchant.

Your play

Audit the statement plus software invoices into one all-in monthly number.
Ask when the contract renews and calendar the 30-60 day cancellation window.
Lead with the dealer migration plan (parallel network, menu rebuild, training, go-live support), because "switching is a nightmare" is the objection that decides these deals.

The wedge

When they love Toast anyway

Sell Como Complete standalone now. You bank the spiff and the relationship.
Como's data makes you the marketing partner, and you re-enter the processing conversation at renewal with receipts.
Como-first is a wedge, not a consolation prize.

Verticals: Where to Hunt and Why

Specialization is the multiplier. Two lanes deep beats four lanes shallow.

#1 · Core

Restaurants

Why: company push, dealer leverage, Instant Approval MCCs 5812/5813/5814, free equipment on 4% dual pricing, the strongest playbook support, and Como fits perfectly.
Target: 1-3 locations, $20k-150k monthly volume, owner-operated FSR or fast casual.
Multi-POS or $50k+ monthly goes to the dealer every time.
Below about $15-20k monthly: only as a one-call terminal deal.

#2 · Second lane

Automotive

Why: an internal play exists (MCCs 7538, 5532), $400-600+ tickets make fee pain visceral, dual pricing is normalized, and the owner is usually on site.
Competitor: 360 Payments, whose moat is shop-software integrations (Mitchell 1 partnership, Tekmetric, Shop-Ware).
Counter: local human service, free equipment on dual pricing, text-to-pay invoices, and the tire-shop play (install, train, signage, week-one follow-up, referral ask).
Ask early what shop system they run. Deep in an integrated 360 setup means park-and-revisit; QuickBooks and a terminal means open door.

#3 · Route filler

Specialty services & retail

Internal plays exist (7299, 5999): salons, groomers, storage, trades, homegoods, collectors.
Fast closes on Terminal+ or a standalone terminal; Payments Manager+ (invoicing, text-to-pay) earns its keep here.
Harvest them along the route. Do not detour for them.

#4 · Experiment

Healthcare, dental first

No internal vertical play covers healthcare, so this lane is self-authored. Run it as a capped experiment.
The office manager is the real decision maker and often feels underinformed on processing; 90% of practices pay prices untied to cost.
The opener: a 10-minute statement review that finds $3k a year.
Fit is card-on-file, payment plans, text-to-pay, not a POS conversion. Expect pressure toward transparent pricing; decide per practice whether volume justifies flexing.
Cap: Tue-Thu mid-mornings, dental only, judge after 20 qualified attempts.

What to Pitch, Who Runs It

Dealer-first is policy: half of a bigger, stickier deal for a fraction of your hours beats all of a small one when time is the bottleneck.

Situation	Pitch	Who runs it
Food truck, mobile, micro	Terminal or Mobile Pay, 4% dual pricing	You, one call
Services or auto, invoice-heavy	Terminal or Terminal+, Payments Manager+	You
Restaurant, any POS interest	Genius for Restaurants	Dealer, always
Restaurant, multi-POS or $50k+/mo	Genius for Restaurants, bigger package	Dealer, no exceptions
Retail, simple counter	GP Retail or Terminal+	You
Retail, complex	Genius Retail Complete	SRM, or RSI when the fit is right
Essentials/Advanced self-install	Only if trivially simple	You, sparingly

Why the dealer earns the 50%

Installation, their own networking (parallel network and router), 24/7 support line, and training.
The merchant gets a better outcome, the deal is bigger and stickier, and your hours stay pointed at 150 doors.
Self-installing makes you the only human between the merchant and Genius support, and one needy install can eat a week.

SRM caveat

SRMs are the required channel for Genius Retail Complete, and their skill runs below the dealers.
Hand SRMs the clean Complete deals; keep the gnarly ones in the dealer channel where support runs deeper.

Pricing Posture

Sell the program, not the rate.

Lead: 4% dual pricing / cash discount

Framed as the premium program: free equipment, 24/7 dealer support, zero processing drag, signage and talk track handled.
The posture is "this program is not for everyone," which is true and self-selects merchants who value support over pennies.

Interchange Plus: the walk-away

Low comp, no free equipment, high support expectations, and the merchant still pays thousands monthly out of pocket.
A price-only merchant is either a dental-lane exception with real volume or somebody else's customer.

Surcharge: on demand only

Sell it when the merchant asks, which in practice means automotive.
Compliance line: card price posted, never advertise the discounted price.

The objection spine

Clarify first: "how did you arrive at that?"
Then cost-versus-results: "is cost the most important thing, or actually getting results?"
Then the risk close: "which is riskier, solving this or keeping it?"

Addons: What and When

Pitched at the demo, not bolted on after the close.

$239/mo

Como Complete

For any repeat-visit merchant: restaurants, cafes, salons. The numbers do the selling: 48% purchase frequency lift, 41% ticket lift.

Spiff, net-new merchant$750

Spiff, existing Global merchant$375

Como Advanced $99 stop orderSept 1

Through August the $99 Advanced tier is a real urgency line for fence-sitters, with the upgrade path later. After Sept 1 it is Complete-only, sold on ROI. "Net new" definition is pending with the incentives team, so treat every non-processing prospect as a potential $750 until corrected. In mediums, the person who owns marketing pain is often your champion, and Como is the product they personally win with.

Ask always

Payroll

One standing discovery question at every FTA: "who runs payroll, how long does it take, and how do you handle tips?"

Auris, full package, 10+ employees or multi-location$300+/mo

Heartland Payroll Essentials, small shopsfrom ~$89/mo

Auris is too heavy for a one-shop restaurant. Heartland Payroll is quote-based per employee and covers paycheck calc, taxes, new-hire reporting, and a self-service portal. You do not need to master it: the Stronger Together referral path means the payroll team sells while you take the credit. Timing: the 30-60 day post-install check-in, which doubles as your referral ask visit.

Cash flow openers: Instant Deposit when they gripe about batch timing, YouLend flexible funding when growth or equipment needs surface. Both open doors more than they earn directly.

The Enterprise Referral Lane

One per month. It is intel gathering, not selling, and 50% of one enterprise close can outearn a quarter of field work.

Capture on every too-big door

Legal/DBA name and location count.
Estimated monthly volume.
Current POS and processor.
Decision maker's name, title, and contact.
One line of pain if anyone offered it.

The front-staff script

"Who handles your payment systems?"
"Is that decided here or at corporate?"
"Who would that be?"
Then hand it to the enterprise channel, log it, and move on. These run 3-12 months and pay at a 50% split.

The Weekly Scorecard

Track leading indicators, because closes lag by weeks and doors are controllable today.

Metric	Target
Doors pulled	150
Snowflake-qualified doors	20
Net-new FTAs set	10
FTAs held	8+
Demos / proposals	4+
Medium threads advanced (new contact or next appt booked)	5
Como pitches	5
Referral asks	10
Enterprise intel captured	1 / month

Gong, used selfishly

Record everything: company push, drawing eligibility, coaching fuel.
Friday's 20-minute review of one medium-deal recording is the fastest way to sharpen the champion talk track.

Open items

"Net new" Como definition: pending with incentives.
Dental lane: judge after 20 qualified attempts, not 3.
Heartland Payroll rate card: get it on the first referral.
First medium close: write the proof story one-pager the same week and mine it for referrals.

Companions: The Process for the pipeline mechanics, Quick Close for the fast-deal tracks, Incentives for what is on the table this quarter.