Considering recurring payments for your business? This contributed post explains it in detail.

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For businesses who sell goods and products to customers, one of the biggest challenges is building a loyal following. You need to be able to depend on making sales each and every month, which likely means you put a lot of time and money into advertising and marketing. This is exactly why recurring payments can be such an incredible tool for businesses to use.

A recurring bill payment simply means the client/consumer pays a bill on a recurring basis and it is set up to automatically occur. When you think about it in-depth, the pros for businesses become incredibly apparent. You have set sales that will occur automatically at set intervals without you having to go out there and convince the clients to return and buy more products/services from you.

The question then becomes how to best sell products and services with recurring payments, and how you go about pitching it to the customers. There is a bit of finesse when it comes to these rebills as we will discuss next. So, let’s take a closer look at how you can go about selling with recurring payments.

Related: How To Make Money: 2019 Guide

Position Recurring Bill Payments as the Norm

Rather than positioning recurring billing processing as something that is out of the ordinary and different, present it as the norm and make it the typical way to conduct sales. You may even want to go so far as to make it the only option for customers, rather than offering one-time purchases. Now, obviously this is a big step so you need to be sure your products and services make sense to set up as a recurring purchase.

Make Sure That a Variety of Payment Options are Accepted

One thing that can quickly send customers to your competitor’s website is if you don’t offer a variety of payment options. Customers want to be able to pay for products and services with the payment type that is convenient for them. This means offering such things as credit cards, debit cards, PayPal, Google Wallet, Amazon Pay, and others.

As a side note, you will also want to look into a company like MerchantScout which features more than a decade’s worth of online debit and credit card processing. Not only will you be able to accept various payment options, but you’ll be able to offer customers a safe, reliable, and streamlined way to go about paying. MerchantScout also prides itself on offering each business their own dedicated support agent that is available 24/7 to answer questions and help you with any problems that may pop up.

Give Thought to the Billing Period

Another key in rolling out a successful recurring payment plan is to ensure that the billing payment makes sense to your customers. Obviously, you don’t want to leave too long in between purchases, but at the same time you don’t want to be “forcing” them into buying products well before it is necessary. At the end of the day, it may make sense to give consumers an option about how long they wish to leave in between recurring payments; in other words, they can set up their own schedule with the option to change it at any time.

Provide Customers with a List of Positives

While it’s obvious why recurring bill payments would work for you from a company standpoint, from a customer’s point of view their benefits may not be as crystal clear. It is up to you to point out all the pros to agreeing to recurring bill payments.

Some of the pros include the fact they never have to worry about running out of product before the replacement arrives; it takes the responsibility of remembering to order off the customer; it saves them time since they can set it up once and then forget about it; and it may even lock in a price if you offer that benefit.

Make Sure the Process Is Easy to Sign Up For

Of course, you also want to make the process easy to understand and easy to sign up for. Customers shouldn’t have to jump through hoops and fill out page after page of details just to set up a recurring purchase. The easier and faster you make it for the customer, the more likely they are to agree to a recurring purchase on not just one item, but possibly a number of items.

Make Sure the Price Is Reasonable

Lastly, you want to be sure that the price you are offering is reasonable and fair. This isn’t the time to jack up prices simply because you will have a returning customer, but at the same time you shouldn’t slash the prices either.

Positioning recurring payments as the best option consumers have will help to ensure that you’re able to secure all kinds of customers and count them as loyal and returning clientele.