Shaving, scrubbing, and whining....a rant by Lenny2
 

It seems like every day there's a thread here talking about a sponsor shaving or a processor scrubbing because sales are low.

I've literally seen hundreds of posts where people say something like "I usually convert 1 in 400 and this week I'm 1 for 10,000....so and so needs to turn the shave down"

WTF is that?
IF a sponsor was shaving you, don't you think they would take 1 out of every 10 sales, or 1 out of every 5, or something like that?
Why would they shave 50% for 2 days and then turn the shave off completely? Could they make it any more obvious that they were shaving?

Same thing goes with scrubbing. I know sometimes processors scrub harder than at other times....because they have to in order to keep chargebacks below a certain level and be able to stay in business.
If they weren't scrubbing you would be out of business because there would be nobody to process credit cards for you or your sponsors.
However, even when they do scrub....they don't scrub hard enough to make sales drop by half or more, that would be insane.
They only make money by processing transactions, so it's in their best interest to process as many sales as possible.

Ratios go up and they go down, for no reason whatsoever and it's not your sponsors fault or the processors fault, it's just the way it is.
When I was selling cars I averaged one sale for every 4 customers I had walk onto the lot.
Some weeks I saw 20 people and didn't sell anything, and some days I saw 5 people and closed every one of them.
When I saw 20 people and didn't sell anything it wasn't because my boss was "shaving" or "scrubbing" me....it's just the way it goes in sales. Sometimes you get a lucky run of customers and sometimes you get a shitty run of customers, it all works out in the end.

If you complain that a processor is scrubbing too hard when your ratios go from 1 in 400 to 1 in 1000....then you should also be complaining that they're not scrubbing hard enough when you have one of those 1 in 200 days. (And you know that we all have those also)

Of course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. :2 cents:

You like to rant a lot, don't you?

I rant, therefore I am.

I would agree with you, but I would not want to set a dangerous precedent, and we already agreed once in the last 48 hours.

Very true :1orglaugh

Awwwwwwwww Shit. I don't often agree with you either. But this time your spot on.

BS. The next time your major paycom sponsor looks way out of wack check the lesser ones you push. It is very frequently in sync. The 19th and 20th come to mind this month. It is harder for me with ccbill as i do less business with them.

It is unreasonable to think there are not things that can effect a sponsor or processor. Everyone in this business has server issues, software changes, etc at some point, and they are not always as smooth as we would like.

you forgot the </rant>

You make many valid points. And as a life long sales man I understand your analogy.

On the flip side I know my traffic inside and out. I live it and breath it every single day and have made a lucrative career out of it. There will always be slumps but many times things do go wrong that aren't classified as a statistical anomaly.

The processors don't fool me nor do the sponsors. I know when something is wrong.

I agree with that