What you are seeing is a pattern for a business that is experiencing a cash flow issue and ultimately will go out of business as suppliers will move them to prepayment or COD. One solution to protect your business is to accept a credit card for payment of the invoice within 7 days and let them manage their cash flow challenges behind the scenes with their issuing bank. The other option is to offer prepayment and if they are not in position for that then I would no longer sell product/services. Sometimes it takes one supplier to force the inevetible, but you have to protect your business and resources as well.

Depending on the size of your test you could always establish a "TEST" account with a gateway/payments provider that understands this is a primary step for your proof of concept.

When a credit card is used to make a purchase/payment the cardholder has the ability to chargeback that transaction for up to 180 days with the issuing bank. If they have not received the product and/or service as promised they will contact the issuing bank.

PayPal offers a service that includes all card types and PayPal. There are also numerous other providers in the marketplace depending on if you are using a shopping cart, hosted payment page or international acceptance. I have been in the electronic payments acceptance space for 20+ years so feel free to reach out.

Having been in the acquiring industry for 20+ years and having focused on ecommerce for the last 4 years this question is very interesting..... Scenario #1 You say you want to obtain an ISO / Super Merchant account. This leads me to believe that you are trying to set up as a PSP, Aggregator, TPPA. If you have your own gateway then you will also need to consider the ramifications of PCI Compliance not only for the gateway but also the users/merchants of your gateway. Are you looking to take liability and risk and approve or decline the accounts? Delayed Funding to offset your risk? Who will provide services for back office such as chargebacks and retrievals? Scenario #2 Or maybe you are just looking to set up a merchant account to process transactions on a payment gateway? The question is to broad being that our industry can go in many different directions. Feel free to set up a call and we can discuss further and get you the specific answer you seek. I think you might be trying to do Scenario #1

You might already have a mentor and not realize it. Depending on where you are in your career and who has given you advice in the past or been a sounding board...that could be a mentor. In my career I have had mentors that were bosses and not until after I left those organizations and maintained those relationships did I ever really call them or see them as a mentor. Look back in your career and see who did that for you and that might be the best place to start.

Generally sponsorships happen because a person(s) have a personal relationship with someone or they identify that the group will have a good impact on their business in exchange for their sponsorship. Sponsorships can be done in many different ways...so get creative and you will be surprised how many companies will want to get involved. I have done this many times with non-profits or even for profits and we created a platform to get their brand out and had to start turning away sponsorships.

Having been in the electronic payments industry for over 20+ years this is a daily question that is asked as companies are trying to reduce overhead cost while driving the brand, sales and most of all profit. One thing to consider is that anytime you have a "contracted" sales force you are losing control of your brand and relying on them to represent your brand as you want it to be. Depending on how deep this sales force gets and layers of folks, control and message will get lost. Someone else mentioned inside sales and if you have tried that yet. If I were building the sales strategy based on the limited information I would start with an inside sales person to generate some interest in the marketplace at the specific targets you are looking for and then add someone who has experience in your specific vertical with the specific types of customers/vendors/partners you seek so they can open the doors and then start sending the referrals and business back to the Inside Sales person(s).

As others have mentioned Business Development is a very broad term and can be what ever you want just like the last line of most corporate job descriptions...."All other assigned duties" Depending on the size of your company and at what stage you are in will determine the best solution. Of course that is not within your question but I will assume you are profitable and right on the cusp of taking off. One idea is to identify your target market and who those customers/partners should be and then do a search for an individual that has experience with those types of customers or even better has specific relationship with those vendors from previous or current roles they were in. Sometimes business development is hiring someone that can open doors to larger opportunities that can really drive the marketing, branding and awareness to your product/service/business.

Sometimes you have to walk away from one and focus on the other to really appreciate and recharge the thought process for Company B. Real life scenario is Twitter and Square....Jack Dorsey was part of the Twitter Team and then left to focus on Square and start really building it while Twitter seem to lose momentum only for Jack to return and now is CEO of both companies spending 50% of his time each day on each company. Twitter just announced IPO and I am sure Square will not be far behind in the next 12-24 mos.