The sources of leads in this business area are wide and varied, and all nearly useless.

By the time official records (ie, bus license) are available the buyers have already made their selections. Most banks have these services already in place for their customers, and will generally beat you.

There are only two methods I've seen that work effectively, but there is a lot of hard work involved, no easy fixes:

1. Phone canvassing: two full time agents calling B-B for service upgrades/equipment upgrades will set an average of 2 appointments a day. Depending on your closing ratio in face to face, you should sell 2 units a week.

2. Networking: visit Realtors(comm), bank commercial agents, leasing agents in strip malls, etc, city and county license offices, and any others you can think of that a new business person might call or see before they open their shops. Leave your card, stop and see them all every couple of weeks. Eventually you will receive referrals. Referrals will show a slightly larger rate of success than phone canvassing, but will be far fewer in number.

You need to remember that most people are going to buy/lease their equipment from the people they obtain their procvessing services from.

Good Luck

Dan's point about waiting for new business licenses is true, however there are other public records you may be able to catch earlier in the process. Also, not every business is super-organized about their startup process, and considering how low the cost is to market to them via mail, it may be well worth the effort.For example, the State of Texas (where I live) makes lists of new franchise tax and sales tax permits available online (so do many other states -- you'll have to check yours). Load those into a spreadsheet, filter the list by ZIP and NAICS code to your target market, and send them a mailing. Try a small sample and see if it works well enough to justify the advertising expense.I've used this approach very effectively to market computer consulting services. It should work for credit card processing as well.