Heartland Payment Systems Inc. intends to roughly double its sales force in the next 18 months to increase its presence in the restaurant, lodging and health care industries, according to the Princeton, N.J.-based merchant processor.
The processor at the end of April had more than 1,200 managers on staff, Bob Carr, Heartland chairman and CEO, said last week during an earnings conference call with analysts. Heartland intends to hire an additional 1,198 sales professionals.
The added staff would bolster the industry-specialization model sales strategy Heartland introduced late last year that focuses on product sales in the three merchant industries and in geographic areas.
“We have really shifted our strategy to try and focus on people within the industry that have expertise in the vertical” and can “talk to the merchant in the language of that market,” says Sanford Brown, Heartland chief sales officer. Merchants “want to know they are dealing with people who have an in-depth understanding of their business and their needs,” he says.
Heartland intends to hire 409 sales professionals for the restaurant industry, 669 for health care and 120 for lodging. “We need to essentially double our relationship managers just to fill the remaining open positions and achieve 100% of coverage in these markets,” Carr said during the analyst call.
Heartland hopes to hire sales staff from the vertical markets themselves, says Brown, noting previous payments-industry experience is not a requirement. “We’re primarily concerned with taking people that have vertical knowledge. We can teach them about our products and services. That’s not the hard part,” he says.
Heartland’s move to sell payment card acceptance in specific merchant markets is a response to the changing marketplace, says Brown. “The merchant community has become more sophisticated. Competition probably is more severe than it ever has been,” he says. “The merchant community expects someone to have a higher level of expertise before they put their trust in them.”
