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them (and in turn our customers) the benefit of having had that crucial sales experience. This also gives the sales staff a lot of confidence – knowing a person who came from sales is supporting their customer. It creates an amazing reciprocity of respect on both sides of the organization.


times when they have a tough week. We pay 100 percent of employee health insurance. We match 100 percent of the first 4 percent of 401(k) and there’s no vesting period for the 401(k); as soon as the money is in there, it’s yours. We strive to compensate people as close to the sale as possible. We understand that, when you win business, there’s a certain euphoria. The more you delay payment after that, the more you lose that excitement – so we pay an up-front commission every Friday. We also share recurring revenue on every account. The crux of what makes our business survive is recurring revenue; accounts generate income on a monthly basis and we share that with the sales rep. That number becomes very material over time. We vest our staff in that revenue so, even if they are no longer an employee of TransNational Payments, as long as they aren’t competing with us, they will continue to be paid that revenue for as long as the customer stays with us. Many sellers wonder, “What did I get for all that work I did all that time ago?” We answer that question.


SP: Can you describe the career path for a sales rep? What are the opportunities for advancement? Haas: When we bring sales talent into the organization, we don’t always know what they’re going to want to do long term. And they don’t always know either. Right now, we have more opportunity than people, which is a great and healthy place to be if you’re coming into the


business. We have opportunities for specialization, so that’s a path. For instance, one of our sales reps has a passion for skydiving — because our reps are given the freedom to design their own territories, he was able to add skydiving as a niche vertical. We are hungry, from a managerial perspective, so there are leadership opportunities and we always look first to promote from within. We’ve also had tremendous success with folks who joined in a sales capacity but moved into an operational role. Sometimes I think people want to be in sales, but they don’t really know what that means. They may be doing well but there are elements they don’t love – and they’ll never master a skill if they don’t love doing it. We’ve had people who are able to functionally operate as a sales rep, but they gravitate toward giving attention to existing customers over going after new business, which indicates their natural gifts may be suited for customer support. When we see that, it makes sense to get that person into a role where they can care for our customers. We currently have individuals working in operations who have migrated over from our sales teams, giving


SP: What does your ideal sales rep look like? Haas: We need people who are bold, driven, candid and transparent, who are willing to try new things and are not worried about being told no. They understand the hunger and the drive toward selling and are motivated by that. We also look for people who are family oriented, social in nature and willing to participate.


SP: What’s the average tenure of a sales rep at TransNational Payments and why do people stick around? Haas: The average tenure is approximately 6-7 years. People stay because they enjoy coming to work. The future isn’t a scary thing here; it’s very optimistic. A lot of times, when a seller has a really great year, it’s hard to have another one. But we don’t reset the dial based on how well someone did the previous year. If they want to raise their own bar, that’s great, but we don’t impose it on them. And, because we run our business like a family, we attract like-minded people who want to be around each other. This keeps them coming back.


To learn more about a sales career at TransNational Payments, click here.


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