On the heels of a very large deal made with Whole Foods, Square has been ramping up the hiring of sales people to hit the streets and make deals with larger sized companies. Square is no stranger to offering customized pricing structures to well-suited clients such as Starbucks and Whole Foods, but their fast increase in hiring sales people is an indication that there is more to come. As they become the first mobile payment processing company to really take a bite out of the big business market, expectations are high and Square does not intend to disappoint.Custom Pricing
The rate for everyday Square customers is set at 2.75% per credit card transaction, but that isn’t true for everyone who uses their mobile payment platform anymore. Obviously, major companies such as Starbucks and Whole foods are getting a better rate because of the amount of transactions they will be processing, but now smaller vendors are able to negotiate for lower rates.
Recently, Square added a feature to their website that allows vendors to request a custom rate. This isn’t going to help out someone running a garage sale or going around $100,000 in sales each year, but it is certainly helping out people who do upwards of $1 million in sales per year. Reports have been surfacing that Square has been backing “backroom” deals with vendors all over the country to give them lower fees in exchange for continued loyalty.
This all came about because there are hundreds (or possibly thousands) of small businesses that have expanded since their early days when Square Register was the only affordable platform that made sense. As many of these small businesses expanded into multimillion dollar enterprises, the notion of moving to different POS systems was more logical because the cost of a merchant account would be offset by the amount of transactions they are no conducting each year. Now Square will work with these retailers to keep them swiping with Square and keeping them paying fees for the foreseeable future.
Sales Team Hiring
Square has had a beautiful ride with their word-of-mouth advertising campaign that has made them a household name. However, now that everyone knows about Square Register and what it does, they have reached everyone they possibly can with traditional methods. The true money for the company lies in well-established businesses converting to using Square Register instead of the traditional style POS systems that they have been using for years. This type of sales requires more than word-of-mouth, it requires a well-spoken tongue.
To increase the amount of established businesses that are weary of the idea of making a switch to Square, they have ramped up hiring for their sales force to the ground running. The job of these new recruits will be to find potential businesses and negotiate a transfer to Square; even if they need to rely on custom pricing to pull it off.
Square is hungry for new revenue from businesses that are forking over too much to someone else. Many companies out there are still using traditional merchant accounts even though they don’t do enough transactions to offset the cost of paying per swipe like they would with Square. Many business owners are afraid to commit to a pay-per-swipe pricing structure even though it could save their business thousands of dollars in fees each year. Only time will tell if the new marketing efforts will help Square continue to grow, but based on their recent successes I would wager that their odds are pretty good.
