The Trust Advantage with Andie Hill, Payroc | Episode 528

The strongest partnerships in payments are built on trust. When trust is there, it creates differentiation, fuels growth, and leads to better outcomes for partners and merchants. Welcome to the Trust Advantage Podcast series brought to you by PayRock. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Leaders in Payments Podcast.

I'm your host, Greg Myers. This episode is a continuation of our Trust Advantage series and is being brought to you by Payrock. Today I'm honored to have as my special guest Andy Hill, the executive leader of the 1099 Agent Channel at Payrock. So, Andy, thank you so much for being here and welcome back to the show.

Thank you for having me, Greg. I appreciate it. So today we're going to be talking about what it really takes for payment providers to earn an agent's trust, turn that trust into merchant growth, and ultimately become a strategic growth partner. So before we dive into the topic, let's talk a little bit about you and Payrock.

So, Andy, if you don't mind, tell our audience a little bit about yourself, your professional journey, and your role at Payrock today. You got it. So Andy Hill, I'm the executive vice president of agent sales at Payrock. I have been in the industry for a little more than 20 years.

I started as a merchant sales agent out in the industry and from there kind of expanded roles at what was formerly First Data. I had roles at Bantiv, at Visa, and then most recently I've been here at Payrock for almost three years. I live right outside of Baton Rouge, Louisiana with my husband. And I have three grown children who are on their own professional journey these days.

And I also have my caboose who is seven years old, who is trying to find her journey as a seven-year-old. So, and nice to be Garrett. Absolutely. So for those who may not be familiar, can you give us a quick overview of Payrock?

Yes. So Payrock is a payments company that was truly built on relationships. So they have scale and technology of a global organization, but our business is still incredibly relationship driven. So we have channels from direct sales.

We have an ICO and agent channel, integration through our ISB channel. We've got processing in other countries such as Puerto Rico, Canada. So globally scaled that way. We have had, we've done numerous acquisitions over the last 10 years that have scaled us to this place where we are today.

Well, we're going to talk about the agent kind of channel and really hone in on that and tie that into this trust theme. So why is recruiting an agent fundamentally different from earning that agent's business? So when I look at it, recruiting gets them in the door, right? It gets them to attend trainings.

They are coming to learn about product. They're really testing the waters with us. Earning the business is what keeps them there after. So I kind of think about it like recruiting is transactional.

Everyone shows up in their Sunday best. We're all courting each other. But earning the business, this is when we're starting to date. So this is the relationship part.

This is where it gets real. This is truly where earning the business is proving that the promises that were made during the recruiting process really are coming true and being proven. This is where we're going to say, do what we say, the expectations, and hold them up. Well, what must a payments provider actually prove before this independent agent will confidently place merchant relationships on its platform?

Ultimately, I think you have to prove that their business matters as much to you at PayRock as it does to them. They have a lot of choices. And a lot of times they are trusting us with their relationships that they may have been cultivating and building out this opportunity for years. And so they're going to trust us with that relationship.

We have to prove that we will protect it like it's our own. We have to show them that the economic, the merchant experience, that being transparent are as important to us as it is to them. So that when we show up, we're showing up with their best interest in mind and making sure that they are there to believe, hey, payrock cares about my merchant's experience, but cares about me and how this is all going to transform and transpire. Okay.

Well, where does trust most commonly break down between, to your point, recruiting and signing that agent, and then to the point where you're actually receiving the first merchant account, where does that trust commonly break down? I think a lot of times we see that the trust can break down as soon as the deal is inked. Recruiting creates expectations with an agent, good, bad, or indifferent, but onboarding either validates those expectations or it breaks them, right? Because this is their first interaction.

Is they've signed this deal, they're coming in, they're coming into our onboarding experience. What does that look and feel like? Agents shouldn't lose credibility with their merchant while they're trying to navigate us. They don't want to feel like their merchant is our test account.

And they shouldn't. So unfortunately, we hear a lot of those stories where we see there may not have even really been an onboarding experience. Maybe that was all through webinar or you know, training that you log into at self-service, you know, whenever you want. There is no person you can call and ask a question.

There is no one you can say, hey, I have a problem when I'm trying to enter this MPA. You've got to email someone. You've got to click a button. There's no one to talk to.

And I think that experience from onboarding, having that personal touch, that is absolutely what you need so it doesn't break down before they bring those merchants to you. Okay. Well, going off script here a little bit, I'm curious. Do you see agents who are very experienced, or do you see agents that are kind of new to the industry, or is it just a common- I see everything.

Yeah. So we see everything. You see folks that hadn't never even heard of interchange or didn't even know that this was a variable or an existence. And a lot of times it comes because either they had a friend who had gotten into this industry.

We get a lot of friends and family that come in because someone was very successful, life-changing success sometimes, right? And they are talking about it, they're explaining what they do. And someone, I didn't even know that was a thing. I didn't know that a business can go to a third party to get processing.

I always thought it had to come from a bank, or I always thought it had to come from here, right? So we get some of that. Then we also get on the other end of the spectrum, those very merchant experienced, even agency type groups, agents who have downlines, ISOs with lots of sub-reps, who have either lost trust or respect with their current providers and they're looking for something different. Or maybe it's a product play.

Maybe they're looking for a specific product, like a compliance surcharge product. They're tired of getting violations on cash discounting and things. So we're on a different gambit, but we see all that. We see referral partners that come in.

We've got ISBs who have referral partners. So lots of things I think, you know, it really boils down to the agent's experience. No experience, great. They're a clean slate.

We get to teach them all the ways. Someone who is experienced, they know what they're looking for. They know what they like, they know what they don't like, and that's when they're going to come over to us and, you know, kind of see where do we fit in that mold for them. Okay.

Well, what experience in the early part of the relationship typically gives the agent confidence to move forward from just, you know, testing, maybe giving a couple of deals to actively selling it? I think that they have to buy into the relationship. Their buy-in comes from how do we fix the thing? There's always going to be a problem.

To say that everything will always run smoothly is not fair and it's untrue. There will always be a glitch. This is technology. This is also humans.

Everyone has error. So it is in how are you fixing those things when something goes wrong? Not having to chase someone for support. Am I confident that someone is going to actually call me back so I can explain to them what the issue is?

Because it's really hard for me to put it in words in an email. Maybe I don't know how to explain it to a support person in an email because it's really something that's bigger than a bread box. It's not just like this easy task that I'm trying to solve. It's bigger than that.

I need to talk to someone. So do they have to chase support when something goes wrong? Are the economics what they expect at the end of the month when they get their residuals? Or is it completely different than what they thought they were going to get?

What does that look like for them? I think it's the agent needs to be sure that they're seeing their provider as someone who's going to protect this portfolio for them. Again, kind of going back to the first thing when we talked about, do you care about this portfolio as much as I care about it? And I think that's where you'll start seeing, you know, people are feeling around, you know, is this risk?

Did they just kind of sell me these goods? But now I'm getting back into the same old thing that I had in my other three providers, if they're somebody that was experienced. I think those are the pieces where you're either going to make it with that agent or you're not. And if it's a not, you won't see any deals come back through.

They will say, Nope, I'll go to the next guy. I'll go here. Because economics in this business today, you know, it's not vastly different. It's pretty close, right?

You're not going to have someone that's way up here and somebody that's way down here. So the economics you can't really depend on. It's really going to be the experience that they have that's going to drive that. Okay.

Well, we've talked so far a lot about sort of getting them, you know, recruited, getting them signed on, all of that great stuff. But let's talk about the post-sale experience. So they've made a sale. What is the greatest influence on whether they continue to bring you sales based on that kind of post-sale experience?

The agent is asking themselves. They're asking one question. And it is, do I want to put another one of my merchants with Payrock? And that is going to happen every single time that they get a hit on a merchant that's ready to move forward with them.

Do I want to put that merchant there? And the merchant experience is either an invite for that agent to say, Yep, here's my next deal. Or that merchant experience is the thing that's going to shut it down, where they say, Nope, not today. I can't risk it with this merchant.

He is too important to me. I don't want to go through the same thing I went through with the last merchant. So every merchant is important, especially from where we sit, because I think a lot of times when you look at some of the different channels, when they lose a merchant because of maybe it was something around economics, maybe it was a bad customer support experience. Maybe the merchant calls in and didn't like something.

That's a one-to-one. If I lose one merchant as payrock, it's really one merchant. If I lose one agent, it's a one-to-many, because that can be many merchants that I have not even seen yet because I lost one agent. So I always talk about this with my team is because one agent isn't the same as one merchant.

So when folks make decisions based on how does a merchant, you know, how is a merchant going to feel about a fee increase? How are they getting you're thinking on a one-to-one. What you really need to be talking about is how is that agent partner going to feel? Because he's the one to many.

And he's really ultimately making that decision of where am I going to put this merchant? Am I going to put them here or am I going to put them over there? And it's those types of, you know, experiences and what they're going through that's going to drive that decision on where they're going to put that merchant. Okay.

Well, thinking about what you said a minute ago about sort of the economics not being a major driver anymore because everyone's sort of similar. And then there's experience that obviously is incredibly important and can be a driver. What about product? I mean, we you didn't really mention that.

Is that like people come to payrock because of a product set often, or what are you what's your thought on that? I would say yes. I think you know, from a product standpoint, we've got some of the most competitive pricing products with our compliance surcharge program that we call reward pay. If you look at states are coming to the table very quickly where they're making their own state regulation around what you can and cannot do with a surcharge.

Here in Louisiana, where we are, we just they had and it's not through in conjunction with a card brand, because card brand already has their own rules for surcharge. But now the state of Louisiana says, hey, Mr. Consumer, if you get surcharged on a debit, you can then turn that information in to the attorney general's office, and they will then find a merchant. So being sure that you're having compliant pricing programs, one that can read bin tables to know that was a debit card versus a credit card.

What can get surcharged, what cannot. So we've got extensive programs around pricing programs. We've got best in class technology, some proprietary in terms of our ROC Terminal Plus, our ROC services, our rock giving products. We have been in tandem with a number of POS providers that we've seen huge success with.

I think everyone is waking up and realizing technology and POS and ISB and software is really the thing that's going to keep a lot of your merchants sticky. So from a product standpoint, I put us up against pretty much anyone. So there's not a vertical we can't solve for today. So I think from that standpoint, we are competitive with the Titans out there, with the smaller guys.

And, you know, we but we work to build it out every day. I think as we see things like agentic commerce, which is coming, you know, faster than we all expected. I think we continue to evolve in our technology stack to say, how does this make a merchant's experience better? How does this make a cardholder's experience better?

Because again, the agent wants the merchant to be happy, the merchant wants the cardholder to be happy. That's kind of this, and we want them all to be happy. So how do we use all of these technologies together to create that experience, you know, which ultimately creates a successful winning experience for us at Payrock? Well, you mentioned, and it's very true in this industry, something goes wrong.

I mean, it happens, right? We're not perfect, we're human, it's technology. So when something does go wrong, what does the provider or payrock in this case, what do you need to do to protect both the merchant relationship and the agent's confidence? I think the easy answer is the resolution.

You have to fix it. No matter what the it is, you have to fix that. And you need to understand that fixing it or providing that resolution doesn't always fix the relationship, right? I think that piece, the relationship with the agent, that can only be fixed by communication.

You need to make sure that they understand what happened in the situation, regardless of whose fault it is. Yeah, sometimes it may be our fault. Sometimes it's their fault, sometimes it's the merchant's fault, right? Because as we talk about technology, the scary part is sometimes you have these merchants who do have this really high-scale, you know, advanced POS, and they start getting in there and playing around with it and tapping on buttons.

And next thing you know, they're not able to get tips or they're not able to get this. And they don't tell anyone until after the shift. And so there's lots of things that can be a variable in understanding what's actually happening. But the first part is always to fix it.

The second part is to provide very clear communication around what happened, using the facts, using the data, how, you know, communicate to that agent, make sure that he understands what faults we may have and own up to your fault. You know, using the word, and I think everyone probably teaches their children this, an apology is not saying you're sorry, but. And I think a lot of times we lean on that because this isn't our family or it isn't this, but it's the same, you get the same feeling from it.

If I tell you, yeah, I'm sorry that you know we weren't able to, that we didn't turn the batch on like we said, but someone said you were supposed to call us back. That doesn't feel very good. And they're and that's all that they're gonna hear. They're not gonna hear any of the other pieces.

So making sure that that communication stays really strong. And I will tell you, Greg, some of the strongest relationships that I've ever built have actually come from difficult situations. The easy ones are easy, right? They like you, you'll buy them a beer, they'll buy you a beer.

Those are really great. But some of the best relationships I ever had came from this really difficult situation where then we had to kind of all come to the table and not in our best trust and own all of our pieces in this, and how we did that really created a path forward for us and saying, okay, she took off the armor. I did the same thing. We might have dropped a couple of F bombs in between, but we solved this, and now I really feel like there's some loyalty here and some genuineness that I can really say when I'm feeling, I know that she or he is going to do the same thing.

And that then I think creates this path of conversation, openness, feedback, positive and negative criticism, because we all need it to get better. And I think that's where you see this true growth start to happen with your partners. What behaviors indicate that an agent's trust is deepening or getting better, which ultimately translates into getting more, you know, merchant account growth. So, you know, you see you've done this for a long time.

You see these different behaviors. How do you know when you you're building their trust? I think there's a shift when from our side, we're constantly trying to be proactive. We're doing the outreach, we're sending the emails, we're making the check-in calls, we are scheduling a business review.

That's us. We're being the proactive side. They're our client. I think you see this shift when they start to call you.

When they reach out to you and say, I have this big deal, I would love your opinion on am I pricing this the right way? I really want to grow my business and I'm interested in getting into XY vertical. How can you guys help me? What should I be looking at?

What are some strategies around that? And I think when that switch happens, where they then become proactive instead of always being reactive, it starts to tell you that that shift in the behavior is an indicator that, okay, this trust is building. They're really understanding that I'm here to help them build their business and achieve whatever that goal may be. And that's part of having those conversations.

Do you understand what your partner's goals are? You know, I think sometimes we think that we all want to go out there and make a ton of money. And, but that's not always everyone's goal. You know, I've come across conversations where I'm thinking this guy wants to go and write a hundred deals a month.

And he's because in my mind, everybody should write a hundred deals a month, right? And he's like, oh no, babe, this is like my five-year retirement plan. I worked hard for 20 years already, 30 years. I really only want to do like 10 deals a month, and I want to stay in my little area, and I want to play golf on Friday.

So don't ever call me. But I think that's important to know because a conversation with someone who wants to drive 100 deals a month looks vastly different than the conversation with someone who is totally comfortable with just doing 10 deals a month. Both are important, right? This is a pennies game, so both are very important.

But I think how you talk to them and watching that behavior come and the guy that's doing 10, he may not proactively ever reach out to you. But understand that you know enough about him that you're not calling him on Friday because he's playing golf on Friday, that would mean the world to him. Whereas someone else might blow up his phone every Friday and he's like, I am so tired of them calling me on Fridays. Right.

So I think that's where you see some of that behavior change. And it becomes that partnership that is built on mutual respect. When you think about, you know, kind of taking that scenario to the next level of becoming like a strategic growth partner to. To this agent or this ISO office.

What do you feel like separates the providers that you know you get a couple of deals from someone? You know, there's sort of that that. And I'm not really the scenario you were talking about, more like they selectively only give you a couple of deals to becoming that like strategic growth partner, like in the true sense of a partnership. I think a provider, they want stick count.

You know, so wanting stick count makes you simply just a provider. Understanding your agent's business model, where, like we said, like where they want to go, that is what makes them a strategic partner. How can I help you get there? Ask the questions, understanding that is the difference between just being a provider.

I can just give you merchant services. You don't even have to talk to me. You can just fill out this MPA, somebody keys it in, it's all good. But if that's but if you want more than that, then we're going to look, how do we come become strategic?

How do we, but it's a give and take. If I'm going to give that to you, which is, you know, time is a thief. We only have so much of it. So I only have these 24 hours.

There's hundreds of partners. And if you're going to come to the table and you say, I want to be this, I want to be this kind of partner. I want to look for this, I want to do these things, then we respond with, I love that. Let's work on these plans together.

How do we do this? Let's do that. Versus someone who's just putting in stick counts, which is also great. But to them, I'm just a provider.

We don't have that interaction. We're not doing those things together. But when I show up and do these, it's going to produce stick counts in the end. But it's also what kind of stick count are we getting?

What kind of merchants are we getting? Sometimes it's not just the merchant, it's the revenue behind it. You know, that's the uh the driver as well. So it's taking all of those things into consideration when you're thinking about what is that difference between a provider, you know, am I making those proactive calls on the right days?

Because I know my partner doesn't want to call on Friday. Am I not? You know, versus just a provider who knows nothing about that partner. Well, one final question before we wrap up the show.

So, what's the most important thing that you want the audience to take away from today's conversation? I think most importantly, what I would want people to know and take away is that in this business, trust is not built on a contract. We all can sign them. I mean, these days you can get agreements via the web.

You can do all kinds of fillables and e-signs, and likely with AI, maybe not even talk to a real person. You might think that you are, but it may not even be a real person on the other end. This business is built on what happens next, not the pitch that you got, not the economics that you got. Because as good as they are, if you lose merchants because we couldn't provide the things that you needed, doesn't really matter.

So the pitch isn't even a thing. It's really what happens next. How did we resolve the problem? Who's answering those phone calls?

Did we meet those expectations that we sold you on to begin with? Did we level set those expectations to make sure that you weren't expecting something that we couldn't deliver to you? And I think that's really important because listen, we're all in sales. It is very easy to oversell what you can't do.

And I had a leader once say he lived and breathed by the motto of just sell it and we'll build it later. And that does work sometimes, but I think it as a whole, you have to be careful of what you're selling and making sure that you're not overselling the dream because they will get in there and they'll see underneath, you know, the covers that it isn't what they that they were sold on. And so to me, that's the worst part of it is I would like to come in with less expectations and blow your mind away than these really over the top, and then you know, only come in at that 75% level.

So, you know, I think partners want to know that they're contracting with someone who cares that cares about their business as much as they do, and that their success is always going to be our success because we can't have those pennies without them. So I think that's what I would lead with. But from a relationship side, that's the most important piece. Well, Andy, I think that's a great way to wrap up the show.

So I know your time is very valuable. So I really appreciate you being here. So thank you so much for being on the show today. It's always a pleasure.

And to the rest of you listeners out there, I thank you for your time as well. And until the next story. Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Trust Advantage podcast series. To learn more about Payrock, please visit www.

payrock.com.