Meltdown Sales Advice from a Top CEO

I give CEOs a lot of guff in this blog, but there's one CEO who I think is absolutely top rate: Bob Carr, founder and CEO of Heartland Payment Systems, one of the largest processors of debit and credit card payments in the United States.

His company processes nearly $40 billion of payments per year, but more importantly, they're a company that focuses on selling. Heartland is 100 percent commission and many of their reps have become quite wealthy. In fact, when the company went public, sixty-three employees became millionaires; fifty of them were salespeople.

Bob himself donates extremely large amount to charity, in a proportion that makes most CEOs look like pitiful pikers. Bob is just a really nice guy... and a great manager. I'm a big fan.

Anyway, I recently asked him, via email, to give you guys some advice on what how to sell during the downturn. He called me back the next day (!) and left m