Description
The Senior Manager, U.S. Merchant Business Development is responsible for managing a portfolio of approximately 10-15 strategic merchant relationships across the industry verticals managed by the U.S. Merchant team.
This role serves as a primary Visa relationship owner, responsible for driving revenue growth, expanding executive relationships, and aligning client priorities with Visa's broad portfolio of products and services.
The Senior Manager will:
- Serve as the primary Account Executive and relationship owner for a portfolio of approximately 10-15 strategic merchant clients.
- Maintain and actively pursue a prioritized list of high-potential prospects outside the assigned portfolio, qualifying and advancing opportunities based on revenue potential, strategic value, and likelihood of execution.
- Develop and execute account plans that strengthen client relationships, expand executive engagement, and drive revenue growth.
- Prioritize client opportunities and allocate time and resources based on revenue potential, strategic value, and likelihood of execution.
- Build relationships across client organizations, including payments, finance, treasury, loyalty, digital commerce, and technology teams.
- Lead or support the negotiation, execution, and ongoing management of commercial agreements, including Debit Routing Agreements and other strategic revenue-generating partnerships.
- Own the end-to-end management of Value-in-Kind (VIK) across applicable accounts, including opportunity identification, client engagement, execution, activation, and measurement of business outcomes.
- Prospect, qualify, and advance co-brand credit and debit opportunities in partnership with issuer and internal Visa stakeholders.
- Drive sales of Visa products, value-added services, consulting, data, risk, acceptance, and emerging commerce solutions, including agentic commerce.
- Build and maintain a robust pipeline of opportunities while meeting revenue, product adoption, and portfolio growth objectives.
- Maintain high-quality account, contact, pipeline, forecasting, and opportunity records within Microsoft Dynamics (MSD) and other sales management tools, ensuring strong data integrity and reporting accuracy.
- Utilize AI-enabled sales tools, automation, and data insights to improve prospecting, client engagement, portfolio coverage, pipeline management, and scalable programs such as VIK.
- Coordinate cross-functional account teams to deliver a seamless client experience and maximize the value of Visa's relationship with assigned accounts.
- Provide strategic client, industry, and competitive insights to Visa leadership and product teams.
- Travel up to 20% of the time, generally averaging approximately one client-facing trip per month.
Qualifications
- 8 or more years of relevant work experience with a Bachelor Degree or at least 5 years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 2 years of work experience with a PhD
- Experience in strategic sales, business development, account management, relationship development, payments, or related client-facing commercial roles.
- Experience supporting merchants within one or more industries represented across the U.S. Merchant organization is a plus.
- Demonstrated success developing client relationships and contributing to revenue growth objectives.
- Strong understanding of the U.S. payments ecosystem, including merchants, issuers, acquirers, debit routing strategies, and co-brand programs.
- Experience negotiating and managing commercial agreements.
- Proven ability to develop pipeline, create business cases, and advance complex sales opportunities.
- Experience leveraging CRM, sales management, AI-enabled productivity, and analytics tools to improve sales effectiveness and portfolio performance.
- Excellent communication, presentation, and influencing skills.
- Strong analytical and strategic thinking capabilities with the ability to translate client needs into commercial opportunities.
- Highly collaborative, self-motivated, and results-oriented with the ability to operate effectively in a matrixed organization.
- Proficiency in Microsoft Dynamics, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.