Meet Business Development Manager, Sam Leybourne
As our sales team continues to expand, we sat down with Sam, Business Development Manager in our Dublin office. Sam shared insights into working at Fire and his journey into the payments industry.
Hey Sam! So, how long have you been with the company?
Since November 2022, so almost 2 years now and loving every moment.
What does your job involve?
My role at Fire includes being responsible for Fire’s Irish and EU sales opportunities. Handling the complete sales cycle through from networking & prospecting to contracts and implementation, being a BDM allows me the opportunity to assist companies of all sizes implement better payment processes for their business.
What do you find most rewarding about your role as Business Development Manager?
It may sound cliché but it truly is seeing businesses improve their payment processes and in turn save time, money and improve functionality. Being a product led sales team, it is all about providing good products to businesses that would benefit. Working through each stage of implementation with our customers is incredibly rewarding and building strong relationships through this process is especially fulfilling.
What is the most exciting challenge you’ve worked on yet?
Each week has a new exciting challenge to face when working in sales and it’s no different at Fire. It’s hard to pick out just one but the challenge that jumps to mind is a customer recently onboarded with a nation-wide impact. The solution was incredibly bespoke and required multiple design stages and a complex onboarding process as a vendor. Since integrating with Fire, they have seen a significant reduction in internal processing times enabling them to submit payments in an earlier SEPA cycle. By reducing these processing times, it has enabled the business to free up resources, reduce manual error and ultimately, get the money to their beneficiaries’ bank accounts quicker.
What’s your background? Why did you want to join a company like Fire?
My background has always been in payments. My latest role before Fire was working for a payments facilitator selling into emerging markets. Seeing the success of account-based payments such as PIX in Brazil, I always had an interest in focusing on a market more local to home where I could see impacts first hand. Naturally, I wanted to join a best-in-class digital payments company with a team who are at the forefront of innovation. With this, Fire was a no-brainer. Now we just need to see open banking (or A2A payments) become as successful in Ireland as PIX is in Brazil!
Summarise the culture in three words!
Driven, collaborative, expert.
What do you like most about working in the payments industry?
In this day and age, everyone is a consumer of digital payments. From paying for lunch to getting paid, payments are involved in all walks of life. By working in payments and having an interest in innovation across the industry, there is always something new to keep your attention.
And how about outside of work? What do you get up to in your spare time?
Self-proclaimed sportsman with an emphasis on the self-proclaimed. A combination of football, running and golf make good use of my evenings. Beside sports, I love cars – both driving and learning new mechanical skills.
Do you have any unusual or quirky skills or fears?
Not sure I would call it too quirky but I have always had a naturally impressive sense of direction. As far as fears, there is nothing too far outside the ordinary – I’ve never been too bothered by creepy crawlies, although put me on I’m a celeb and I might tell you differently.
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Meet Operations Analyst, Kelsey Fagan
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