Staying Connected and Leading Virtually with VP of Sales At Broadridge, Scott Anderson

1Huddle Podcast Episode #5

On this Bring It In podcast episode, 1Huddle’s CEO and Founder Sam Caucci sat down with Scott Andersen, the VP of Sales at Broadridge who has been in the financial service world for 25 years. 

On this episode of Bring It In season one, Scott sat down with Sam and discussed hiring, staying connected, leading virtually, innovation, and providing the best service for clients.

Audio available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. 

TOP 3 HIGHLIGHTS

Below are some of the insights Scott shared during our chat, edited for length and clarity. You can find more Bring It In podcast episodes here.

• “In the early days of the pandemic, we had a twist on that tagline and it’s ‘ready to help’. So we need to be there to help our clients.”
• “I truly feel that as a sales leader, you work for the people that we call working for us.”
• “We call them the ABCDs of innovation; AI, Blockchain, Cloud, and Digital.”

FULL TRANSCRIPTION

Sam: So to open up Scott, tell us a little bit about you and Broadridge.

Scott: I’m Scott Andersen. I am Vice President of sales at Broadridge. I run a portion of our account management organization, the emerging accounts. I’ve been at Broadridge roughly about five years now. I spent the last 25 years within financial services, but I’ve been with Broadridge for five years now. 

Sam: Broadridge, pretty strong culture all the way around the horn. Talk to me about sales culture. What does sales culture mean at Broadridge?

Scott: So sales culture at Broadridge is very roll up your sleeves. Everybody’s willing to get the work done, from the CEO on down the chain. A very can do attitude when it comes to sales engagement, right? It’s also very customer centric, right? Trying to solve the issues and the problems our clients have by offering and serving up solutions that can aid them in their day to day.

Sam: We’re in the middle of COVID-19, businesses have been obviously impacted. How has that impacted you and your group?

Scott: Yeah, so it’s obviously a shift with what we call the new normal, but you know, we’re in the midst of a global pandemic, it has impacted us. Right. It has impacted us by the way we communicate with our clients.

So we have to do things virtually now.The opportunistic meetings that you would have if you’re on a client site where you’re meeting with the COO, but then you pass in the president’s office and you just drop in to say hello, those types of things don’t happen. So you have to be a little bit more prepared and a little bit more conscious of the fact that things have to be done in a virtual manner.

So I’m teaching my team where we’re doing some training around how to hold an effective virtual meeting to make sure that our clients are getting our clients comfortable with doing video conversations like you and I are doing right now. Six months ago we were on hold in this.

So now we’re starting to host virtual meetings and what becomes a little bit more challenging as you can’t go in with a 40 page PowerPoint deck and read a room anymore. The way we deliver messages has to change. I think the presentation style has to change and adapt to the new normal.

Sam: I talk to a lot of sales leaders or CEOs who some believe like we’re going to get totally back to normal. Some say we’re going to stay remote forever. I guess, where do you sit on what you think is going to stick for your team? 

Scott: The good that might come out of this is the fact that we can do things a little bit more virtually and a little smarter.

I don’t think we’re going to go back to  complete business travel all the time. I think people are gonna be able to be a little more calculated. We had an internal leadership meeting the other day and we had this conversation and it was like, look, we can think whatever we want to think. Right. We can think that it’s going to go back to completely normal or it’s going to change forever. The question is what is the client’s comfort level going to be. Are they going to be comfortable with somebody coming to their offices? What are their policies going to be? So I think the jury is going to be out on that, but I think things are going to change.

Sam: Talk to me about hiring at Broadridge right now. What advice do you have to maybe college graduates or younger people that are looking to make a career switch or who are coming out of school? As a sales leader, what should they be doing right now? 

Scott: My policies on hiring, it’s funny a quote that kinda my mantra that I live by when I hire people is I hire the attitude and I train the skill. I think attitude is something that we can’t control when we take a look at even what we’re going through today. When I’m looking to hire new talent, I look always at the attitudes first and then I can always train the skill. 

I mean, to that point, I hired somebody in the midst of this pandemic. I took somebody from one of the other teams at Broadridge and brought them onto my team. It’s something that he wanted to do for a very long time. He’d reached out to me two years ago and he kept on top of it. So this guy, Marcos is his name. The guy’s very aggressive, but in a very good way. He showed me what he wanted, I hired him. We had three different trips planned for him to go out and visit with clients, with myself and some of the other associates. And, boom. Travel freeze.  

No one’s in offices. So, I gotta be honest, Sam. I used your tool in a lot of ways for product training. Right. I got on the phone with Roger, we got things spun up really quick on some of the solutions that he needed to learn. And we got it spun up real quick and we got very positive results out of it. So I want to thank you for that because 1Huddle helped me onboarding him, although he knew Broadridge because he was at Broadridge, there’s certain solutions that I needed him to learn in order to be effective in the role he’s in today. And without tools like 1Huddle, I couldn’t do it.

Sam: I think that’s what’s happening now too, the way that software was built, especially for companies, it was built for an era and things have now changed. The concept of the future of work, it’s not in the future anymore, it’s here now! Have you learned anything, cause you mentioned you’re doing a lot of training. Obviously you’re involved in that process. Have you learned anything about yourself as a leader when you know, for the last eight weeks you’re managing people through your computer screen? 

Scott: I’ve gotten to know my team a lot better. I’m getting to know them on a different level now. Right. Because what I did soon after the pandemic hit, I created a team happy hour every week on Thursday afternoons. So we’ve been holding those for the past couple of months. And then I do a check in another two days during the week for a half hour.

So the happy hours and an hour it’s very little business. It’s more just talking about the environment, things that are happening, who’s drinking a craft beer. Who’s on their sixth pot of coffee, things of that nature. And kids and dogs are included. It’s a very good environment, so you get to know people on a different level.

So I think, being a leader, a sales leader in this environment, it’s about, and I said this when I first got the position to run the team I’m running today, is I work. Right? My success is their success. So I got to do whatever I can to make them comfortable in the environment that they’re in in order to be productive, because if they’re productive, I’m productive.  So I truly feel that as a sales leader, you work for the people that we call working for us.

Sam: More than ever today, leadership is being challenged. We could agree with that. What would be a piece of advice that you have to leaders out there right now who just like you are waking up, trying to get the most out of their people. What’s like a message or quote, something simple that you would have to say to them that helps center you? 

Scott: Well, two, we already talked about the attitude of who to hire, right. You know, you hire the attitude, not the talent. I’m sorry. You hire the attitude then you teach the skill. The other thing- I see your daughter running by, I have a ten-year-old daughter who plays competitive sports. She’s a competitive soccer player, you know, plays on a travel team, the whole nine yards. One of these that I tell her a lot and it does apply to business as well, is hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard. 

So, I look at my team and what I ensure, what I expect. And what I witness is everybody’s putting in a hundred percent effort. We might not see the results today because of the environment we’re in, but I think taking care of your clients, being their advocate, getting in front and getting in front of them, asking the questions with empathy, it’s in these moments and companies really get, I don’t think they get necessarily built, but the best brands come together right now.

Sam: And I’m on the phone with some CEOs, C-level executives, managers, leaders, who are making the wrong choice right now. Listen, if you’re a restaurant, obviously if you’re cut to 25% capacity, it makes sense. You’ve got to make cuts. You have to do what you have to do to survive, but there are some businesses that don’t have to do the cuts that they’re doing, that are choosing to do it. I just think those are the ones that are going to lose. It’s not that it’s, to your point, right or wrong. Everybody’s going to remember how you treated them in the next few years, right now.

Scott: No, a hundred percent. I couldn’t agree with you more. I think right now, one of my marketing taglines is ‘ready for next’. Because we’re doing things from an innovative perspective.We call them the ABCDs of innovation; AI, Blockchain, Cloud, and Digital, right. In the early days in the pandemic, we had a twist on that tagline and it’s ‘ready to help’. So we need to be there to help our clients.

We serve a fair share of wall street brokers and banks that are dealing with the things we’re dealing with. We have to be there to ensure that they are being as productive and they’re out there firing on all cylinders. So we have to be there to help our clients.

Right. Uh, you know, one of the things that we’ve done, specifically with our advisory type clients, is we have some content that’ll help an advisor communicate with their client base. So we’re offering free trials of that, sign up for it now. So during the pandemic where you can’t do face-to-face meetings, we have some curated content that you can send whether it’s COVID related or tax related or saving for retirement, things of that nature, we’re able to help. This one example of how we’re able to help the financial industry.

Sam: I liked the ready for next, the ready to help. I saw that on the website. So, cool. This was perfect, Scott, I appreciate it.

Scott: Appreciate it. Have a good day, take care.

Topics Discussed: Sales, Culture, Hiring, Onboarding, Training, Leadership, Innovation, Tech