Was Nick Randall’s move from SC Austereo to Fairfax a smart one?
Hands up those, who when they were at school dreamt of a career in sales? It’s a rhetorical question that sales trainers often ask, safe in the knowledge that no one in living memory has ever raised their hand.
With a degree in economics, Nick Randall was prepared for a career in finance. Yet, as almost everyone in sales does, fell into the job by happenstance. “I worked at a bank. My dad never liked his job. He lived for the weekend. And I didn’t like my job at the bank either. But I thought that that’s how work is meant to be,” recalls Randall.
In 1999 he quit the bank and decided to take some time off to travel and see the world. But before he boarded the plane, his brother who worked in media, insisted Nick go for an interview as a sales rep for Austereo in Melbourne. Says Randall, “I didn’t know if I really wanted to do it. I didn’t actually understand it. And my brother said, just do it. The sales manager’s a good mate – just go and have a chat.
“I loved what transpired from that job interview. Before I knew, it’s been 14 years to where I am now.”
Randall had worked his way up through Austereo from a rep at Fox FM to Senior Group Sales Manager, Melbourne, Director of Sales, Brisbane to Director of Sales, Sydney. He also won an ACRA for Best Integrated Sales Promotion. He came out of the merger with Southern Cross as National Sales Director of a hugely expanded empire that included a vast regional radio and television network. And yet, he decided to pack all that in and follow SCA expat Adam Lang to Fairfax Radio.
radioinfo: So, what lured you away from SCA?
Randall: A couple of reasons. To be honest, I’ve always admired the Fairfax brand. I grew up reading the Age. I love the Age. I love 3AW – even when it was Southern Cross owned.
My parents are in their late 80’s. I went down and saw Mum and Dad. And mum asked, where is it you are going to work? I told her I’m going to work for this radio group and they are owned by Fairfax. She said, your grandfather used to be the subeditor of the Age. And as silly as that sounds, it made sense to me.
Even when I was working in radio at FM, when the whole Underbelly thing was going on and John Sylvester was breaking the story about the underworld at 8:30 on a Wednesday, everyone found a radio to tune in to 3AW. If you wanted to listen to the best football call, you went to 3AW.
Another reason was that Michael Anderson’s on the board of Fairfax. He was a terrific CEO. He’s very strategic and built an incredible company when he was at Austereo.
But the main reason… you know, I worked with Adam Lang when I was in Brisbane – he was head of all our revenue and yield, our inventory team. And then getting to work with him as the general manager of Sydney and also as the COO of SCA.
He is an exceptionally impressive operator who’s got a vision. He’s very disciplined. He’s got a real magnetism about him. He is exceptionally fair. He doesn’t have an ego. He’s not worried about what people say about him, he just gets things done.
radioinfo: I get the impression you admire your boss…
Randall: I’ve learnt over the years, that wherever I go, it will be a lot about who the CEO is. Working with Adam, I get that he wants to create something fantastic. You’ve got this purpose and direction that you’re buying in to. So I love getting out of bed every day.
radioinfo: So, it had nothing to do with the money?
Randall: There was a very lucrative remuneration structure – which it should be as a National Sales Director.
radioinfo: I guess they’d be worried about hiring a Sales Director who was rubbish at negotiating a package for himself…
Randall: It was an exceptionally quick negotiation. Adam doesn’t muck about with those sorts of things. He believed that that was the value that I was. And I agreed.
radioinfo: In other words the package is commensurate with the effusive praise you’ve just given him…
Randall: I’m trying to say it so that it doesn’t sound like effusive praise. But honestly, the money comes last, it really does. The person you work for. The culture. The role description, the remit, the team around you – that’s where it’s at. And then finally the money.
I’ve had a few recruiters call me over the journey. There was one particular national sales role, not in radio, and I remember I was driving through Holbrook (VIC) and I actually pulled over and got out of the car to talk to this recruiter and said, I know I’m not worth that much. It was a ridiculous amount of money that was being thrown around.
radioinfo: You mentioned culture, is it very different at Fairfax to what you knew at SCA?
Randall: Austereo has a great culture. It’s very much about winning and creating great work. There is a definite belief that they are number one and that they lead Australian radio – that they wrote the book on radio and no one contributed to any of the chapters. Not even a footnote.
They’re right at the top, so there’s a lot of looking over the shoulder – which I disagreed with. Whereas here, we are on the way up.
At Fairfax, everyone has seen the road ahead and is really excited – what are we going to create today? It’s a ground breaking kind of culture here whereas there (at SCA) it was all about hanging onto the number one position. Still, it was a very happy place to work. I loved my 14 years there. I left a real piece of me over there.
I got this great email written to me by Nikki Rooke who used to be the head of Agency Sales for Sydney and then went over to Channel 7. It was just after I resigned and it said something like, At Austereo, which is such a great place, you are number one – you have these wonderful people around you. And when you’ve been there for so long, you just can’t imagine yourself being anywhere else. Yet, what you will find is that all that can happen somewhere else too.
There are equally talented people here at Fairfax. There are parts of this business that are friggin’ impressive. Go and spend some time with Clarke Forbes (National Content Director) or Bill Barrington in the syndication business and you go, wow these are really impressive people and they’ve all got that energy.
I’ve been really blown away with the culture here at 2UE and that’s the one that I see most days. I commence my travel this week and I am going to be travelling a lot
Peter Saxon