{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Portfolio Perspective: Managing Risk & Seizing Opportunity","title":"Trust, Credit, and the Middle Market: What It Really Takes to Get Deals Done","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3923,"description":"In this episode of Portfolio Perspective: Managing Risk & Seizing Opportunity, Andrew Pace sits down with Bruce Brandon, Vice President of Indirect Business Development and Training at TCS Equipment Finance, to explore how trust, credit discipline, and vendor relationships shape deal flow in the middle market broker channel.\nMost brokers spend their careers in small ticket, app-only territory, where a credit score and a Paydex number get a deal approved in 24 hours. Then, once or twice a year, a $500,000 or $1 million opportunity lands on their desk, and the playbook that worked for everything else stops working. Bruce Brandon has built his role at TCS around that exact moment.\nBruce is a 25-year veteran of the equipment finance industry, with leadership experience at Onset Financial, Pacific Western Bank, Marquette Equipment Finance, and Bank Financial in Chicago, and a track record of generating well over $100 million in new business over his career. At TCS, he runs national indirect business development through brokers, vendors, and manufacturers in the $300,000 to $30 million middle market, while also training the firm's new salespeople.\nThe conversation covers a lot of ground: why vetting a broker and vetting a transaction are two completely different processes, what separates audited financials from reviewed and compiled statements and why that distinction changes how fast a deal can move, and what TCS learned from the trucking downturn about how quickly asset values can turn against a lender. Bruce also gets into the vendor side of the business, where relationships often live with a single salesperson rather than a company, and why that makes vendor-sourced deals harder to predict than they look.\nBruce is direct about where speed comes from and where it doesn't. Deals backed by audited financials move quickly. Deals backed only by tax returns don't, and he'd rather tell a broker that upfront than promise a turnaround he can't deliver.\nKey Topics...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/YAp1sD8605iAhnj8hdb-ZqxhPWIeBVU1K5D-1nxaW4Y/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9mNWJj/NzczNGQxNzczMmFi/MmY2MjYwYTY4NDRl/MWUwNC5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}