Here are twenty things you will face as a Comcast Enterprise Account Executive (EAE) that may shock you and delay your successes in this position. Every sales job is hard and has its challenges. When betting your sales career on a company be sure you evaluate the Comcast Enterprise Account Executive pros and cons carefully. A very successful EAE with four years of experience at Comcast, and years in telecom, is quoted as saying “I do not think there is a more difficult sales job out there.” Don’t say you weren’t warned.
1. Low First Year Pay – Your offer letter will likely show your first-year target compensation to be around $115,000. If you’re coming from the telecom industry and have a book of business and client relationships to start with, you might hit that number. If you’re not from the industry expect to make about 26% less than that, or about $85,000. Is it fraudulent for them to put $115,000 in the offer letter knowing that few make that their first year? A good question for an employment attorney. One thing is certain, you’ll be doing the job of a senior sales professional for your first year, but make way less than your value to the company, or you might at another company in a similar job. If you want to be prepared for other potentially fraudulent Comcast hiring practices you might experience, please read this article too.
2. Confidential Compensation Plan – You won’t have a clue about how much commission you’ll earn until after you get hired and on board. You also won’t be able to determine how realistic the $50,000 target incentive compensation (commission) is. Comcast has declared their compensation plan to be confidential, so nobody can talk about it. I believe they don’t show it to prospective Enterprise Account Executives as many would realize it’s filled with elements that are not good for a sales person, and not take the job.
3. Educational Ramp – If you’re from the telecom industry and experienced selling fiber and metro ethernet and networking solutions, you’re good. If not, you’ve got a lot to learn. To the extent that you need to understand what you’re selling before you sell it, this can be a time suck. The training you get will give you a good overview of the services and technology, but you still won’t be able to answer most the questions an IT director will ask you, so you’ll need to always have a sales engineer with you on all appointments.
4. Limited Target Market – So who is your ideal company to sell to? It’s not the big ones, they are handled by the Comcast National Team. It’s not the bigger mid-market companies, as those are sold by the Comcast Majors Team. It’s not all the small to small/medium sized businesses as those are being heavily approached by the Comcast Small Business Sales Team, and really don’t need fiber. Right between the small and the medium sized business exists the elite small group of your target companies. But you’re not the only one selling this group Comcast services…
5. Other Sellers of Comcast Services – I heard one person say “If Comcast could sell their services out of vending machines, they would.” You will not be the only one selling Comcast to those prime mid-market companies. Comcast has partnered with thousands of telecom installers, consultants, phone providers, and others who can sell the same Comcast services as you. That means they are working just as hard to get in the door, and when they do, they can sell Comcast or many other telecom providers and lots of other services, while you can only sell one provider.
6. Lack of External Marketing Support – I can’t count how many times a potential customer said to me – “I didn’t know Comcast offered fiber.” Many businesses get three postcards per month advertising Comcast’s services. None of the marketing mentions anything about fiber optic services or the other advanced voice solutions Enterprise solutions you will offer. As potential customers are not aware Comcast offers enterprise grade fiber and other services, you’ll be educating people from scratch. No marketing means you should not expect to get any company provided leads.
7. Low-Priced Competition – In the major metro markets there can be many fiber providers, and many who are much lower priced than Comcast. You will need to be comfortable knowing you are selling a much higher priced service with negligible proven advantages. Additionally, as you won’t receive any training on the competitors, you’ll need to do your own studying to figure out all of their services and how Comcast compares so you can speak knowledgeably about the differences.
8. Undocumented Differentiation – To many businesses and IT guys, fiber is viewed as a commodity product. It’s hard to sell a commodity on anything but price. As everybody is making claims about their service, reliability, and speed, and there are NO independent market studies showing Comcast as superior in any of those areas, the person who gets the sale is often the one who creates the most fear and doubt about the other guy.
9. Long Sales Cycle – Most of the mid-market companies that need fiber probably are already on a 3 to 5-year contract with another provider. That means it can be a long time to get a shot at a potential client’s business. Couple this with needing budget approval it can be a long time from first contact to sale. Expect an 18-14 month ramp to get you to steady sales.
10. Sales Engineer Requirement – It’s recommended that you bring a Sales Engineer on every appointment. If you’re used to being in control of your sales process, and understanding everything about the product or service this will be a shocker. If you’re not from the telecom industry, you’ll rely on the engineer to answer many of the questions and to help craft a solution. Getting schedules coordinated for you, your engineer, and the client for the initial meeting and every follow-up meeting can be challenging and stretches out the sales cycle.
11. Recent Entry into Mid-Market and Enterprise space – Comcast only entered the Enterprise business space in the last 10 years and still considers itself a “startup” with all the snafus of a startup.
12. Great Small Business Internet – So how’s that a bad thing? I heard more than once that they couldn’t go with Comcast for their main fiber, because Comcast was the only cheap backup service.
13. No Admin Support – You will create all your own presentations, send all your own marketing emails, make 100% of your calls and deal with all your customer service issues.
14. No Appointment Setting / Cold-Calling Support – You will be making 100% of all the calls to set appointments. Your actual time selling in front of a customer will be miniscule compared to the hours spent doing $15 per hour cold-calling, emailing and sales support tasks.
15. Time to Manage Your Projects and Problems – Sales are great except for then you need to deal with managing the installation process and making sure things get done. There are project managers, but the many handoffs and lack of accountability means you will be riding shotgun on your deals.
16. Delays in Commission Payouts – I can’t mention details here as they are ‘’confidential” but just be aware that it can take a while for you to get a large portion of your commissions after the sale.
17. The Performance Improvement Plan – It’s what you’ll be put on when you don’t hit your quota, which you won’t, because they are too high, and based on an unrealistic 90-day rolling average. Even the best people who have been there for years and are on the President’s list go on the PLAN occasionally because you can’t really control when your deals close. In your weekly one on one with your manager you’ll have to sign lots of performance paperwork saying you acknowledge you’re not hitting quota. You won’t feel bad as most everyone on your team is on the plan too.
18. It’s Comcast – Comcast has a lot of haters. Comcast is legend for their horrible customer service, tricky billing, outages, and glitchy technology on the cable consumer side. What that means as you’ll be fighting an uphill battle with anyone who had a bad experience with their home services. Their thinking will be, “If you suck on the consumer side, how can you possibly be good on the business side?” You WILL pick up the occasional customer who has been with the competition, who ALSO occasionally lays a brick and disappoints.
19. Flakey Commission Tracking – I sold a few small business services in addition to enterprise services. I was not paid a commission on these for many months after they were installed, and probably would not have been had I not carefully reviewed my commission statement, and formally requested them. There is a disconnect here which will cost you if you don’t watch it. They could easily fix it, but I saw no desire to do so.
20. No Credit Card for Expenses – You’ll front all your sales expenses. Not a big deal, but if you’re parking downtown and taking a lot of clients to coffee, your out of pocket each month will be hundreds of dollars.
Every sales job is hard and has its challenges. Know that you’ll be facing these 20 challenges when you become a Comcast Enterprise Account Executive. If you take the job and one day feel like you’re doing the work of a junior sales person, and pushing a big boulder up a hill, don’t say you weren’t warned.