Good Morning. BI recently released its list of rising stars on Wall Street and asked them for advice on getting ahead now that AI can handle a lot of the work entry-level analysts used to do. My favorite piece of advice is: “Don’t let AI do the thinking for you”. Because once AI is making all the decisions and you’re just doing what it says… aren’t you the robot? That’s a scary thought. Anyways… Let’s get into today’s Follow Up. (:

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A paper cut between your fingers… Clipping your fingernail just a little too short… Calling your cable provider to cancel…

Three of life's most painful experiences.

If you’ve ever tried to cancel your TV or internet, you know what I’m talking about.

In 2014, Ryan Block posted the final 8 minutes of his call with a Comcast rep. He asked multiple times to cancel his account, but the rep kept pressing for a reason and trying to talk them into staying. That recording went viral.

A month later, Comcast’s internal sales training materials surfaced. We got our hands on the PDF, and it's a pretty wild look at the sales playbook behind those customer service calls.

Here’s what their reps were taught.

The guide starts out with the S4 framework: Start. Solve. Sell. Summarize.

In other words, greet the customer, fix the problem, sell them something, and then recap the call.

Now remember… this guide is for the customer service reps who take calls from customers experiencing issues. These aren’t new customers looking to upgrade or change their service.

So after the rep greets the customer and fixes their issue, they’re taught to try to sell the customer something new. (I kinda love it… )

Safe to say Comcast is a fan of our favorite sales creed… “Always Be Closing.”

The transition page lays out exactly how they expect their reps to go from helping the customer to selling them…

Oh, your remote’s broken? Sounds like you need a new (more expensive) internet package. 😄

All of these transitions are a way to do discovery on the customer and figure out what else they can upsell them on.

And all of the reps get graded on how well they do this. A strong transition earns six points. A basic one earns three. And if they skip a sales opportunity or pitch before fixing the problem, they get zero.

The objection examples get specific and lay out exactly how reps should deal with them.

The customer doesn't watch TV? Ask if someone else at home does.
They use Netflix? Pitch faster internet.
The package costs too much? Ask what they watch and find another bundle.

This definitely isn’t unique to Comcast.

Every sales team should have some sort of objection battle card like this as a part of their training material. Bonus points if it has all of the talking points against your closest competitors.

And then there’s a section about asking for the sale. Arguably the most important part of the entire sales process.

This part is gold. They train their reps on the 3 types of closes to use and how to create urgency. This stuff is sales 101.

You can take the multiple-choice, assumptive, and summary closes and rewrite them for just about any company in any industry.

Rather than just giving this guide to their reps and expecting them to follow it, they grade their reps on how well they follow the 4 S’s. And each S has a different importance level.

Greeting, relating, and setting the call agenda is 22%.
Identifying & solving their problem is 27%.
Transitioning into selling & closing the deal is 20%.

And the remaining 31% is about their behavior, documentation, and wrapping up the call.

Now… if you find yourself on the other end of one of these calls with a trained weapon Comcast rep, here’s how to get out of it.

When a rep finds themselves in one of these scenarios, they’re not supposed to present a new offer.

Apparently you’ve just got to flat-out say “Don’t sell to me.” Let me know if that works. (;

Today’s newsletter was written by Nic Conley