Growth, leadership and navigating your career with Comcast Business SVP Tracy Pitcher

0:00You are listening to and watching the Builders podcast where I interview CEOs, entrepreneurs, and leaders about building their business and career. Today, I speak with Fortune 50 executive Tracy Pitcher. She is the SVP of Comcast Business for the Central Division. And Tracy gives a masterclass on articulating go-to-market in a large organization. And I've got to say, you should stick around for the last 10 minutes where Tracy gives some very candid and real advice on navigating your career. Thanks for listening.

0:36Hi, Tracy. How are you? Good to see you. I'm great, John. How are you today? I'm doing really good. Thanks for being on the podcast. Comcast, your employer, is one of the biggest and most recognized brands in the world, even if you're not in a region served by Comcast. But Comcast business may not be well understood by the audience. Can you start by sharing the size and scope of Comcast business, your role, and then how you help businesses grow? First of all, thank you for having me. I'm delighted to be here. But yeah, let's talk about Comcast Business a little bit. So Comcast Business launched in 2006.

1:12We are a leading provider of connectivity solutions. We're approaching 10 billion in revenue, annual revenue. We have a global footprint with about 2.6 million customers serving 102 countries. So it's a very diverse clientele. We serve everybody from the solopreneur all the way up to Fortune 100 companies. And we cross really every vertical. So including but not limited to, you know, health care, finance, manufacturing, retail, food and beverage, hospitality, government, education. We really cover it all. So that's who we are and the breadth of what we do. In my capacity as senior vice president for Central Division, I oversee and I'm responsible for what I'll call the performance and growth of Comcast business across the 12 states that make up the Central Division.

2:01And this is all about ensuring that Comcast Business is the trusted partner of our customers throughout their entire journey. So maybe perhaps beginning with local messaging, the sales channels, the order and installation process, and then certainly the post-sales experience for the entire time that we have this relationship with our customers. And it's all about delivering the right service at the right time to the right customer. I was surprised to hear that Comcast business was in 102 countries. I assumed it was U.S. only. My bad for that. Let me go the other direction. What's your point of view on, I'm guessing maybe Illinois is in the central.

2:43Yes, it is. How do you speak to a Chicagoan locally, but also sort of say you've got the stability of an international organization? Yeah, so we do have to customize based upon what the customer is looking for. So I'll give you a couple examples. And this applies to Chicago or otherwise. But we might be serving a home-based business, for example, who wants a simple broadband connection and some security edge, and they might actually order that from us online. They could in person as well, but likely online. But then we do much more complex solutions. I'll give you an example. So I'm here in Atlanta, Georgia, and we service the battery in Atlanta.

3:25Now, the battery is where Truist Park is located, and it's where the Atlanta Braves play. So here in the battery, we service this area with two 100 gig Ethernet lines, 250 miles of fiber optic cable, 320 Wi-Fi access points, another 800 of those inside Truist Park. And then as the battery, which is a mixed use area, we service the hotels, the restaurants, the experiences. All of that happens right here in the battery and Comcast business services at all. And so I think that sort of demonstrates how we customize for where you are and what you need. But I also think it demonstrates the breadth and the flexibility of the solutions that we have.

4:09So that's just an example of how we bring it all together. Did you know that Builders is sponsored by business.com? I'd love to tell you about a new free membership from business.com for small business decision makers. It's called business.com plus, and it's designed to address the pain in selecting new products and services. What is the pain you might ask? It's things like knowing which vendor is best for your specific business, negotiating pricing, having access to someone who can answer questions for you. The new membership, Business.com Plus, handles all of that with a dedicated advisor, pre-negotiated pricing, and solutions tested and reviewed by experts.

4:49Check it out at business.com slash plus. That's business.com slash P-L-U-S. And you have to flex up. I was at the Dodgers game last night. And being connected when you're at the field, and I know I'm talking about from a consumer perspective, But at the field, letting your friends know that you're having this great experience, you know, capturing all all all the moments, interacting with what's on the big screen. All of that is incredibly important to having a great fan experience right now, which which is probably, you know, a big part of why we were looking up last night. Like the Dodgers make, you know, four million dollars in tickets, food and everything, every every game.

5:29That's really cool. I'm curious about how you interact and reach your prospective customers. I have a lot of or more experience, I should say, in B2B. There's the rise of B2C. There's a rise of social media advertising, new platforms, influencers. And so B2C marketing has been really upended in the last decade. Do you think B2B marketing has seen a similar seismic shift? And as you're making those decisions in a business unit, what are the opportunities and challenges of reaching a decision maker, whether it's a home business or the person who's deciding whether or not Comcast should serve the battery?

6:09I think you're right. There's been these significant shifts in marketing, both on the B2C and the B2B side. If I go back 20 years, I think direct mail was potentially one of the top marketing solutions. right? And it just doesn't play that way anymore, right? So we have had these major changes, and I do think they mirror what you're seeing in the B2C space. But you will find Comcast Business on social media. You'll find us in a variety of applications and digital assets. And, you know, digital really is critical in terms of how you show up. So with strong digital and social, that presence has to really have the right content in order to inspire action.

6:50And so you really do You have to have not only a presence, but the right kind of presence. But in terms of how we find and connect with prospects and customers, we also really engage in, you know, some people call them influencers. I'll say brand ambassador. So for us, for example, professional golfer Billy Horschel, he's a brand ambassador for us. We worked very closely with him at the Players Championship this spring down in Sawgrass. We'll continue to work with him on a go forward basis. But that's important, right? When you think about golf and you think about our customers, that's a great place to meet our customers.

7:25Sponsorships are something that have been around for a long time, but I think they still play a role on both B2C and B2B. So for us in B2B, it might be a CIO award event that we choose to sponsor, or I think I just gave you the example of TPC. We're a sponsor of TPC. So that plays a role. But you also started to talk a little bit about technology and the transformation there. there's definitely been shift in the tools and the platform that you use to find your prospects. So I think a good example might be LinkedIn Navigator. I think a lot of folks use that to find clients and prospects. But then there are other tools out there that really help you customize your message, maybe to the individual, to the role they play, or even to their industry.

8:10You know, I'm going to speak to somebody in healthcare differently than I speak to somebody and finance. And then all of that requires that you leverage technologies like AI so that you can gather the information, tailor the information, and customize that content to find the prospect or the existing customer and really connect with them in a more meaningful way, really enhance that engagement. And then you mentioned connecting locally a minute ago, so I'll spend a minute on that too. We do still show up in our communities. As you mentioned, some communities have different things happen in communities at different times.

8:45So as part of the Central Division, yes, I support Chicago, but I also support Miami, believe it or not. And those are two very different cities. So we have to meet our customers where they are. Not necessarily a marketing engine. In fact, it's not a marketing engine at all. One of the ways we do that is we have a program that's called Comcast Rise. And so Comcast Rise came alive in 2020 when all of the small businesses were suffering with COVID. So we have helped more than 14 ,000 small businesses to date. But thinking about 2025, we've selected five cities across the country. We will select 100 small business owners from each one of those cities, and they will get a Comcast Rise grant.

9:29And that grant is made up of media support, tech makeovers, education and learning tools, a coach, and even a$5 ,000 cash grant. So it's all about helping those small businesses grow and thrive. So yeah, lots of change. But I think if nothing else, I hope I've emphasized that there is no one method, there is no one medium. Like you've really got to be everywhere that you think your customers and prospects are going to be. You got to show up and you got to show up in a way that's meaningful to them. I love that. I want to ask a couple, I want to go down a couple of level on a couple of those things.

10:03But let me start, let me start with enterprise customers. So your largest, your You know, there may be ways to open the door via LinkedIn Navigator or inviting them to TPC and showing them a good time. But I'm curious about sort of the mix and importance of face to face with the largest enterprise deals that are happening today. Could you give the audience some context on how you think about that? Sure. So I'll rewind just a little bit and say, you know, brand perception is really key to our growth. And by the way, thank you for giving us an opportunity to talk about ourselves a little bit and help us create some of that brand awareness.

10:41But that's really critical because when you are engaging with enterprise customers, you know, first of all, they're going to probably do some research online about you. And one of the things that I think is so meaningful and so critical is to really have recognition and be represented on the industry leaderboards. And so that's something that's really important because if I'm a key decision maker, that's going to be one of my reference points. I'm going to go to those leaderboards and say, is Comcast business on any of those boards? So we've been making actually great progress in that area. In fact, in 2024, we've been recognized across all of the priority solutions.

11:20So that means network solution boards we've been recognized for, cybersecurity managed solutions. I think maybe the most recent one is VSG Vertical Systems Group has named us the number one SD-WAN provider in terms of the number of sites, surpassing another well-known, not-to-be-named competitor of ours. But really, this is a big part of it for us. So we're going to continue to focus on earning our spot on those leaderboards as a way to really engage with those enterprise customers. Because as you know, I can't have a sales rep, you know, knocking on the door of a tall, shiny building. They're probably not going to make it past security.

11:59So it is really about being on those leaderboards. It's about having those sponsorships. It's about creating those personal engagements. That's what's going to bring it all together. And then back to using tools and technologies so that we can reach out to a prospect in a way that says, huh, I'm interested. I do want to have a further conversation with you and consult with you, Comcast Business, on how we can address our business needs. Yeah, I think it's important for that multi-million dollar sale or larger, I guess, how many touch points are required to influence the decision maker. And you may not know whether or not the sponsorship of an arena played into that, but you do know that it's one of many, many touch points that, that gets someone to make a decision.

12:47I want to ask another question. I don't know if personalization is the right, the right way to say it, but you talked about, you know, a healthcare business and another business and speaking differently to that. And that, that makes, that makes sense to me. It also strikes me as a challenge because you have, you, and maybe I don't know how your, how your field marketing or sales teams are set up, if they're set up by category or set up by location, but, but, but how do you, how do you arm the people on the ground with the right information to speak to those different categories? Because there's so many different types of businesses out there.

13:20Yeah, so multiple ways. So first of all, we obviously do a lot of research on the different verticals. We attend and participate in the variety of conventions, for example, that those organizations have. So we're there and we're listening to what they're talking about. So I think both healthcare and finance, for example, are very interested in security. So those might be parallel conversations that you have because everybody cares about security, but it might look a little bit different for them than maybe it does for retail. You know, retail wants to protect the credit card. These other folks have to protect proprietary, different types of proprietary information.

13:57But a big part of it is all of that research that we talked about so that you know what those industries are actually talking about. It's paying attention to earnings calls. It's paying attention to 10 K's. And it's also, as you mentioned, having sales reps that are designed to follow certain verticals. Now, there's some that can sell all over. But again, you want to get, you know, we have specific sellers that get involved with government, different sellers that handle education, different sellers that handle health care. So we really do break it up so that they become experts in those spaces so that they can have those meaningful conversations and can be equipped to culminate all of the research that's done so they can, again, engage those different prospects.

14:44And what do they need? What are they looking for? And what's on the cutting edge for them? So that's what we do in those spaces. Yeah, it's really interesting because there aren't that many businesses in the US that probably have the size and sales force of Comcast, but there's so many different ways to slice it up by size of business, by region, by industry. And so it sounds like you all have taken kind of a hybrid approach to that. And the industries that require specialization, like government might be one of those, then you have people for that. That's interesting. I'd like to shift a little bit and ask about customer retention.

15:19Is it arguably more important than sales at this point? And I think I'm a little bit more familiar with B2C industries like mobile service or maybe home internet. But how do you think about customer retention? What's your strategy? How do you organize around that? Well, I think the rule still applies that it costs more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. So that applies in the B2B space as well. But it's critical. You know, we talked about earlier that my responsibility is for growth and I'm not going to grow very well if I lose customers consistently. So we've got to make sure that we're retaining those relationships.

15:58And we really do that in a variety of ways. So, you know, we start with your whole just your employee engagement. And does everybody in your team understand the importance of the relationship? So I always remind the team that if we don't take care of our customers, someone else will. and competition is fierce and customers have choices. And, you know, I keep reinforcing with the team that let's not give customers a reason to leave us. We want to make sure that they would be concerned, you know, they're getting such great service from us that, you know, they have to wonder if they would get that same great service from somebody else.

16:30But here are some tactics that we deploy. So first of all, we talked about, we have sellers that have certain verticals. We have folks in the organization whose primary role is to connect with existing customers. So to do check-ins, to do account reviews, to really understand, do they have what they need at this time? We've talked about growth of customers, right? So a customer who was 20 employees when they started with us, that's now 2 ,000 employees. We need to be checking in and make sure that the service they have is growing with them. We haven't talked about reliability yet, but we have to.

17:02When you're getting service from somebody, you need that service to always be on and always be fast. And so we continuously invest in our network, proactive monitoring, healing. In fact, over the last 10 years, we've invested about$80 billion in our network and we're not done yet. You know, we're going to continue doing that. You also have to bring value to your customers. So for us, that could mean some of our comprehensive bundles or packages that we have. I mentioned earlier a home-based business or a small business might just want internet and security. That enterprise customer probably needs Ethernet with some secure network or cyber solutions or both.

17:43And so it's about having some packaging that makes sense, but then also bringing forward some value. So Security Edge, for example, is built into almost every single one of our data packages on the low end. Comcast Business Mobile is a great opportunity for small businesses to have savings over their current provider. And we would encourage folks to look at that. And then finally, well, maybe not finally, but we also need to tailor. We've talked about tailoring. We also need to tailor those services to grow with them, as we mentioned. And we want to make sure that they're getting the right service.

18:16So maybe you were on a broadband connection before and you need to move to fiber. We're going to make sure that you get that growth and that change in your platform. And then we listen to our customers. So we do live focus groups periodically. We actually have an executive advisory group of customers that trial new things for us and give us very honest feedback and let us know where we're on the right track and where we're not. And we actually are also a net promoter system organization. So we take all of that seriously. So there are a number of ways that we try to retain that relationship with our customers, but we believe it is so critical to the future of Comcast business that, you know, it's foremost on the list of priorities for us.

19:00Yeah. And it sounds like on that, you have so many things at your disposal. You have your voice of customer. and then you also have this broad, statistically significant score that you're asking customers. I don't know whether it's after a phone call or how you're doing it, but which is also a really good leading indicator probably. I'm glad to be able to work on what's going on. I'd like to ask you about your career. Your early career, based on looking at LinkedIn, was customer care, operations, delivery. What were some of the early learnings you had that helped you on your path to leadership?

19:34And I'm also curious, did you have your heart and career set on the type of leadership position you have now? And if not, when did you realize that this was interesting, exciting for you? I'll start with part one, which I guess is sort of what got me into leadership. And I think maybe the most obvious for everybody is work ethic, right? You got to show up. You got to work hard if you're going to do the next thing. but early in my career one of the very early things that happened in my career is um my husband and i always talked about the importance of doing what's best for the business in other words don't be afraid to make a decision or take a risk that you think might put your career at jeopardy like like don't let that get in the way don't let that be something that creates fear so i you know i've always operated with if i do what's best for the business of course with integrity but do what's best for the business then things will work out okay for me personally And that's just been the truth.

20:30It's always been that way. I've also been very curious. And I think people that are continuous learners also, I think their careers continue to accelerate. And, you know, I've taken on tasks and assignments that have helped my career evolve. So when I was running care at one company, I also was able to program our Avaya phone switch. And at the next company I went to, the aspect phone switch literally sat in my office and I could make adjustments to it as I went. I oversaw the billing system in another role. There was a period of time where while doing many other things, I was the conduit between operations and legal.

21:06And so all of these examples, and there are many more of them, I think prepared me for those next opportunities. And it also let people know, or maybe it was a proof point that I was somebody with the ability to flex. So I think that willingness to take on more, try new things is important. And then there's like two other things that I think I consciously did. One, I've always surrounded myself with people who are experts of filling the gaps of knowledge that I don't have. Of course, my goal is to always learn from them. But back to, you know, back to businesses, other businesses, you know, like if I were a chef, I might be a great chef.

21:43But do I know anything about bookkeeping? You know, maybe not. So it's that sort of philosophy. And then I think the final thing is really always about having a board of directors. I wish I could remember who shared this concept with me, but I read it somewhere. But it was this really this board of directors. So the person who pushes you, the person who lets you wallow, the person who never lets you wallow, So, you know, the person who truly believes in you, the person who's your best advice giver, I think surrounding yourself with people like that also helps propel you forward as you go. Now, did I think I would land in this chair?

22:17Probably not. I mean, I think I've been a person because of, as I described it, always learning and looking for new opportunities. I never set myself on a singular path. I've always been open to, oh, that's interesting. And I'm curious about that. And that sounds like something I'd like to go do. And I'll and I have followed that path and it has led me here. Now, candidly, I've now been in this industry like 26 years. But if you look across my history, I've done many different things in that time. And it's been just a ton of fun. And I'm lucky and fortunate to have had the opportunity to do it.

22:49I've worked at organizations as large as Amazon. I've worked at startups. I've worked in midsize organizations. And in my opinion, kind of learning how to get things done in large organizations is challenging for a lot of people, a lot of highly capable, really amazing people. Do you have any recommendation or advice for leaders trying to figure that out? And maybe I really liked your idea of a personal board of directors, which is someone who maybe has had these experiences and just can help you unlock things. But curious to hear what recommendations you give someone who's asking you why they struggle with that.

23:26Yeah, to build on what you said, you know, there's people who are like just rock stars at one company and then go to the next company and it just doesn't work out. And I think the question you've asked, you know, there's been books written on the question you've asked, I'm sure. So I'll just I'll give you my my three cents on it, if you will. I think particularly when you come into a large organization, understanding the culture is important. And the best way to do that is by building relationships. And I think, you know, every single one of us, even if on some level we're individual contributors, we all work with and through other people.

23:59So you've got to have those strong relationships. You've got to put money in the bank, if you will, so that you can withdraw it at a later time when you need to. And being a collaborator, particularly in a large organization, is important. And you have to have the ability to seek those win-wins, you know, back to greater good for the business. if we both go after win-wins, then people will find you to be a strong collaborator and advocate and someone they just want to work with. So relationships, I think, is number one. I think the second thing, particularly in a large organization, is reflection.

24:31People have to be super honest with themselves about their performance. I mean, it's easy to make excuses. And so under the umbrella of reflection, I have three thoughts there. One, when your numbers aren't being met or the goal hasn't been achieved, you've got to take ownership for that. And I'll do a recommendation. I love the book Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. I believe that that's true. You've got to own it. Also, one of the conferences I attended, I heard a CEO say something really important about reflection. He said, ask yourself, what would the hot shot replacing me do?

25:10And that is a daunting question, but it's one that we should all ask ourselves periodically. And I do, because it really gets you right on the back, right on track. You know, if you were getting off track, you're back on track pretty quickly when you say, okay, what would the person replacing me do? And then third, if you're not getting the job you want or the promotion you want, or the assignment you want, then I always say, you got to figure out what your big butt is. You might have a big butt and you don't know it. And what I mean by that is the good old fashioned Tracy's great, but, and no one ever tells you, you know, and sometimes it's because they can't put their finger on what your butt is, or maybe it's something difficult to share with you.