The Difference Between Sales At A Startup Vs. A Large Corporation
This is mainly a trade-off between training and autonomy. You’ll get more training at a large corporation and more autonomy at a small startup.
Better training and mentorship at a large corporation.
At a large corporation, your tasks will be very well-defined. There will be a hundred other people at the company with the same job title. You might even feel “pigeon-holed” into a rigid process that feels robotic without any room for flexibility.
On the positive side, at a large corporation, you will have more training materials than you can possibly digest, multiple levels of management for mentorship, and a large cohort of successful peers to learn from by osmosis.
Tech companies with sales training programs.
Here are a few large tech companies with well-established sales training programs:
- Salesforce (learning resources like Trailhead)
- SAP (new hire training program, SAP Academy for Sales)
- Oracle (new graduate training program, Class Of)
- Google (learning resources like Grow with Google)
- Adobe (career acceleration program, Adobe Sales Academy)
- Yelp (new hire training program, Yelp University Sales Training)
Sales is one of the most desirable skills in technology workers today. By joining a company with a well-established tech sales training program, you can actually get paid to learn how to sell the right way and set yourself up for a successful career by learning the fundamentals early on.
Be careful not to assume that all corporations have excellent training programs and all startups have no training whatsoever.
More autonomy and equity upside at a small startup.
At a small startup, you’ll have the opportunity to take on more responsibility. You might feel “overwhelmed” as a result of being “stretched thin” between many different tasks. It’s not uncommon for a salesperson at a startup to also handle customer service, operations, and/or marketing. There will be less leadership with the time to train you and fewer veterans to learn from. You’ll have to figure out most things on your own.
On the positive side, at a small startup you will have the opportunity to come up with creative solutions independently with little to no micro-managing. If you can survive the steep learning curve in the beginning, you may be promoted into a more senior title faster than you otherwise would have at a larger corporation. And, of course, there are all the normal perks of a startup: larger chunks of equity in the form of stock options, the excitement of rapid growth, and less bureaucracy.
It’s a personal decision.
This is a personal decision. It depends on your own learning style, work preferences, and career goals. I’ll give you the same advice that was given to me when I first started in tech sales:
Go work for a big well-known company with a well-defined training program, then you’ll have a lot more options with that knowledge under your belt.
Ultimately, this was the best decision for my career because I was able to gain a lot of valuable knowledge from a large company’s training program and proven business model. I was then able to take that knowledge and apply it in my next role as a sales leader at a startup.
Questions to ask about company size during interviews.
In order to determine the size of the company and the level of training and mentorship you will receive, here are some questions that you can ask the company:
- How many employees work at the company currently? (for startups)
- What are the company’s growth plans for the next year? (for startups)
- How big is the sales team?
- What kind of training would I receive as a new hire?
- Who would I report to?
- How many other people would be reporting to that person?
Summary
Here’s a summary of the benefits of working at a large corporation versus a small startup:
| Large corporation | Small startup |
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