Eagle's Nest or Crow's View? Who is better to sell for?

There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.

~Nelson Mandella

A recent article in Linked In got me thinking ... which is better from a sales point of view -- to sell for a big corporation or a small organization?  There are definitely good points for either.

Smaller Company (Crow's View)

• Usually bigger job title
• Greater agility in customizing solutions for customers
• Less bureaucracy to weed through to get an answer
• You can pick up the phone and call an executive for permission to clarify rules, boundaries, pricing
• The President, or an Operations Executive, will roll up their sleeves and sit in and pow wow to brainstorm on ways to win a customer
• You will be given more responsibility, in a shorter period of time because you have less people to prove anything too
• On the flip side, if you mess up, it will be exposed more readily with less barriers
• You will have to prove to the customer that you can handle their work or requirements
• Looking from the outside in, you may more easily identify gaps in service that you can fill
• You can offer to be the back up provider to the Bigger Corporation, which can be a toe in the door
• Customer relationships have a wider breadth - they get to know the delivery/dispatch personnel to the service tech, to the accounting people
• If your customers run into financial challenges, you can often navigate a win win arrangement that will earn loyalty
• More difficult for a smaller company to have the advertising, PR machine that the Big Corporation has
• Small companies tend to be entrepreneurial, therefore, many customers know the owner/principle personally
• Loyalty between employer and employee tend to be pronounced and rewarded with trust
• Smaller graphic locations or spread out to only a few branches

Big Corporation (Eagle's Nest)

• You will typically have brand recognition, which opens doors easily, even if just gaining appointments
• You will have a smaller title and a narrower realm of responsibility
• More people get involved, which can often cause confusion with the customer
• Too many silos or processes can greatly hamper being able to serve the customers
• Difficult to communicate, many channels you have to go through to get a single answer,
• The Big Corporation could be its own worst enemy --  you feel like you're constantly jumping through hoops to get have simple things done (i.e. credit to customer owed)
• Change is imminent .... customers are sometimes uncomfortable when they have to keep explaining themselves through various channels
• Streamlined processes are sometimes the barriers created to do business with customers
• Executives rarely visit with customers, and even then, they must be substantial in order to see
• Many managers are figureheads, numbers watchers, metric creators, and results drivers
• Strictly a professional relationship that rarely goes beyond to personal, family, history, because managers constant change prevents
• You have to prove yourself through multiple layers, multiple channels, multiple colleagues and their managers, in multiple locations to get one thing done
• The rules are the rules, the processes are the processes

The main difference highlighted definitely show the benefits and obstacles of both Big and Small.  Yes, in a smaller organization, there is less bureaucracy to weed through to get an answer, which often impacts customer responsiveness.  However, it you've worked for a substantial corporation, you are accustomed to the luxury of process ... less fly by the seat of your pants knee jerk reactions.  Alternatively, big companies have so many silos and obstacles in front of employees that negatively affect customers.

One of the biggest misconceptions I had was when a Small Company was acquired by a Big Corporation....  I was under the misguided impression that there would be big influx of money.  That was hardly real.  Stiff cost controls are common in both scenarios. 

The ability to serve is what is key.  There are definitely pros and cons to either.   Utopia would be finding a nice balance between the two.