Exit into enterprise tech sales? Pro's and con's...
(Orangutan, 337
Points)
on 1/22/09 at 9:23am
It's been mentioned here a lot, that front office positions that actually bring in the money to the firm are far better regarded than middle-, or back office gigs.
I was wondering why people never consider exiting into ENTERPRISE SALES positions at tech giants like Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, etc...
I understand that it is far from M&A and strategy but the work-life balance must be pretty good and the money also shouldn't be bad.
What do you think? What are the pro's and con's? What makes high-tech enterprise sales less sexy as the other common exit ops, other than irrelevancy to finance?
It's a bit like the whole S&T
It's a bit like the whole S&T vs. IBD argument in that there is a large, but highly variable, upside to sales and generally better hours/lifestyle as well.
If you're good at direct sales you can potentially make high six-figures / over $1MM (don't think that's too common, only for the best) in commissions.
The downside is that a large portion of your pay comes from commission and so it is highly variable and almost like working at a prop trading firm that doesn't give out any salary (except all the tech giants should give some base salary even if it's low).
The other downside: I'm honestly not sure how easy it is to get into, especially coming from banking. I knew a few mid-level bankers who had worked at those companies before, but they were all involved at the M&A/bus. dev. level. Honestly can't think of a single person who exited specifically into sales there.
The skill set is quite a bit different and not much you do as an Analyst/Associate really applies.
As far as why it's less "sexy": well, the main point that comes to mind is that advancement depends almost entirely on your performance whereas in banking/PE, for example, you can get promoted up fairly high without having to do the really hard part - bringing in clients rather than executing deals.
Yes, working 80 hours per week is "hard" but in a different way than bringing in a $15B client is "hard."
So the AVERAGE mid-level banker probably makes more than the average mid-level salesperson.
Another downside: constant travel, at least at some of the companies. It's a bit like consulting in that regard. A few sales guys I knew were always on the road, a new city each week / each few days.
Ok that was rambling and not very coherent but I thought this looked like an interesting question and hey it's 3 AM where I am right now.