Wednesday, March 12, 2014

A Day in the Life of a Medical Device Sales Representative

By Rick Fromme

English: Photograph of The Beatles as they arr...
The Beatles arriving in NYC in 1964  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Welcome to the brand new MedMasters’ blog series, “A Day in the Life.” I thought this theme is highly appropriate for our readers for two reasons. First, as most of you know, 2014 marks the 50th anniversary of the Beatles "invasion" of 
North America. The Fab Four’s impact on our music and modern culture at-large is indelible. More directly for health care professionals, the series is designed to give insight into the daily 
functions, responsibilities, positive attributes, and qualifications of various specialties in the ever-growing health care industry.  Since my professional background is in medical device sales, I thought I’d start with “A Day in the Life of a Medical Device Sales Representative.” 

A typical day involves promoting your company’s capital equipment, implants, disposable products, surgical instruments, or biologics  to many doctors, area hospitals and surgery centers. Often times a rep will be required to get buy-in from different levels and such as  physician/surgeons, administrators,  the OR staff and purchasing agents. Particularly with capital equipment, implants, certain surgical instruments, and biologics, the medical device rep must be comfortable interacting with, and in many cases, educating physicians about the use of their products. Likewise, in addition to training physicians and surgeons, a rep will need to train the OR staff as well before a surgical case can be performed.

Operating Room
Operating Room (Photo credit: Jeff Kubina)
Many immediately recognize the opening lines to the second section of “A Day in the Life” that Sir Paul sings: “Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head.” For reps who are frequently required to be in the OR, their day typically starts before dawn, often rising around 4 or 5 a.m., to be out the door an hour later.  For it’s the rep’s responsibility to be at the OR an hour or so before the first case starts. Sometimes they need to be there even earlier in the event they are bringing in equipment which will need to be safety checked through the biomedical department before taking it into the OR suite. Once there, the rep — who will need to change into scrubs like the rest of the OR team — helps the circulators and medical techs plan the case around the product and equipment that will be used and answer any questions about it. The rep is also available to answer surgeons’questions as well, however, they will not assist with the actual surgery. But the rep is there to answer any technical questions for the surgeon and OR staff as the case progresses.

If the equipment or instruments haven’t yet become part of the hospital’s inventory, then post-op, the rep must ensure the equipment is properly cleaned and sterilized to negate the possibility of inadvertently transporting any kind of infectious material out of the OR and back into the environment.
   
English: Sunrise picture taken out of a drivin...
Sunset picture taken out of a driving car (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Unless there’s another procedure scheduled, the rep is free to don his or her salesperson’s garb to market the devices throughout their territory
At least that’s part of the remaining day. Some reps’ territories are quite large, sometimes hundreds of square miles. A rep may be in one area of their territory, following up on a sales presentation with one client, and receive a phone call from another hundreds of miles away that needs to ask some detailed technical questions and is requesting a personal visit. So along with having strong sales skills, time and geo-management skills are important. Traveling and being a road warrior is part and parcel of a sales rep’s life. The rep, if not reimbursed for gas and automobile/travel allowances, must keep accurate records of these, (and other) expenses as they are tax deductible.

In regards to selling, the rep must also be comfortable meeting, and sometimes socializing with professionals at different levels in the medical community. For example, a rep could meet with a hospital's administrators,
department heads, or purchasing agent.

Most reps have sales quotas they must meet on a weekly, monthly quarterly and annual basis. Since many reps often work on a commission-only basis, not meeting one’s quota has adverse professional and financial consequences. So if the rep isn’t selling, they’re not achieving his or her most important task.

English:
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
From reading the above, one can readily see that a highly skilled and successful sales rep must have a number of different skills to perform his or her job well. The rep must have a strong background in the health sciences and biology. Knowing functional anatomy, physiology, biochemistry is important, too, as well as adhering to strict protocols involving sterile techniques and practices. Of  course, s/he must possess strong sales skills, but also soft skills such as the ability to effectively communicate with, and in some cases, teach and mentor a group of already highly educated medical professionals. They may also interact with administrators and other non-surgical/medical personnel. In certain situations, a rep may join these professionals in social engagements outside of the medical facility, such as at dinner, or another social outing. Again, strong interpersonal skills are imperative. The rep must also have strong organizational and time management skills in order to sell/service their product(s) throughout a given territory. And they should have a modicum of bookkeeping skills to enable them to keep track of expenses and other fiduciary issues.

Rick Fromme combines entrepreneurial enthusiasm with an insider's knowledge of the medical industry to co-found MedMasters.com. Both his drive and perspective helps provide health care professionals with a superior mechanism with which to communicate, network and market their strengths. Prior to founding MedMasters.com, Rick operated a highly successful medical device distributorship. Other milestones in his 12-year career in the medical industry include a key position at a medical device start-up company that was later sold to the Ethicon Endo division of Johnson & Johnson. You may reach Rick by connecting with him on FacebookTwitterGoogle+LinkedIn and YouTube

Enhanced by Zemanta

3 comments:

  1. I had a friend who was a medical device sales rep. Very interesting. As lifelong Beatles fan, I like the title of your new series.

    ReplyDelete
  2. If you want to be a rock star, all it takes is practice, practice, practice.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Never a boring day on the job.

    ReplyDelete