By Rick Fromme
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| (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 Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube.
