I rant elsewhere about medical sales rep career, and I concluded that this is something to consider - from selling Pharma products to selling medical device products. I've been promoting devices in the pharmaceutical industry from March 2008 to October the same year, and there are so many things I've discovered, particularly about the company and not so much of the industry.
For today though, I'm going to present the selling of medical diagnostic products from a different angle. The things I'm about to share with you are purely from my personal observation, and they might be in line or even contradict with your current situation.
After going through the training and putting myself on the field, I can say that selling medical devices is actually MORE challenging than selling medicines for my previous pharma company. And I'm only in this for slightly over 2 years! Here are the main differences that lead me to such a conclusion. If you're in any of these 2 industries right now, you probably can see where I'm coming from.
1. Nature of medical device sales
In my own words, after spending one month of my working days in this industry, I summarized my JD (job description) as a marriage between serviceman and dispatch.
I repeat serviceman and dispatch!
For example, when a diagnostic machine is placed at the customer's central laboratory or STAT lab, even though there's Application Division and Engineering department for that Medical Device Company, it is highly likely that when a problem occurred, the customer will call the Rep instead of the 1-800 service center number.
A customer wants an immediate response, and that's when you come in to do troubleshooting (taking care of a problem or problems that happen to a medical device). That's the Service Man job.
The Dispatch job comes about if any of our customers find themselves with tons of short expiry reagents or the devices' consumables (things that have prescribed lifespan and cease to serve their purpose when expired). They'll make a 'panic' phone call, and everyone will be running high and low to entertain them. More so if the customers belong to a critical account group. It's not unusual to see something 'extra' get done to iron things out for them.
For a former pharma sales rep who change career, it's the serviceman job that out a toll on you (think about the random time of the day that customers can call you, and the distance you have to cover to get to them). I thought the medical device sales job was simply to sell.
2. The behavior of most of the customers
Most of the customers I'm dealing with, so far, are the end user. Being the end user means they are 'always right' (you've heard this before - Customer is always right!). Reality is, they're NOT still right, especially when it comes to managing their resources and operation, but if anything goes wrong, guess who gets to do the cleanup?
3. The agent/distributor
In Malaysia, our company could not directly supply the items - reagents, and consumables - to the customers. It's done through the appointed and certified agents. They are specific criteria to describe these agents but to simplify things, choosing the wrong agent means back and forth blaming game between the company and the end user about taking responsibilities, in particular, if something goes wrong. If everything goes according to plan, everyone wants to claim the credit.
I've experienced it first-hand. Even if we argued and win the argument, the blame invariably falls onto the medical device sales rep, who represents the company. Why?
Because we're the ones facing the end users.
For some, this topic is out of scope, but if you pull aside any guys and gals who have left the medical device industry, this is the NUMBER ONE reason why they left. This is not surprising at all. With that kind of pressure and expectation from both - the company and end users - just a relatively low-end compensation for them to go through all the trouble is hard enough.
When they compare that to the relatively 'low-workload-high-payout' pharmaceutical selling, they know they can earn way more with the kind of effort they've put in. I know this will never be justified but has been playing on both side of the field, I understand exactly how they feel.
In fact, I salute those who stay that long selling medical devices (above 5 years).
I recall a day, during one of my training days in HQ, the GM came by and was talking to a few reps. He finally spoke to me and asked me this: "So, how long are you going to stay with us?"
"It depends," I said. And he just smiled.
Really. It depends.
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