How not to succeed in medical sales: Spend Your Time Performing Low-Wage Tasks
Most medical sales professionals can answer the following question with little problem: What do you get paid to do? The answer of course is: To sell! Why is it then that I often find medical sales representatives performing low-wage activities instead of what they were hired to do? What concerns me more is that they […]
Mistakes in medical sales: How to fix them and earn the customer’s respect
If you sell medical devices, there are times when mistakes, oversights, and failures will have fingers pointing in your direction. Your company ships the wrong product or a defective product. You relay information to a customer that’s incorrect. You forget to bring something that a customer or patient needs. You fail to show for a […]
Selling to Physicians—A problem or an opportunity: You’ve got 15 seconds.
If you sell to doctors in the U.S., it’s probably no surprise to you that many are not happy with their jobs and who can blame them. They are losing control of how they treat their patients, the government and insurance companies are telling them what they can charge for what they do, and the […]
A key determining factor for your level of success or failure in medical sales is in your pocket
After penning the title for this article, it occurred to me that some medical sales representatives probably have no idea what I’m referring to. You might be thinking that the key to success that spends time in your pocket is: Your car keys: Wrong by a long shot. What you drive has nothing to do […]
Medical sales: Don’t be a commodity
More and more products in healthcare are being viewed by decision-makers as commodities. In an era of accountable care, products that are good enough are displacing those regarded as the “gold standard.” Selling commodity-type products can be a challenge, but the bigger problem is when you, the sales professional, are a commodity yourself. Hopefully, your […]
A Stupid Medical Sales Question That Makes Your Competition Look Good
Sales reps know they should use questions during a sales call to identify needs and priorities as well as to control the flow of the conversation. Often though, sales reps ask questions that actually work against them. I listened as Gary, a sales rep who hadn’t been hitting his numbers, asked a couple of common […]
Successful Medical Reps Are Like Pilots: “The Right Stuff,” Only Closer to the Ground
I used to think that pilots were men and women of almost super-human skill, until I learned how to fly. The truth is becoming a pilot just isn’t that difficult. There is a lot to learn, but it certainly doesn’t require extraordinary intelligence or coordination. It’s a learned skill, that’s all. There is no question […]
Social Media and the Aspiring or Veteran Medical Sales Rep
During breakfast this morning, my wife C.J. asked, “Do you think corporations have the right to ask job candidates to reveal their Facebook page?” She was surprised by my answer. I said, “Yes. Companies have the right to ask. Job candidates also have the right to say no, but that may not be a good […]
Medical Sales: Helping your Health Care Customers to Stay on the Ethical Path
The vast majority of the medical sales professionals I encounter are ethical people. I can tell by how they talk and act, where they focus, and how the occasional moral conundrum affects their sales decisions and activities. Ethical behavior has surfaced as a key issue in health care today, especially in terms of paying attention […]
Tell your medical sales competition that selling in the summer is a waste of time…
May 29, 2012 by Mace Horoff • Blog, Competition, Medical Sales Performance Tags: summer coasting medical sales; summer medical sales plan •
…and then work your tail off to sell as much as you can while your competition coasts for a few months! There is some accepted wisdom that healthcare customers, especially physicians, are difficult to call on and sell to during the summer months. I’ve heard the excuses and so have you: “The doctor is more […]