Hiring Medical Sales Reps? First–Review Your Current Team
Are you hiring sales reps for medical sales, laboratory sales, clinical diagnostics, imaging sales, medical device sales, biotech sales, pathology sales, surgical supplies sales, hospital equipment sales, pharmaceutical sales, or other healthcare sales? Your first step should be to review your current team: What works in your sales reps and what doesn’t? Then you can make a hiring decision that’s based on past results of what works in your company and be more confident in your choice.
Let’s be honest: Most sales managers are so busy that they hire on auto pilot. (Not that it doesn’t sometimes work for you.) But if you’re the kind of manager who makes decisions based on what has yielded the best results (and in this case, that means hiring candidates who are similar to your best-performing salespeople), then you need to review your team. You can do this as an overview, or you can use formal assessments. What do you look for? Experience, tenure, degree, personality profile, sales productivity, or other qualities important to the success of your team.
For example, one of my clients just had a rep leave in Philly, so he calls me: “Please provide me candidates for the Philly position.”
My next question: “Based on your experience, what would you say your ‘best fit’ best performer background is?”
After some thought, he gives me this information:
- Ex-pharma with strong b2b exp, bus degree
- Ex-pharma with business degree
- Medical supply distributor with psych degree
- MS/Molecular Biology/No sales experience/Sales personality
All four profiles have performed at or above plan for the client.
When I pressed the manager for further insights, he said “You know, in the past we haven’t been able to get much sales experience in a range of 50-60K base plus 30 comp. And the technical person (#4) who wanted to make a transition did do very well, but the ones with sales experience ramped up faster by at least 3 months.”
I have found similar patterns in other managers who ask for candidates like #4, but who always move forward with candidates who have sales experience. (With new clients, I start out sending both.) When I discover this pattern, I point it out to the manager and then stop sending those candidates–in this case, the technical sales rep wannabes who aren’t making the cut.
See? My recruiting was based on past results. Once you’ve narrowed your search criteria, the whole process becomes faster, more efficient, and more productive.
Just some food for thought…
Written by Peggy McKee - the medical sales recruiter
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The scientific evidence shows that people with business degrees like MBA’s perform only as well as those without the degree. In fact a degree like an MBA may even hinder ones success in business. So I’m suggesting that a sales managers experience, as shown above, maybe also be a poor criteria for getting good new hires.
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