Medical Sales Recruiter - Tips & Quips

CRM (Salesforce.com), Six Sigma, and Sales Process – Audio Guest – Chuck Overbeck

the medical sales recruiter — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 21:43:39 +0000

Want to learn more about CRM systems (and hear a former sales manager from Ventana Medical Systems talk about how they applied the system)? Listen to Chuck Overbeck (owner of Sales Sigma Consulting), a former hiring manager client of mine talk about the CRM system (this can help you understand the systems and what you need to be able to communicate in the interview about CRM systems).

You can see Chuck’s LinkedIn profile here.
I hope that you enjoy the audio interview. If you have a topic you would like to see covered here, please tell me in the comments section!
Peggy

Article courtesy of Peggy McKee - Owner / Senior Recruiter at the nationally
recognized medical and laboratory sales recruiting team of PHC Consulting.
© Copyright 2008 PHC Consulting | All rights reserved

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Don’t Send Your Cover Letter As An Attachment to Your Resume

the medical sales recruiter — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:27:10 +0000

Just a quick heads-up:

When you send your resume to a recruiter by email, don’t send a cover letter as an attachment. For the most part, it’s a waste of time. A busy medical sales recruiter doesn’t have time to open extra attachments, and expects that you’ll say what you need to say in the body of the email. Do what you can to make life easy for the person reading your documents.

BTW: A resume objective is a great way to summarize who you are and what you want, too.

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Use a Field Preceptorship to Get Your Next Sales Job

the medical sales recruiter — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:30:42 +0000

A field preceptorship a fantastic way to boost your chances of landing a medical sales job. Also known as a ride-along or job shadowing, it’s usually something we associate with students, but a field preceptorship offers multiple benefits for the jobseeker:

It gives you on-the-job experience without having to get the job. You can explore it to see if it’s right for you before you make the commitment to change careers.
You can use the experience on your resume, giving you keywords that will flag your resume in Applicant Tracking Systems–especially helpful for those with no prior experience in medical sales.
It gives you material for your 30/60/90-day plan, an impressive document to have in a job interview.
It sets you apart as a “go-getter.” Not everyone will go to this length before they even have the job.
It shows that you know how to make contacts, which is essential in a sales role.
It’s impressive to hiring managers, and helps them to see you in the job.

How do you find someone to ride with? Ask your doctor or lab for the names of sales reps. When you contact them, ask if you can ride along for the day, or even part of the day. Reassure them that you’re not after their job, but are just looking for information. Try to stay quiet during the actual sales part, but in between, ask questions about a typical day, the pros and cons of their job, what it takes to be successful, and so on.

When you get to the interview, the prep work you did will show, giving you the edge over other candidates and help you land the job.

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How Do Med Techs / Lab Employees Transition to Medical Sales Jobs?

the medical sales recruiter — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:15:26 +0000

Well, I guess the first question should be: CAN med techs or other laboratory people transition from a technical role into a sales role? The answer is: it depends. The odds are low, but for those who can beat the odds, they’ll likely be fantastic sales reps. It tends to be a love it/hate it proposition. Why is that? It’s because the laboratory is a black-or-white world. There are absolutes and definites. In the sales world, there are many more variables, many more maybes, and much more fluidity inherently involved in dealing with people. The laboratory person who has good people skills coupled with that extensive technical background and who can deal with the uncertainty and constant change will be very successful.

So, if you’ve got the technical background necessary for success in laboratory sales, how do you make the leap?

Before you do anything else, go for a ride-along with a few sales reps. See what it’s like on the other side of the fence. Ask questions about the pros and cons of the job, ask what a typical day is like, and find out how to be competitive in the job search and in the field. The logical way to find a sales rep willing to let you job shadow him would be to get names from labs they sell to. If you’d like to keep this on the down low for a while, find a lab where you’re not known to ask for a few contacts.

Use the job shadowing experience to beef up your resume with keywords that will get it flagged by computerized tracking systems. You’ll have to revamp your resume to give it a sales focus while still highlighting your technical background.

Find out everything you can about how to get into medical sales. There are hundreds of articles available right here on this blog.

Expand your professional network. If you haven’t done it already, set up a profile on LinkedIn. Join sales groups like Sales Cafe: Sales Rep Careers to find out what’s going on and make more contacts.

Shore up your sales skills. Research sales skills and sales call best practices online. Read books on sales techniques. Watch YouTube videos for job search advice.

Seriously consider hiring a career coach to help with your medical sales job interview preparation. On the face of it, it looks like an expensive option when you could do all this research yourself, but in reality, it’s a time- and money-saver: if you want to get hired faster, you consult an expert who already knows the territory and can give you a map of the best way to get where you want to go. It will keep you from making some completely avoidable mistakes and show you how to put your best foot forward.

Get good at handling phone interviews. Almost all your initial contacts with recruiters and hiring managers will be by phone. Making a good impression there will be the key to landing the face-to-face interview.

Learn how to write a 30/60/90-day plan. Use all of the research you’ve done on the sales process, and then research the specific company you’d like to interview with. Write an outline of what you’d be doing in the first 30 days, the first 60 days, and the first 90 days on the job. That’s usually things like training (find out how they do that ahead of time) in the first 30 days, initial field work and customer introduction in the first 60 days (find out who their customers are), and going after new accounts in the first 90 days (think about who that might be). The 30/60/90-day plan will make you stand out as a person who knows how to be successful in this new role, and help the hiring manager see you in the job–which is half the battle.

Polish your interview skills (this is a given). Practice answers to difficult but common interview questions, know how to answer behavioral interview questions, dress appropriately for a sales rep role, watch your body language, ask questions of your own, project confidence, know how to ask for the job, and don’t forget the thank you note.

This is all a lot to remember, and it’s certainly a lot of work. But if you’re ready to transition out of the lab, the rewards will be worth it.

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Sales Interviews Are About Sales! Quantify Your Experience.

the medical sales recruiter — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:08:20 +0000

A sales rep’s job is to make the sale. So if you’re looking for a new sales position in laboratory sales, medical device sales, or any other health care sales arena, the best way to get a medical sales job is to make it your mission is to demonstrate that you can ring that cash register, and do it well.

Start with your resume. Your resume is your marketing document….your “brochure” that’s going to draw them into calling you for an interview. And a sales resume is all about the numbers. That’s what hiring managers (and medical sales recruiters) are looking for. What kind of numbers can you pull down? What’s your sales ranking? Did it increase? What does your customer/units sold/profit growth look like? What was your budget? What kind of revenue have you generated? (Either in actual dollar amounts, or percentage increases.)

Be prepared for the interview. There’s a good chance that you’ll find yourself in a behavioral based interview (also called BEIs, or Behavioral Event Interviews). The reason hiring managers like these so much is that they get a better picture of what you’re like in everyday situations, as well as in difficult situations like the ones you’ll surely be in on the new job. They want to know exactly how you’ll represent the company in every circumstance. The best way for them to get an idea of that is to see what you’ve done before, because past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. And, any sales rep worth his or her salt can talk a good game, but only a few can back it up. SO: When you’re thinking about possible behavioral interview questions in a sales interview and coming up with outstanding examples of your fine selling and customer skills, quantify them as much as possible.

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Pack Your Resume With The Right Keywords to Get That Medical Sales Job

the medical sales recruiter — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:09:34 +0000

If you want your resume to actually be a marketing document for you, and get a recruiter’s or a hiring manager’s attention, you must pack that resume with the keywords that are relevant to the career area you want. Recruiters, hiring managers, and Human Resource departments use computer searches and applicant tracking systems to flag resumes worth looking at, and that means they use keywords to search for the ones they’ll be interested in looking at further.

But what if you’re new to the area and don’t have much experience? Well, then you have to be a little more creative in your mission. That does NOT mean you should lie on your resume. That’s always a bad idea, and you’re sure to be found out eventually. What I mean is that you should highlight what is relevant to the potential employer.

So, for example, if you want a job in medical sales, medical device sales, laboratory sales, biotechnology sales, or other health care sales area, here’s a few ideas for you:

If you’re in real estate, but you sold to a group of doctors, you might want to list them as one of the accounts you sold to.

If you sold copiers, maybe you sold to clinics, day surgery offices, etc. Not only does it help with the keyword count in your resume, it lets us know that at least you’ve been in the environment.

By all means, go ahead and join professional organizations. So for a laboratory sales rep job, you could join AACC (American Association of Clinical Chemistry), CLMA (Clinical Lab Manager’s Association), or various other organizations where you’d find people in that profession. Then you can put them on your resume, and elaborate on your association with them, which gives you more keywords for your resume.

Carefully read job descriptions and ads to see what keywords they use; then see which ones you could legitimately incorporate into your resume.

Don’t forget keywords for sales skills.

Need some more resume help? Research resume writing skills using keywords online, or check out the Extreme Sales Resume Makeover Kit available from Career Confidential.

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Pharma Rep Transitions to Surgical Sales (with the help of a coach)

the medical sales recruiter — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:29:48 +0000

Crystal G, former pharma rep in Texas, explains how she made the transition into surgical sales.
I asked her to chat with me about the process that she went through….

Was this helpful? Please give me feedback in the comments.
If you are interested in individual personal coaching, read more here…..

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The Medical Sales Recruiter Sets Resume On Fire To Say This: Stop the Faux Job Search

the medical sales recruiter — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:37:24 +0000

This is not your daddy’s job search….

You can’t just send out resumes anymore and expect to get a call for a medical sales job or health care sales job. Life is different, and the job search is different. Get a career coach, get on LinkedIn, find some resume help. Get serious, and play to win.

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The Medical Sales Recruiter Makes the List of Top 25 Most Influential Online Recruiters

the medical sales recruiter — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:16:39 +0000

I’ve been named one of the Top 25 Most Influential Online Recruiters by HR Examiner! HR Examiner partnered with Traacker, the Boston-based online reputation discovery tool, to calculate online influence based on content, traffic, and activity.

I am #7 on the list, and I am in some very nice company: from Jason Buss of The Talent Buzz (#1) to Dr. John Sullivan (#25) (who incidentally just recently guest posted for us on the cost of a vacant position). You can see the rest of the list here.

I’m happy to be on the list, and want to thank all my readership for helping me to get there. I continually strive to provide valuable content for jobseekers, and hope that you find it useful. As always, I welcome comments and suggestions for topics that you’d like to see covered here.

See you at the top!

Peggy McKee

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