Are you trying to break into medical sales?  We talk a lot about preparing for your medical revenue interview with a 30/60/90-Day Revenue Plan.  A well-done plan is your blueprint for the first 3 months on the job–but what about after that?  How will your performance be assessed once you’re “on your own”?  Well, the stakes get a little higher.  “On your own” means the performance meter is running and your evaluation and scrutiny will increase.

Life after the first 90 days as a pharmaceutical sales rep

Welcome to the big leagues!  By now, you better be very familiar with your company’s CRM program (e.g. Salesforce.com) and used to the constant conference calls and/or Facetime calls.  If you own or have a company-issued Iphone or Ipad, your regional manager is likely to use that as a tool to update the region’s forecast.  What does that mean to you?  Don’t be sitting in your jammies at the time the call is scheduled and always have your information and your office area organized. 

You’ll probably have very little in-person time with your manager (maybe once a quarter field trip plus national meeting time), so the time you do have with him or her counts.  Your manager probably didn’t get to be the manager of your team by not being observant and judgmental, so when you’re around your manager, the recorder is running:  evaluating your words, actions, and presence.  When he/she gets worthy data and feedback, your life and how your manager deals with you will get better. 

Perceptions are reality, so make sure your manager’s perceptions of you create the reality you want.  A painting is composed of many brushstrokes, and every interaction is a brushstroke to your manager.  Always remember to use the same skills internally as you do externally.

Your hiring manager’s perceptions of you’ve a top impact on your reality–your life on the job.  Some of the rules he has to implement are dictated to him by the company, but on a lot of other stuff, he has discretion on enforcing.  For instance, in my experience as a revenue manager/director, the rule was that everyone starts out even and everyone does everything for the first 90 days.  If you were at or above plan at the end of the Ninety days, you got some reprieve based on your performance and compliance.  That meant that you had longer to turn in your forecast, your pick of check-in times, your choice of projects to lead, etc.

Will you be a big clinical sales rep?

Influence your hiring manager’s positive view of you

Your attitude and interactions have a leading impact on your manager’s perceptions of you, too.  (Brushstrokes, remember?)  In my 20 years of managing revenue reps, I noticed that players always like to have attention and contact.  Leading reps enjoy chatting with the manager and gaining his or her perspective.  Because they’re nice, they most often have thought through their situations and have already formed a plan of action, but they believe “two heads are better than one” and are interested in the manager’s input.  Reps that are scarcity-based don’t like working in a team environment and rebel at authority.   They will have a very difficult life in the corporate world.  It doesn’t mean they’re bad, it just means that maybe they’re an entrepreneur and don’t know it yet.

How will your boss measure your success?

My rule was always “Constant Improvement,” and that’s likely to be your manager’s rule, too.  As a new rep, that means you should constantly be making strides toward meeting or exceeding your sales goals.  So this month is better than last month, and the month after will be better than this one.  If you’re doing the right things, the right things will happen to get you to that goal.

There are always exceptions and it’s true that if you took over a territory at 65% of plan and after two quarters in the field you’re at 70%, your manager is not likely to be pleased.  An improvement of only 5% in 6 months just isn’t fast enough.  At that rate, it would take almost THREE years to turn around a poor-performing territory–and if it takes that long, your manager won’t likely survive.

10 critical checkpoints to help you stay on track:

1.  Have you made face-to-face calls for all of your Best Few prospects in your sales funnel?

     a.  Have you documented the status of these accounts in your CRM records?

     b.  Is the sale on track to close?  By definition, a Best Few prospect is a 90/90 prospect, meaning 90% is will happen and 90% it will happen in the specified time frame.

     c.  If it’s off track, have you developed a plan for correction and gained your boss’s input?

TWO.  Have you met all the thought leaders in your territory?

3.  Are there any special events/shows planned in your opportunity?  If not, what do you need to do to get one?

4.  Have you called Product management and asked for one of the product managers to field voyage with you?

5.  Have you corrected any customer satisfaction issues?  If it’s a longer-range issue, do you have a plan in place with the buy-in of your boss and the service/technical organization?

6.  Have you identified who you can develop as a positive reference/demo site in your opportunity?

7.  Have you met your service engineers and taken them to lunch/breakfast? 

8.  Are you using a “blown up day” to use as your office day to set appointments?  (You haven’t set a particular day like Monday or Friday as your office day every week, have you?  You shouldn’t.)

9.  You’re focusing on accomplishment instead of activity, aren’t you?

10. Are you being a seeker?  (Seeking those with information you need.)

Keep a great attitude

Don’t associate/commiserate/communicate with team members that are always negative and complaining. 

90% of selling is mental and the rest is in your head.

Kraig McKee

Senior Recruiter, PHC Consulting

PS – Got musings that only a pharmaceutical sales manager can answer?  Put ‘em in the comments section below.

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

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Ask a Medical Sales Manager: How will my boss measure my success after my first 90 days as a medical sales rep?

Here’s a quick guide to answering 5 common (but tricky) job interview questions within pharma and health care sales.  Click the link for the answer.

Don't make a mistake in your clinical laboratory sales career opportunity interview!

1.  “Tell me about yourself.”

2.  “What’s your greatest weakness?”

3.  “Are you a team player?”

4. “What’s your sales style?”

5.  “Can you sell me this pen?”

Perfecting your answers to these typical queries will go a long way toward helping you with what you got to prove in the interview to get the clinical sales job you want.

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

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Pharma device maker Stryker sure does seem to inspire strong feelings, doesn’t it?  Synthes isn’t too fond of them at the moment, and I’ve even written myself about why you should never work for Stryker.  On the other hand, it seems like everyone wants to work for Stryker and they made MedReps list of Best Places to Work 2011.  So what’s the deal?

As always, there are 2 sides to every story and one job seeker (Jason) asked me just the other day to help him figure it out.  He discovered himself in a Stryker job interview and wanted to know if it was worth pursuing.  Listen to the audio below for what I see as the pros and cons involved in working for Stryker:

Article courtesy of  Peggy McKee - Owner / Senior Headhunter at the nationally
recognized pharmaceutical and pharma revenue recruiting team of PHC Consulting.
© Copyright 2008 PHC Consulting | All rights reserved

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Happy New Year 2012! 

If you’re in a clinical sales job search, you’ve got your work slash out for you…but I’ve got 3 ideas that will get you rolling in the right direction:

1. Take advantage of free training.  Register for this no cost webinar:  How to Land a Career opportunity in Clinical Sales.  Whether you’re an experienced sales rep or a brand-new rookie, you will benefit from the tips you’ll learn in this discussion.
2. Learn how to discover clinical laboratory sales hiring managers.  Going straight to the source is the most likely way you’ll discover a spot before everyone else hears about it.  Hiring managers appreciate an aggressive go-getter.  Here are some ideas for how to discover hiring managers.
3. Learn to write a 30/60/90-Day Plan.  Not everyone does this, because they’re a lot of work…but I would never go into a medical sales interview without one of these babies if I really wanted the career opportunity.  It’s the key to what you’ve to prove in the interview.

Bonus Tip:  Don’t forget to sharpen up your CV and submit it to PHC Consulting!

Best of luck!

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

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Just for fun…

I hope you enjoyed that.  Now click this link for real help with your laboratory sales interview queries and answers.

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

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Wishing you all best this holiday season!
–Peggy McKee, the Medical Sales Recruiter

Article courtesy of  Peggy McKee - Owner / Senior Headhunter at the nationally
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© Copyright 2008 PHC Consulting | All rights reserved

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Happy Holidays from PHC Consulting!

What are your goals for 2012?  To be the major performing clinical device rep in your company?  To land the pharma revenue position you want? 

A top part of how I achieve my goals (when I was a medical sales rep and now as a pharmaceutical sales recruiting business owner) is that I actively visualize my success–what it will look and feel like when I reach my goals. 

Here is a great article about effective visualization techniques that will help you achieve more success–not just in your professional goals, but in your life:

Effective Visualization– How To Use The Subconscious & Law Of Attraction To Materialize Our Dreams

By Kurt DuNard, The Exceptional Life Coach

The secret is that you’ve an excellent power within yourself that can bring about miraculous outcomes. The power that you’ve has been known to cure incurable diseases, build billion dollar companies, create magnificent symphonies, paint masterpieces and build excellent loving families. The light switch that turns on this power is called visualization. Anyone that has created everything good in their lives used visualization whether consciously or unconsciously. The ones that systematically use visualization consciously have created excellent success. We all know who they are. They’re Olympic athletes, the super rich, star entertainers, major salespeople, and almost anyone you can think of whom you believe has created an exceptional life. Visualization is such a powerful tool that it pays to practice and increase our visualization skills. Here’s how.

Why Visualization Works

• It puts the subconscious on notice by saying “Here are my dreams—help me achieve them.” The subconscious then sends creative ideas and amazing inspirations.

• There is a place in the brain that is called the Reticulated Activating System (RAS). You might tell your subconscious that you would like a blue Lexus LS 430 and all of a sudden you start seeing these cars everywhere. The RAS has been activated and you are noticing lots of nice-looking blue cars. Visualization causes you to notice. Before you were blind and now you notice.

• Here is the spooky part. Visualization, like prayer, activates the law of attraction. In absolutely unexplained, accidental, coincidental ways you attract the right people, the right situations, and the right resources. You are living a charmed life. Most successful people will tell you that they worked hard but they also were very fortunate. You can also be fortunate.

• Visualization creates enthusiasm, excitement, and joy because your subconscious starts believing that your fantasies are coming true. Enthusiasm, excitement, and joy are the fuel that’s needed to emotionally make it OK to take action to achieve our fantasies. You believe that success is yours for the taking and so you are enthused and take action. If diamonds are in the road, you must take action to pick them up and you are enthusiastically picking Them up. There must be action—pick ‘em up.

Start Where You are

Visualization should be a fun relaxing exercise. Visualizing your dreams should never be a chore, a have to, or routine. It should always inspire emotions of happiness and peace.

If you think you are new to visualization, you’re mistaken. You’ve visualized all your life, you were just not conscious of your practice. What may be new is that you have decided to become better at the practice and to be a conscious guide to your visualizations. You’ve decided to consciously tap into your power. You can only succeed. Follow those few simple rules.

• Visualize what you want. Make them positive visualizations.

• Avoid visualizing disaster or what you don’t want. Avoid negative visualizations.

• Visualize living your dreams now in the present tense and how you feel.

• Use lots of emotions and all the five senses if you can. It’s important that your subconscious believes this is real.

• Do balanced visualizations to create a balanced life. Visualize health, prosperity, family, friends, career opportunity, spiritual, wisdom, creativity, etc.

• Visualize daily in the morning and just before going to bed. The more you visualize, the more you will look forward to it and the more you will notice positive changes in your life as a result.

Priming the Visualization Pump

The real power to change our lives comes through visualization; however, there are other practices that can help us augment the subconscious other than visualization. These practices can be done through the day or just before a visualization session.

• Use photos to help you visualize

Discover pictures that make you emotionally excited, that represent goals, and aspirations. They could be the perfect house, you at the flawless weight with your picture Photoshoped onto another body, or it could show laughing friends and children. The photos are more powerful, when you are in the picture. When you test drive your favorite car, have a picture taken of you with the car and another picture that you’ve taken from behind the wheel. Have a picture for all your fantasies and goals. Make sure your goals are balanced in all areas of your life. Otherwise, you could have a great career with a sadly neglected family. Jack Canfield negotiations about how he took a $1.00 bill and then wrote six zero’s behind the “1″ to make it a million dollar bill. He then put that “$1,000,000 bill” above his bed so he would see it every morning. That representation of a million dollars soon materialized in Jack’s life.

• Written Goals on THREE X 5 Cards

Put each goal on one side of the card. You could make it even better if you put a picture on the other side representing the goal. Morning and night, look at each card and visualize how you feel having accomplished this goal in the present moment—not the future.

• Convert Your Goals to Affirmations and Memorize These Affirmations

Those affirmations are a statement of how you feel having accomplished the goal. It’s a verbal visualization.

I feel amazing, full of energy, and always ready for action now that I weigh 150 pounds.

Because you repeat these affirmations so frequently, they almost become a mantra that can be used to still the mind during meditation and visualization. To be effective, however, they must be done with thought and never as a thoughtless chant.

• Get Ready For Success Because You Know it is Here

If you don’t prepare for success, then you don’t believe in success and even if it came you wouldn’t be willing. Part of making it happen is to assume all of these ideas work and you must get ready. Buy the new wardrobe for the new job. Learn Italian for your dream vacation to Italy. Move to where you wanna live even if everything is not perfect right now. We must have an unwavering faith that everything is going to go our way or maybe even better. That faith is what convinces the law of attraction to go into overdrive.

Example of a Simple Visualization Session

You get very relaxed and sit down in your favorite chair that you use every morning. It’s quiet and you’ve learned to love this time of day. You get out your power photos that help your visualize. You go through them and get more and more positive. Then you go through your index cards and look at all your goals. You’re starting to get willing for visualization. Now you relax, with both feet flat on the ground and both hands resting lightly on the chair arm or on your legs. You close your eyes and slowly you say your affirmations.

Legend has it that Bill Gates, Paul Allen and many Silicone Valley entrepreneurs were influenced by the book The Master Key System by Charles F. Haanel. Here is a series of affirmations he talks about.

I am whole,

Perfect,

Strong,

Powerful,

Loving,

Harmonious,

And Happy.

You say your affirmations to yourself at least three times. As other thoughts outside of your visualization invade your mind, you come back to saying your affirmations. Now you’re in the right frame of mind for effective visualization. You start imagining your life as you live your dreams in the now. You imagine perfect health and what that means to you. You imagine consummate friendships and how they interact with you in your home. You imagine your career working with the kind of people you love and how every day you’re being recognized and appreciated for your excellent work. You imagine going to these nice places you have only dreamed of—now you are there. Your clothes, the food you eat, where you live, everything is in living color and you can smell the ocean breeze as you sail in your yacht. Everyday as you do your visualizations, the pictures, the inspirations and faith will become stronger and stronger. One day you will come to a clear realization that you’re living what you lived in your visualization only two years ago. It will be no surprise.

Visualize all your goals, fantasies and affirmations. Change Them when they’re no longer exciting. Spend at least fifteen minutes a session.

Copyright © 2008 Kurt DuNard

Kurt DuNard, The Exceptional Life Coach, is the author of EXCEPTIONAL LIFE: Living the Life You Were Meant to Live. High achievers seek him out to pinpoint their soul’s goals, increase abundance, and discover more happiness and joy. If you think you would also like those things, then receive your FREE success tools from Kurt DuNard now at www.DuNard.com.

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

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Reach Your Medical Sales and Job Search Goals With Visualization

What were pharma revenue reps reading in 2011?

Major medical sales posts of 2011

(1)   Medical device reps wanted to know the best companies to work for:

Top Medical laboratory Device Companies of 2011

(2)   Clinical sales reps of all stripes wanted to be more competitive in career opportunity interviews:

Business Plans for Pharmaceutical Sales

(THREE)   And career opportunity seekers looking for pharma sales jobs liked this one:

Breaking Into Clinical Revenue With NO Pharma Background

Want to do a holiday favor for someone in a pathology sales job search?  Pass this article along to Them.

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

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Holiday networking is a gift to yourself

The holidays are possibly THE consummate time to build your network–which is important for your entire medical sales career, but vital during a job search.  There are so many opportunities for you to reach out to others, and it will pay off for you throughout the new year.

Take advantage of the season

The most important thing you’ve got to remember about networking during the holidays:  just do it.  You can be confident that just about any contact you make this time of year will be received positively.  People expect it, so take advantage of it.  Reach out by sending out cards and emails to EVERYONE.

Reconnect with people you haven’t talked to in years 

Think about all possible contacts:  people you used to work with, former bosses, old high school or college buddies, former neighbors, your kid’s Little League coach from 10 years ago, everyone.  Send a card or an email.  You have a reason–it’s the holidays.  Just say, “Hey, how are you?  I was thinking about you and wanted to say Hi.  What have you been up to?  Merry Christmas!  Happy New Year!”  (Or Happy Holidays, or whatever holiday you celebrate right about now.)  You don’t have to tell them you’re looking for a position.  And you shouldn’t, yet.  There will be time to gracefully fit that into the conversation later.

If they respond and they’re geographically close to you, invite them to grab lunch or coffee or drinks with you to catch up.   If they’re too far away for that, they might ask how you’re doing and then you can talk briefly about your career opportunity search goal in a positive, upbeat way.  (If that seems difficult, watch my episode Be Positive When Explaining Your Unemployment.)

Thank your boss

If you’re employed, now is a great time to give your boss a gift or just say “Thank You” without looking like a suck-up.  Bosses like appreciation, too.

Attend holiday parties and events

If you’ve got a holiday party on your calendar, check out these networking event tips.  Set a goal of a certain number of people to meet, and follow up with ‘em after the party with a nice “It was valuable to meet you” note.

Offer help and information to others

Keep in mind the spirit of the season.  If you can think of a way to help someone else out–do it, even if it’s as simple as giving them a link to information they might want.  Be a resource for people.  I firmly believe that if you put worthy things out there, good things will come back to you.

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

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Need some quick, easy and great gift ideas for the clinical sales rep on your team?

• You almost can’t beat a gift card…to a restaurant, a spa, or even their favorite store (bonus points for you if you know what it is).

• If you don’t wanna give something a little more personalized than a gift card, try a themed gift basket built around just about anything:  coffee, movies, fruit, candy, gourmet food, or chocolate.

• Get Them a Kindle.  What’s better for a busy person on the go than a quick and easy way to keep up with their reading?

• If they already have a Kindle, get them e-books to go on it.  Read everything great lately?

• Get Them a magazine subscription (print or digital).  I like Selling Power.

• I think the ultimate gift for a sales rep is more sales training.  After all, what’s better than learning new ways to build your skills and make more money?  If there’s a valuable training program that the reps would normally be required to pay for themselves, foot the bill for them.  You’ll both benefit from this one in the long run…

A really worthwhile finishing touch to any gift:  write your team member a note expressing your appreciation for ‘em, and/or noting something especially great they did in the past year that really impressed you.

Article courtesy of  Peggy McKee - Owner / Senior Headhunter at the nationally
recognized pharmaceutical and pathology revenue recruiting team of PHC Consulting.
© Copyright 2008 PHC Consulting | All rights reserved

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