Are you trying to break into pathology sales?  We talk a lot about preparing for your medical sales interview with a 30/60/90-Day Sales 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 medical sales rep

Welcome to the leading 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 travel 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 good 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 have a big impact on your reality–your life on the career opportunity.  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 anything for the first 90 days.  If you were at or above plan at the end of the 90 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 top pharma sales rep?

Influence your hiring manager’s positive view of you

Your attitude and interactions have a top impact on your manager’s perceptions of you, too.  (Brushstrokes, remember?)  In my 20 years of managing sales reps, I noticed that players always like to have attention and contact.  Big reps enjoy chatting with the manager and gaining his or her perspective.  Because they’re worthwhile, they most often have thought through their situations and have already formed a plan of action, but they believe “2 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 2 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 3 years to turn around a poor-performing territory–and if it takes that long, your manager will not 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 those 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?

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

THREE.  Are there any special events/shows planned in your territory?  If not, what do you have to do to get one?

4.  Have you called Marketing and asked for one of the product managers to field trip with you?

5.  Have you corrected any customer satisfaction issues?  If it’s a longer-range issue, do you’ve 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 territory?

7.  Have you met your service engineers and taken ‘em 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 questions that only a laboratory sales manager can answer?  Put ‘em in the comments section below.

Article courtesy of  Peggy McKee - Owner / Senior Recruiter at the nationally
recognized clinical 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 clinical and health care revenue.  Click the link for the answer.

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

1.  “Tell me about yourself.”

TWO.  “What’s your greatest weakness?”

THREE.  “Are you a team player?”

4. “What’s your sales style?”

5.  “Can you sell me this pen?”

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

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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Lab 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 career opportunity seeker (Jason) asked me just the other day to help him figure it out.  He found himself in a Stryker position 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 Recruiter at the nationally
recognized clinical laboratory and pharma sales 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 pharma sales career opportunity search, you’ve got your work cut out for you…but I’ve got 3 ideas that will get you rolling in the right direction:

1. Take advantage of no charge training.  Register for this free webinar:  How to Land a Position in Pharmaceutical 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 find clinical revenue 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 find 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 clinical sales interview without one of these babies if I really wanted the position.  It’s the key to what you have to prove in the interview.

Bonus Tip:  Don’t forget to sharpen up your resume 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 here for real help with your laboratory sales interview questions and answers.

Article courtesy of  Peggy McKee - Owner / Senior Recruiter at the nationally
recognized medical and pharmaceutical 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 Recruiter at the nationally
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Happy Holidays from PHC Consulting!

What are your goals for 2012?  To be the major performing medical device rep in your company?  To land the medical sales career opportunity you want? 

A top part of how I achieve my goals (when I was a pathology sales rep and now as a clinical 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 Fantasies

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 have has been known to cure incurable diseases, build billion dollar companies, create magnificent symphonies, paint masterpieces and build awesome loving families. The light switch that turns on this power is called visualization. Anyone that has created anything worthy 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’re. They are Olympic athletes, the super rich, star entertainers, big 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 totally 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 dreams. 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’re enthusiastically picking them up. There must be action—pick them up.

Start Where You’re

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

If you think you’re new to visualization, you are mistaken. You have visualized all your life, you were just not conscious of your practice. What may be new is that you’ve decided to become better at the practice and to be a conscious guide to your visualizations. You have decided to consciously tap into your power. You can only succeed. Follow these 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 fantasies 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 every single day 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. Those practices can be done through the day or just before a visualization session.

• Use photos to help you visualize

Discover photos that make you emotionally excited, that represent goals, and aspirations. They could be the flawless house, you at the perfect weight with your picture Photoshoped onto another body, or it could show laughing friends and children. The pics are more powerful, when you’re 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

These affirmations are a statement of how you feel having accomplished the goal. It is a verbal visualization.

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

Because you repeat those 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 Willing 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 ready. 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 career opportunity. Learn Italian for your dream vacation to Italy. Move to where you want to live even if everything is not consummate 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 pictures 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’m whole,

Perfect,

Strong,

Powerful,

Loving,

Harmonious,

And Happy.

You say your affirmations to yourself at least 3 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 fantasies in the now. You imagine perfect health and what that means to you. You imagine flawless 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 single day you’re being recognized and appreciated for your excellent work. You imagine going to these valuable places you’ve 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 are living what you lived in your visualization only two years ago. It will be no surprise.

Visualize all your goals, dreams 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 these 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 medical laboratory and medical 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 medical sales reps reading in 2011?

Major pharma sales posts of 2011

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

Big Clinical Device Companies of 2011

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

Business Plans for Laboratory Sales

(3)   And career opportunity seekers looking for clinical sales career opportunities liked this one:

Breaking Into Pharmaceutical Revenue With NO Medical Background

Wanna do a holiday favor for someone in a medical revenue career opportunity search?  Pass this article along to them.

Article courtesy of  Peggy McKee - Owner / Senior Recruiter at the nationally
recognized medical and lab 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 clinical laboratory 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 Ten years ago, everyone.  Send a card or an email.  You’ve a reason–it’s the holidays.  Just say, “Hey, how are you?  I was thinking about you and wanted to say Howdy.  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 got to tell them you’re looking for a job.  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 job search goal in a positive, upbeat way.  (If that seems difficult, watch my clip 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 priceless 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 fine things out there, valuable things will come back to you.

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

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Job Search Tips: How to Take Advantage of Holiday Networking

Need some quick, easy and great gift ideas for the laboratory revenue 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’s).

• If you don’t want to give something a little more personalized than a gift card, try a themed gift basket built around just about anything:  coffee, vids, 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 ‘em 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 revenue 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 wonderful finishing touch to any gift:  write your team member a note expressing your appreciation for them, and/or noting something especially great they did in the past year that really impressed you.

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

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