Medical Device: Good, Bad & Ugly

Short attention span summary: This industry isn't for everyone, no matter how hard you work or talented you might be. You must equip yourself with the tools to manage the peaks and valleys of the grind, otherwise you face a high likelihood of burnout or failure. Do your research, be patient until you find the right opportunity then develop a process to maintain a healthy relationship between work/life.

The Ugly

Starting here because I think it's important to fully understand and accept the worst case scenario of something so you can decide if the possibility of that is worth the reward associated.

Your mental health will be tested more and more the longer you work in high level sales. Since the quotas always grow and the pace never slows, the tax your mind, body and even spirit pays can be high.

Companies expect you to hit your number and meet other performance measures - consistently. 99% of the responses given to questions regarding poor performance will be viewed as an "excuse". It often doesn't matter how reasonable the response or accurate the analysis you provide is, your performance expectations are not being met. Any business headwinds faced are on you to remove, work through or overcome. That's stressful.

Customers will often forget that there is a living, breathing, important and loved human being behind that badge. They will call/text/email you all times of the day and night with an expectation you will drop everything to address their needs. Being a few minutes late or having to leave before the case is over to care for your family or take your dog to the vet is rarely met with applause. To them, your job is to provide support and to serve them. They are not wrong either but you have to set professional boundaries. (That's a bar)

The Bad

The number of uncontrollable aspects of your job can be often frustrating and sometimes overwhelming. Product backorders, recalls, indication delays, access restrictions, layoffs, bad leadership, poor strategy, micromanagement, no budget, price cuts, buying freezes and global pandemics to name a dozen.

Your ability to acknowledge and manage or overcome these things will be a result of how disciplined you are in consistently analyzing your business, educating yourself about your competitive landscape, customer base and market dynamics then calling audibles that leverage identified tailwinds.

Let's talk leadership. Or management. Maybe it can be neither. Essentially, the person you might work for.

Their leadership style, temperament, mastery of your role, understanding of the business, culture they allow or ability to manage up can all make your job more difficult. Weigh on you. Cause anxiety or stress you the heck out. This is an industry where a lot of rapid growth companies hit the easy button and promoted a lot of high performing individual contributors that were meant to be just that - individual contributors.

Just because you were President's Club doesn't mean you should lead people. Just because you want to lead people doesn't mean you should.

Leading people is HARD. I make mistakes ALL THE TIME (made a big one today) but my hope is that my people know I work hard for them and constantly working to improve as a leader to help our team become the best salespeople possible.

That's not the case for some leaders as well all know. Especially in sales. The business is moving too fast and the list of responsibilities grows daily it seems.

No excuse. Just the facts.

"If you don't LOVE PEOPLE, don't lead people."- Me

If not, you can become the reason they leave a career, company or even industry, they dreamt of.

The good news. Everybody, at every company in this industry, that came before and will come after you, faced a lot of the same issues. If you're built for this. If you're truly supposed to be in sales, you will find a way to get it done regardless.

The Good

Actually, there's ALOT OF GREAT things about working in the medical device industry.

Most importantly, you are truly helping people, every day in a tangible way. You can see a product you sell/promote or service you provide directly help someone sick, in pain, scared or even dying.

These innovations solve real problems that physicians, hospitals and health systems face while treating people in our communities. People you know and love.

There will be a moment in your career, many actually, where you will know this for yourself and the feeling that comes immediately after, makes all the aforementioned challenges worth it.

A really cool aspect of the industry is the chance to work with some incredibly brilliant people. Whether it's coworkers, physicians, hospital executives or nurses - the talent you come across is endless. What most have in common is a lifelong dedication and commitment to helping complete strangers to them called patients live a longer life. This is truly an inspiring thing to see up close. Watching a surgeon process the patient's anatomy in real-time, identify any abnormalities vs the indication for treatment, recall information charged to memory from a preoperative workup from months ago to the finally orchestrate the next 2 hours of life saving surgery with the rest of the room will leave you in awe.

Another thing, the one you read about online, these roles can change your life.

Seriously, a life changing, generational difference making impact, on you and everyone or thing around you. The house you drove past, the family you would draw in kindergarten, the destinations googled and being the source of support for someone else you once needed, is all within reach with a successful career.

I want to help you do just that and much more, so thank you for reading!

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