They Get It....
Monday, December 19, 2011 at 6:03AM On an earlier blog , I talked about vision or the lack thereof from many of the companies in the orthopedic and spine business. I promised I would also address the other side of the coin: the sales piece. I have thought about this for some time. I didn't want to take the easy way out of just bashing poor sales performance or for that matter take the side of the near-sighted, narrow minded sales rep who loves to blame everything on " corporate." I wasn't exactly sure how to address it until one night last week I got a text message from 4 guys in Pittsburgh. These four guys were sitting around, having a few beers and decided to send me a note just to say they were thinking about me and thought they would say hey. It was a great gesture and I am honored that after being gone from a company almost 8 years, they felt like saying hello.
It got me thinking about the sales dynamic and today's sales representatives in Spine and Orthopedics. It is fashionable to paint them all with the same brush. That brush being the big one that paints them as overpaid prima donnas who think they are the doctor and should be treated with some sort of exhaulted respect. Honestly? I think this is the wrong brush. But not for the reason some of you might think. I really do believe that there are a large number of representatives who are overpaid prima donnas and if there was a character trait that would best describe these folks it would be "entitlement." These are the reps who inherit a million dollar territory and grow it to 1.2 million over 3 years and think that they are the reason that the customer is doing business with the company. The fact of the matter is that nothing could be further from the truth. Most of these individuals are what I like to refer to as...wait for it....farmers. They do a nice job of maintaining the customer but they rarely grow the business faster than the market growth. For this average performance, they believe they should receive above average compensation. He guys! This is not MLB where you can get paid 2.5 million for batting .240.
The orthopedic business was built on 2 things...clinical innovation to solve orthopedic needs and the back bone of every great organization...a sales team who got it. What is IT? Actually many things. IT is understanding that you have to grow your business to stay ahead of competition. IT is never taking for granted that the customer is yours, that he/she loves you and only you and their business will never move. IT is that you get up everyday with the understanding that we are in a great industry, in a great country and that today you will earn what you are paid because you will do your job better than anyone else. IT is understanding that real salespeople are hunters not farmers, that they eat what they kill and that nothing feels better than a conversion of a potential customer to a real customer. IT is knowing that you have to adapt...to the market, to changes in the company, to new regulatory demands and to outside stuff that hasn't even surfaced yet. It is...well IT. There are many components of IT and everyone can add to this very short list that I have demonstrated here, so this really is just a start of defining IT.
What I do know is that IT is not lost in this industry. What has happened is that the bar has been lowered, sales performance has been exchanged for cost of sales, that a person who never would of been hired 10 years ago because they did not have that intangible IT during the interview is now hired because he/she has a good resume and the human resources department says they would be a good fit in your selling team, that sales people are not measured on sales performance but rather on whether they are liked by the powers to be...whoever they are!!
Then there are 4 guys in Pittsburgh who did the job they way it was meant to be done.... the customer was happy, the organization was happy and I was proud to have been one of their associates. They got IT.
Reader Comments (1)
As usual, you cut through the fluff and hit the real issue straight on. Who's in charge of these companies anyway? HR? Sure seems like it. The funny thing is that some of these companies have a policy against allowing a manager to hire someone without a college degree. As if somehow that is a barometer of success? HR people are "Administrators" who rarely get IT. I am not sure that I can substantiate this, but do you think that you have to have IT to be able to see IT in others?