I spent ten years managing teams of medical sales people in the pharmaceutical industry with the unfortunate task of removing several from their roles. Medical sales is a great career, very rewarding with lots of opportunities to progress. I always found it surprising how many squandered their position down to such simple things they should or shouldn’t have done. Here’s my top five.
1) Go to work. You may well scratch your head but it was indeed amazing that some of these well paid, privileged people simply didn’t go to work. The difficulty from a management point of view is that 90% of the medical sales job is entirely unsupervised, and the manager relies on honest reporting on a weekly basis.
If it were just the occasional morning or afternoon here and there, it would be very difficult to spot. In reality it’s not. What starts out as a morning or afternoon nearly always escalates to much, much more. Don’t do it, it’s a slippery slope with no way back up.
2) Don’t get hopelessly drunk in whilst with senior managers if you know you can’t take it. Medical sales meetings are notoriously social affairs. The alcohol is often free and after the stresses and strains of selling who wouldn’t let their hair down a little.
The problem is, in groups of 100+ there’s will be at least one who does something stupid while under the influence, such as throwing a television out of a hotel window…upstairs! Hurling verbal obscenities at the sales Director, or turning up for your meeting in the same clothes you had on the dance floor the previous evening….unshaven.
We are talking highly about educated and, by day, high sensible people, who for some reason at night turn into something quite different. You know who you are, if you value your career, drink coke!
3) Don’t fall out with your boss. By all means discuss, reason and debate with your boss, but don’t get visibly upset, loose your temper and call him names. This is the chap who decides what your pay rise is, decides how pretty your appraisal looks and whether or not you’re recommended for promotion. Ultimately if your boss decides you simply can’t get on, he can dismiss you based upon this, ‘irreconcilable differences’ is grounds for dismissal. This means if your boss decides your relationship is unworkable, one of you has to go…unfortunately, he decides.
4) Tell your most important customer he’s an prat. I was in medical sales for years and I can think of many supposed eminent Doctors who were, well, less than pleasant, and at times downright daft…but I was never daft enough to tell them that. It only takes one senior Doctor to call your company saying you’ve been rude to them and your history. This comes under the heading ‘bringing the company into disrepute. It something company’s can’t afford to have and the easy way out is to show you the way out.
5) Leave your company car, with laptop and phone visible on the passenger seat of your car…in a town centre all night while you go drinking. When your boss receives a phone call from the police who have traced it back to you to alert the ‘security risk’ at 3 am one Saturday morning, you may find you’re in a meeting at 9am Monday morning…not to talk about your
Medical sales!
These are all real examples, there are lots more. I still think medical sales offers a fantastic career opportunity for anyone who’s good enough to get in to it. If you are one of the luck ones, don’t throw is away over one moment of madness.
