12 Things Only Medical Device Sales Reps Understand

You are a sales professional, you just want to sell. You want to build relationships, you want to solve problems, you want to drive growth.

Too often though you are doing paperwork, arduous operational tasks, and performing cumbersome processes that don’t add real value.

You know what you have to go through on a daily basis, does anyone else?

Here are 12 Truths, that only medical device sales reps truly understand:

Even though you are in sales, your main job is actually inventory management. You deep down just wish you could get back to selling and growing the business.
You call customer service way too much. You seem to always be calling customer support for the same things, over and over again. The team loves to help you, but you know that some of these issues with pricing, billing, and inventory requests should be automated.
You have at least 4 different software tools. And they easily should be 1 HIPAA-compliant tool, yet these tools are not user-friendly, and don’t actually help you do your job better!
Pen and paper are often still your best friend even though you should have broken up a long time ago. Often, when doing your job, it is easier to create a hack to get work done than using the tools provided. Or you just call someone.
You never know if the scheduling and the requesting app will actually work when you need it. Downtime is real. The problem is never known when you call IT. Sometimes it just magically starts working again and the apps never work without an internet connection.
Most of the time you call or send emails to verify inventory statuses just so you don’t blow a case. Since there is no single source of inventory truth you are always calling to verify, to follow-up. You often drive around town just to make sure everything is where it should be.
You spend so much time trying to get the sales and inventory data, that you never have time to review it. Sales data is elusive. Getting the numbers you want to see (your numbers) is a cumbersome process of emailing, asking, and often begging. Getting your hands on inventory data is not any easier.
Even though it is already 2024, faxes are still a big part of your life! Whether it is sticker sheets, usage capture, replenishments, or consignment requests – for some reason, no one has figured out yet -you still have to use fax machines almost daily.
You have your surgeon preferences saved in various files because you found that copy and paste still works so well. Rather than having the surgeon-specific preferences established and saved into a system, you created an elaborate note-taking process that allows you to cut and paste into emails with the best of them. No one knows the pain you go through to make this happen.
Your inventory audits and counts are done by manually counting and then putting data into Excel files. Inventory counts are the worst, especially when lugging around a scanner. Physically counting everything and then going back to your laptop at night to input the data takes forever. You know there has to be a better way. Then support in the back offices tries to reconcile, when you should be able to do it right from your phone.
You kind of know where all your inventory is, but never actually really know. This is where your great memory, some notebooks, saved messages and calls to customer support all come into play. You always have a general idea, but deep down you wish you could be certain.
Everyone wishes the hospital/ASC surgery schedule would just be uploaded directly to your phone. The holy grail. You want communication and transparency. You want everything to be simple. You want to be able to plan your cases without having to worry if anything has changed in the last 24 hours.

Don’t worry. There are people who understand. People that have been in your shoes. Also, there are tools that can help.

Keep pushing. You are needed.

Good luck!

P.S. –

If you want to sell more, and build stronger relationships all while reducing headaches and cumbersome manual admin work, you need to speak with us.

Contact us: 858.956.0219 or info@movemedical.com

watch: www.movemedical.com/transform (video)

A good sales & inventory solution is worth its weight in gold, a fully integrated medical device-specific operations and sales force effectiveness platform is priceless.

A comprehensive sales & inventory tool should be able to or have:

Surgery Scheduling (+ Calendar)
Surgeon Preferences / Preference Cards
Case & Opportunity Management
Inventory Control
Real-Time Visibility (All Locations, All Types)
Active Order Visibility
Opportunity/Lead Management
Customer/Account Management
Sales Metrics / Data (Reps, Leaders, Corporate)
Shipping Coordination (FedEx, UPS Integration)
Directed Picking & Put-away (Bin Mapped)
Auto Product Replenishment
Expiration Notifications
Direct Orders
Send & Receive Tools (Rep to Rep etc.)
Contract & List Pricing (Real-time)
Audit/Cycle Counts
Reporting & Billing
Image & File Sharing
Secure HIPAA Compliant Communication
Mobile Usage Capture
UDI Compliance
Barcode Scanning
RFID Integration & RFID Reconciling (HF/UHF)
ERP/CRM/EMR Integrations
Demand Planning Tools
Consignment/Loaner Management
Pluggable Workflows (Programmatic Integrations, Integrated Prediction Models)
Sourcing Matrix Tool
HIPAA Compliant Communication Platform (Messages, Calendar, Usage, Notes, Files)
Sourcing Optimization
Future Stock (Virtual Inventory Assigned to Future Events)
Atomic Inventory (UDI Ready, Piece Level Tracking, Serialized or Not)
Hybrid Kitting (Skinny Kits, Kit Management, Kit Versioning, Tracking)
Cross-Boundary Workflows
Lost & Found (Automatic Cycle Counting )
Merger/Acquisition Integration
Par Management
Multi-Catalog Management
Loan Optimization (1 Loan Per Day)
Separate or Combined Sales & Operations Alignment
Cost-to-Serve Metrics
Turn Ratio Dashboards