The pharmaceutical sales industry has witnessed steady growth for decades, as emerging companies have hit the market with exciting new drugs, and Big Pharma has expanded its sales forces to maximize coverage. In addition, the implementation of the “Pod” concept by Big Pharma during the past two decades has swelled the numbers of pharmaceutical sales representatives.

That is, until recently. As the U.S. economy began to stagnate in 2006, and the presidential initiative to socialize health care gained momentum, pharmaceutical companies have responded by significantly reducing the size of their sales forces. Additional forces, such as the rising popularity of television marketing of drugs by Big Pharma have contributed to the shrinking number of pharmaceutical sales representatives now calling on physicians.

So, does the pharmaceutical sales industry still provide a great career opportunity these days? The answer is a resounding YES!

While the number of pharmaceutical sales representatives has shrunk by an estimated 25% since 2006, this industry remains vibrant, with many new companies, drugs, and sales opportunities emerging. The challenge for the individual seeking entry into this lucrative industry, however, is much more acute than any time in recent history.

But, there are strategies available for job-seekers into the pharmaceutical industry that will significantly enhance the chances of obtaining one of these coveted sales opportunities. I have revealed some creative methods which may prove fruitful to those who choose to utilize them in their search:

1) SHADOW A PHARMA REP- If you want to prepare yourself
for a job in pharmaceutical sales, you should spend a day or two
shadowing a current pharma rep on his/her sales calls. Even if you
do not know a pharmaceutical rep, you can easily find plenty of them by
spending an hour walking the floors of a medical building where
doctors are located. Ask them to allow you to accompany them on
sales calls, to obtain a taste of what their typical day is like. By spending this much time with a current rep, you will have the opportunity to
ask them about possible job openings within their company, or
with other companies that they may know about.

2) PHONE A DISTRICT MANAGER DIRECTLY- Too many job-seekers
simply apply to openings through the corporate web site. Their
resume becomes one of thousands, and their chances of ever securing
an interview are very low. However, one can dramatically increase
his/her chances of getting an interview by communicating directly
with the hiring district sales manager. Once again, you can identify
these individuals by walking the halls of medical office buildings.
you will engage many pharmaceutical representatives each hour you
spend there, and can ask them to provide you with the name and contact
information of their sales manager. As a bonus, you may find some
district managers working with their reps, and can engage them directly
when you meet them. Always dress smartly for these forays to the
medical office buildings. And, do not forget to carry several copies of
your resume with you, in case a request is made to provide one.

3) ATTEND A MEDICAL CONVENTION- The exhibit floor of
most medical conventions is filled with pharmaceutical exhibitors.
the major national medical conventions such as the American Family
practice Society, the American Cardiology Association, and the
American Diabetes Association, have dozens of pharmaceutical
exhibitors manning booths on the exhibit floor. During lull times
when the physicians are in scientific sessions, most booths are relatively
quiet, and this provides an excellent opportunity to talk with sales
managers and representatives. It is almost always possible to secure a
visitors pass (for a fee) to gain entry to the exhibit hall during these
conventions.

4) JOIN A PHARMACEUTICAL SALES JOB BOARD- The niche job
boards which specialize in pharmaceutical sales jobs are an excellent
place to identify and apply for entry-level pharmaceutical sales jobs.
I suggest that you join at least two of the fee-based niche pharmaceutical
sales job boards. The “free” job boards are open to everyone in the world.
so, your chances of having your resume noticed when applying for a job
a job found on a free board are very slim. Contrarily, the fee-based job boards limit applicants to members-only. Thus, your chances are much
better applying to a job found on these boards. Why join two fee-based boards? You will find different jobs on each board. Two of the best job boards for finding pharmaceutical sales jobs are www.gorillamedicasales.com , and www.medzilla.com .

The time-worn phrase that “the-squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease” certainly applies when seeking a pharmaceutical sales job in the current job environment. One must be creative, assertive, and be willing to invest some time and money towards securing a position. I urge you to “think-out-of-the-box” in your job search. Attempt to identify covert opportunities to present your case in person, or on the telephone, to the individuals within the pharmaceutical companies who can help you achieve your goal.

One of the most perplexing mysteries for any individual wanting to enter the lucrative world of medical sales, is “how can I ever get a medical sales job when I have no experience in medical sales”?

During my many years as a medical sales recruiter, and in my current role as Founder/CEO of GorillaMed.com, a leading job board for medical sales opportunities, I have been asked this question more than any question I can recall. While there is no sure-fire method of preparing to secure a job in medical device sales or pharmaceutical sales, there is a very popular entry method which has proved successful for thousands of individuals over the years.

First, you will need a minimum of two years of outside sales experience, selling a tangible product or service, in which your success is measured by your performance versus your sales quota. In other words, how effective were you in achieving sales success versus the sales success expected by your employer?

The types of products/services which medical companies covet in their potential sales candidates are such tangible items as office equipment, copiers, and office supplies. Such companies as Xerox, Canon, Toshiba, IKON, Pitney Bowes, Wallace, etc., are examples of the type of sales background which medical companies find attractive.

In addition, such industries as credit-card processing and consumer products are also in demand as target backgrounds for medical companies. Companies such as Cintas, Paychex, Coke, Pepsi, Gallo Wine, Hersheys, etc. are also a great background for making the transition into medical sales.

However, to really increase your odds of being able to land a job in medical sales, you must have a history of documented success in exceeding your sales quota and performing in the top 20% of your respective sales force within your company. Medical companies want only the very best non-medical sales representatives, and your sales history in your current occupation will be critical to landing a medical sales job.

So, if you are serious about entering the world of medical sales, I suggest you consider making a two-year investment in your career by selling one of the product-types listed above. Consider this an “apprenticeship” towards achieving your ultimate goal of becoming a medical sales representative.

The majority of medical sales jobs seekers do not really understand the process which recruiters use to fill jobs for their clients companies. The most common misunderstanding is that recruiters engage with a job-seeker, and actively work to match that candidates’ experience and skill set to a job opening.

The reality is that most medical sales recruiters do not find jobs for candidates. Rather, they find candidates for companies. In other words, recruiters are given “job orders” by a company to find a candidate who matches their hiring requirements for a job in a given market. The recruiter then conducts a search to identify potential candidates for that opening who match the qualifications outlined by the hiring company.

Many times, the candidate who actually secures the job does not even come from the recruiter who has been given the job order by the company. The phenomenon known as “Fee-Splitting” is a term used to explain how a job from “Recruiter A” is filled with a candidate from “Recruiter B”.

Fee-Splitting works exactly like real estate, where a fee is split between the listing agent and the selling agent. The total placement fee paid by the hiring company is split between the recruiter having the job order, and the recruiter providing the candidate who secures the job.

It becomes apparent that the recruiter who has knowledge of the strong candidates who may be looking for a new job hold the key to filling that medical sales opening. It is relatively easy for a recruiter to get job orders from a company. However, the real power to filling those openings is providing the right candidate. Thus, fee-splitting is a very popular method of filling pharmaceutical sales jobs and medical device sales jobs.

Most health care sales job openings handled by recruiters are given by the companies to several recruiters to work at the same time. Since these searches are almost always “contingency searches”, companies really have no incentive to limit their use of recruiters to just one.

However, some of the better recruiters have developed long-standing relationships with companies, or with individuals within the companies that allows them to gain an exclusive job order. This means that every candidate considered for interview must come through the one recruiter who has been granted that job order.

As a job-seeker, if you can identify recruiters who have exclusive job orders with companies, your chances of getting an interview are greatly enhanced.

NEXT: “Recruiters do not work for you, they work for the hiring companies”

Did you ever hear that you should never quit your current job until you have landed a new one?  Well, this old adage is true, and here is why.

Medical sales recruiters understand that most of their hiring managers prefer to hire a great sales rep away from another company.  So, when they are evaluating potential candidates to interview for a sales opening, they tend to favor those candidates who are currently employed.  Therefore, if a recruiter has been given only three interviewing slots by the hiring company, an unemployed candidate may be left out of the process in favor of one who is employed.

This phenomenon has been somewhat diminished in importance by the large number of high quality sales individuals who have been down-sized because of the economy.  However, make no mistake about it, most hiring managers are psychologically tuned to hiring a sales rep away from another company, rather than one who is currently unemployed.

The lesson here is that you should start your job search for a new sales position while you are still employed, if at all possible.  Never leave an unhappy situation to seek greener pastures without understanding that you may be reducing your opportunities for gaining a better position by being unemployed.

NEXT:    Try to use a Recruiter who has an Exclusive Job Order from a Company

In this tough job market, job seekers are pulling out all of the stops in their attempts to secure a job.  The medical sales industry, once thought to be immune from an economic downturn, is seeing the loss of thousands of health care sales jobs, causing unemployed sales reps to seek-out new methods to compete for those few available positions.

One method being hyped is “email blasting”.  Job seekers pay a fee to have their resume sent via email to hundreds, or even thousands of recruiters and potential employers.  Sounds like a winner, right?  To the contrary, this method is actually a waste of time and money.

Why?  First, recruiters and companies receive literally hundreds (or even thousands) of new candidate resumes daily.  They have become so inundated with emailed resumes filling their in-boxes each morning that most merely delete those emails without ever reading them.  Email blasting is a veritable “black hole”!

Secondly, recruiters spend their time attempting to find a perfect match candidate for a specific job profile, in a specific location.  They do not have the time to browse through hundreds of unsolicited resumes with the slim chance that one of them may be a match.  Instead, they post their job specifications on reputable job boards, and wait for qualified candidates to respond to that posting with their resume.

So, save your money spent on email blasting, and spend it registering for one of the “pay-to-play” medical sales job boards, like www.gorillamed.com.  You will be investing wisely in your job search efforts.

NEXT:    “The best medical sales candidates are already employed”

Contingency medical sales recruiting (that is, where the recruiter does not get paid unless he fills a job) is an extremely competitive industry, in which 90% of the individuals who enter this field fail within the first year.  This business compares very closely with being a realtor, in that the 90% failure rate for recruiters and realtors is very similar.  New recruiters have to work for many weeks, or even months, before they may actually place a candidate, and generate income.  Therefore the fall-out rate for new recruiters is extremely high.

Furthermore, as in real estate sales, the old 80/20 rule certainly applies to medical sales recruiting.  That is, 80% of the medical sales positions are filled by 20% of the recruiters.  Why?  It is because the medical sales recruiters who are successful, stay in the business for many years, and slowly build their credibility and professional relationships with industry personnel over time.  It is very difficult for a new recruiter to get job orders from sales managers who have developed a long-term relationship with an established recruiter, and may be reluctant to compromise that relationship.

This fact is very important to the job seeker, since choosing who will represent you in your job search may be the difference in finding a new job or not. One quick barometer of evaluating a recruiter with whom you might consider engaging is to ask that recruiter how long he/she has been in business.  You may also want to secure a sample list of client companies which that recruiter has represented in the past.

In summary, when choosing a recruiter for your quest to find a job in medical sales, do your homework.  Ask colleagues and seasoned sales managers to recommend several high-quality recruiters with whom they have utilized in the past.  Choose two or three of these recruiters, and start developing a relationship with them.  Even if you are currently not seeking a new job, it always pays to have a close working relationship with a few quality recruiters.  Make this a priority as part of your overall career-building strategy.

NEXT TOPIC:   “Why Email Blasting Your Resume is a Waste of Time”

Many experienced and entry level job seekers will engage with a medical sales recruiter in their search for a job in medical sales.  This process can be frustrating, with the candidate feeling he/she has no real control of the proceedings.

In my latest series, I will discuss many aspects of the medical sales recruiting business, gained during my many years in that industry.  It is rather obvious that most medical sales representatives do not understand the recruiting business.  My hope is that this series will enlighten these individuals, so that they may better interact with medical sales recruiters in the future.

TOPIC #1 -    THERE ARE TWO TYPES OF RECRUITERS

There are two main categories of medical recruiters.  The first category, retained recruiting, refers to recruiters who are retained by a medical company to find a key employee for a high profile position within that company.  These recruiters are paid a substantial professional retainer, plus all expenses including travel, to identify, screen, and interview individuals throughout the nation for a critical position.  In general, retained searches are limited to filling senior executive positions such as CEO or CFO.  In some cases, VP positions are also filled through retained searches.  The recruiter agrees to work to fill these positions as long as it takes until the right candidate is found and hired.  In a retained search, the recruiter is compensated by the company whether they hire a candidate or not.

The second category of recruiting, which applies to almost all medical sales and sales management positions, is contingency recruiting.    In this type of recruiting, companies engage the services of one or more recruiters to identify and screen potential hires.  These recruiters are paid nothing by the companies to conduct these searches.  The recruiters carefully evaluate and screen potential candidates, and select a small group of them to be interviewed by the hiring company.  If the company actually hires a candidate provided by a contingency recruiter, they agree to pay a pre-negotiated placement fee to that recruiter.  In other words, contingency recruiters make nothing until one of their candidates is hired.

NEXT:     “NINETY PERCENT OF RECRUITERS LEAVE THE INDUSTRY IN THE FIRST YEAR”

During my years as a medical sales recruiter, I was frequently asked by job-seekers if I could find them a medical sales job in a different state than they currently resided.  Candidates wanting to re-locate often attempted to provide solutions to the obvious obstacles of attempting to secure a sales job in a different state by stating that they “would pay their own re-location expenses.”  While this noble gesture of good faith may seem like a big concession by the candidate, it really had no impact as to why individuals wanting to re-locate had almost no chance of being successful in that quest.

The fact is, in my decade of medical sales search, I have never seen a candidate successfully get a sales position in another state, unless he had a personal relationship with someone who could negotiate that deal.  There are so many reasons why it is almost impossible to re-locate with a new company, without knowing someone at that company.

First, there are so many highly-qualified candidates living in the open territory.  Why would a hiring sales manager want to look outside of that city to hire?  Hiring an outsider would require the new representative to spend time “getting settled” in his new city, moving his family, perhaps buying a house, etc.  In addition, there would be a significant amount of time spent by this individual “learning the market”, locating the physician’s offices, finding the hospitals, learning where to park, negotiating the traffic patterns to effectively cover the territory, etc.  Even the interview process becomes an obstacle, because the candidate does not reside in the state in which the interview occurs.

In addition, the new sales representative would have no previous relationships with doctors, nurses, purchasing agents, or other ancillary personnel in that market.  In effect, the hiring company would sacrifice at least three months of productivity while the new sales person worked through these obstacles.

Finally, there may be a vast difference in selling cultures between the current market, and the market from which that sales representative came.  As an example, an individual who successfully sold medical products in his home town of New York City, may not be successful at all selling these products in Birmingham, Alabama.

In conclusion, I would offer one bit of advice to a medical sales representative who wants to re-locate to another state.  If you want to have a realistic chance at securing a new job in your destination state, quit your current job, and move to your state of choice.  After you have re-located, start our job search in your new location.  You will have a much better chance of succeeding.

It is the day of your job interview for a medical device sales position.  Your goal is to “nail” the interview and get the job offer.  How do you prepare?

Here is a great way to prepare for a medical device sales interview which utilizes behavioral techniques.

• Identify 6-8 examples from your past medical sales experience where you demonstrated top behaviors and skills that employers typically seek.  Think of examples that will exploit your top selling points.
• Make sure that half of your examples are totally positive, such as accomplishments or meeting sales goals.
• The other half should be situations that started out negatively, or precariously, but either ended positively, or you were able to make a bad situation better.
• Always use fairly recent examples.  Anything more than a couple of years old is too old.  Try to focus on examples from your medical sales selling experiences.

Finally, an hour before the interview, review your resume.  Most interviewers focus on things you have stated on your resume.  By re-reading your resume, you will be able to remember your achievements, and will not be surprised by a question asked about something you may have written on your resume many months earlier.

During the interview, listen carefully to each question.  Before rushing to answer, mull over in your mind what behavior the interviewer might be attempting to uncover.  Then, pull an example out of your pool of prepared “answers” that provides an appropriate description of how you demonstrated the desired behavior in your job as a medical device sales representative.  With practice, you will be able to tailor a finite set of prepared answers to almost any question answered.  Finally, do not forget to always answer your questions using the SAR technique.