True job satisfaction comes from following your passion. Performance excellence comes when you fully engage the work you are passionate about. Passion enables you to perform your job in extraordinary ways. Knowing what to do will drive performance; however, knowing why you do what you do will ignite your passion. Passion enables you to find creative ways to achieve your goals.
I’ve made an observation relating to passion after watching the top-performing Altrus territory managers and other medical device reps sell a new product. These top-producing sales reps have no doubt in their minds that Altrus or the product they represent is the absolute best device on the market. These territory managers derive true pleasure from sharing this passion with customers and colleagues.
Have you ever played golf, baseball, or tennis? These sports all have a sweet spot. When an athlete finds this sweet spot using just the right golf club, baseball bat, or tennis racket, he or she will experience amazing results. Hitting the sweet spot in sports yields a long drive down the fairway, a home run, or a great return. If you have ever experienced the sweet spot in your favorite sport, you know what I’m talking about. The swing feels so effortless, and you barely feel yourself hitting the ball. The ball goes far and exactly where you want it to go—and the feeling just doesn’t get any better!
Passionate Altrus sales reps help their surgeons play in their professional sweet spots by using Altrus. These reps express the tremendous fulfillment they obtain when helping their surgeons learn a new technique or new product and then seeing the positive impact on the surgeons’ practices and patient outcomes.
The most successful new product sales reps help their surgeons find their sweet spots and then live there.
How do you engage your passion and help your surgeons find this sweet spot with your product? The answer is simple: passionate reps aren’t wallflowers!
According to Dictionary.com, a wallflower is “a person who, because of shyness, unpopularity, or lack of a partner, remains at the side at a party or dance.” In the medical device industry, we could define a wallflower as “a medical sales rep that lacks confidence or passion for the product and remains in the back of the operating room, not engaging the surgeon or owning the room and the outcome of the situation.”
A passionate new product medical device rep engages their surgeons. Too often I observe sales reps that lack assertiveness towards the product they are selling and the environment they are selling in. If you have a device that you know could drastically change a surgeon’s practice or a patient outcome, never ask for just five minutes to discuss your new product! You need that surgeon’s undivided attention and time to really explore what issues he or she is currently having and how your device may or may not help. More importantly, you are trying to uncover a surgeon’s sweet spots before he or she uses your device. In other words, if you have a good idea what your surgeons’ issues are, you will have a better chance to position your device to help their practices and deliver a better patient outcome. You can’t do that in five minutes or at a scrub sink before surgeons enter the operating room.
Assuming you have spent the necessary time to uncover the surgeon’s pain with his or her current device, you now have an opportunity to work a procedure with your new device. We need to continue to engage with each surgeon in order to become part of the procedure. We need to resist the temptation to become a wallflower in the operating room. Your device needs you! You need to ensure that the surgeon is using your device correctly. A new device cannot sell itself; it needs you to engage with the surgeon and coach each one to find his or her sweet spot. Most importantly, do not allow the surgeon to use your device incorrectly. If a sales rep observes a surgeon’s incorrect technique and does not offer correction, undoubtedly, the surgeon will blame the device or the rep for the experience.
A passionate Altrus rep understands that no device is perfect but also firmly believes that Altrus is the best device on the market and every surgeon should be using it. This energy and enthusiasm is contagious for surrounding colleagues—and for the customer too!
