A Day In The Life of a Medical Sales Rep
If you’re considering a career as a medical device sales representative, you might find yourself wondering, What does a medical sales rep do? To give you a better understanding of this career field, let’s look at a day in the life of a medical sales rep.
What Does a Medical Sales Rep Do?
A medical sales rep works with healthcare professionals regarding the supplies they need for their offices or ORs. If you’re an orthopedic sales rep, you’ll work with orthopedic surgeons, educating them on different devices they could use for various procedures.
As a medical sales rep, you may work with one company that sells one specific device, or you may work with a company that sells several devices used for a variety of conditions.
Medical sales reps may or may not have previous healthcare or sales experience.
A Typical Day
What is sometimes appealing for people considering a career in medical device sales is that it’s not a career spent behind a desk. Medical device sales reps often spend their workdays traveling from hospitals to healthcare facilities educating doctors and health professionals on their devices.
Because medical device sales reps are usually on the road meeting with different healthcare providers, the daily tasks of a sales rep are never the same. If you’re not visiting healthcare professionals at their offices, you may be working independently or meeting with manufacturers at their facilities.
If you’re a medical sales rep in surgery specializing in orthopedics, in addition to everything outlined above, you may spend time in the OR on different cases advising surgeons on device usage or troubleshooting issues as they arise.
Working with surgeons and doctors means that most medical device sales reps don’t have typical 9-5 working hours. Reps have to be available either to attend cases in the OR or meet with surgeons on their schedule. This means that your working environment and schedule can vary significantly.
Meetings and Relationships
A large portion of the job and day-to-day work will be spent cultivating relationships with healthcare professionals and meeting with them to discuss your device. If you’re not meeting face-to-face, you’ll likely be communicating remotely in some capacity.
If you’re spending a chunk of your day in cases in the OR, you’ll likely find that the late afternoon is when you spend time catching up on emails or returning phone calls. You may also need to take calls from surgeons at later hours as their schedules permit.
As a medical sales rep in surgery, it’s likely you’ll work as part of a sales team, so nurturing relationships with your coworkers is an important part of each day as well.
Education and Certifications
If a day in the life of a medical device sales rep sounds interesting to you, it’s helpful to have a Bachelor’s degree in engineering, biology or another specialty, but this is not a requirement.
As a new medical device sales rep, you’ll likely receive hands-on training with your new employer. If you’re still considering the field as a career, you might find it helpful to either do some job shadowing of a medical device sales rep or get a sales internship at a medical device company.
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