Thursday, October 23, 2008

Becoming a Sales Associate - Fast Track Opportunity for Growth

In the Northeast in particular, we hire a number of sales associates each year. One of the associates who was hired last year was recently promoted and shared his experience with me:

And yes, I have moved on now to my own territory.

You are absolutely correct in that "X" was an excellent mentor. I would contest it would be impossible for someone else to do better. He prepared me in every facet and made me better with every mistake and every triumph that I had.

So far I am doing pretty well with the new territory. It is definitely a whole different world then just being an associate. As an associate, per my request and desire along with my mentor's desire to train me into becoming not just familiar with product but to be a hunter and to sell, I did have the opportunity to take on some selling opportunity and actually was successful in getting some evals which eventually led to nice deals that we were able to close. However, through most of that process a lot of the basic relationships were my mentors before they were mine and even though I built some very strong relationships there on my own, I suppose you could say I already had a foot in the door from the hard work my mentor had put in that territory over time.

Now, in the new territory it is quite a bit different in that those preexisitng relationships aren't nearly as strong, or sometimes nonexistant altogether. Also, as an associate, the buck doesn't really stop with you. You do all the things necessary as per your Sr. Reps request, or tasks you have taken on etc, you go home and maybe do some studying or learning, however the actual NUMBERS are not really your concern, or directly in your view at all times.

So there is definitely a whole new level of responsibility and awareness of what is going on in the territory that I have certainly begun to realize in my new territory. All in all however I have viewed this merely as a vast amount of potential to grow business in a territory which really has a lot of case volume and nearly the amount of Linvatec business to match. Hard to think I was on the phone with you from my college apartment only about 15-16 months ago.

There was definitely a lot of hard work, although over some of my colleagues I think my background in biomechanics got me faster in the right direction as opposed to those with non medical type backgrounds. And I was also very fortunate to land in the environment with OR Specialites...where my mentor gave me so many invaluable opportunities, as did the distributor owner and even learning from several guys who really get it and have a proven track record of success.


Being a sales associate has been a stellar growth opportunity for this young rep. It really is a fast track to success in our highly competitive industry.

Right now, we have a sales associate opening with our distributor OR Specialties in Hartford. Though we prefer for candidates to have a year of outside B2B sales experience, this could be great opportunity for recent or December grads of UConn's or William Patterson University's professional selling programs. If you are interested in being a part of this great team, please send me your resume at LMcCallister@Linvatec.com

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