If you are a sales professional or want to become one, or if you are looking for a new sales job, you will face one of the toughest interview processes of any job seeker.
Are you on LinkedIn? If not, you should be. Not only is LinkedIn an invaluable component of your professional network, it’s an amazing resource for information about pharmaceutical and health care sales.
For example, in the Sales Café group, this is a discussion:
What’s your opinion of the American Institute of Lab Sales Academy?
The discussion started with a question from a recent college graduate interested in medical sales and was wondering if pathology sales training programs were a nice opportunity for someone with the degree, but no experience.
He got several responses from health care industry executives, sales reps, and others, including me (the clinical sales recruiter), and generated a few more queries from more experienced jobseekers who do have the sales experience, just not the clinical revenue experience. (Just looking at the caliber of the people in the discussion will show you how worthy it is to participate in LinkedIn groups.)
The trend of the discussion seems to be that clinical sales training programs are a major investment with questionable value, and that employers focus more on hiring revenue reps with a valuable attitude, communication skills, and interpersonal skills, along with the technical knowledge. Although it’s acknowledged that laboratory sales can be a hard field to break into, and candidates are looking for an edge.
My input was that since I’ve never participated in a training program, I don’t know how worthy they’re. As a career coach, I see value in training and job preparation, although I don’t know if that’s what would give you the edge in a job offer. As a clinical sales recruiter, I’ve never had a client company ask for a candidate with those certifications, and I’ve never had a candidate win the position based on having gone through a course…so I don’t think candidates should expect a hot pursuit if they do.
The advice I always give to people trying to break into clinical sales is to (1) do job shadowing, which provides you with experience, resume keywords, and sets you apart; (TWO) get a career coach who can show you how to present yourself as a top candidate and give the best interview of your life; (3) and research–read everything you can on getting into pharma sales (this blog has hundreds of articles for you), and watch YouTube videos on job hunting and clinical sales (I have a Clinical Sales Recruiter channel, and there are many other great ones with specific information).
Let’s continue the discussion here: Have you participated in a laboratory sales training program? Did you find that it was helpful to your clinical revenue job search?
Article courtesy of Peggy McKee - Owner / Senior Headhunter at the nationally
recognized medical and pharma sales recruiting team of PHC Consulting.
© Copyright 2008 PHC Consulting | All rights reserved
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