I've got an upcoming interview with this division. Of course the headhunter is telling me it's a $115-20k opportunity--though I realize that's probably optimistic. It's being marketed as capital with disposable trail vs a traditional oharma job. Can you share the good, bad, and ugly--as I don't see any recent updates...
Your major product is radiology and MRI contrast media, both products have undergone substantial discounting. These products are, for the most part, 10 to 25 years old, and the discounting has scared off most generic competitors. Your major competitors are Bracco, GE and Berlex/Bayer. They've combined territories, so expect to see a large piece of dirt as your territory. A lot of that business is also tied up with group purchasing contracts. Unless it's changed in the past couple years, Premier is a major contract for your products. HealthTrust has Bracco contracts and Novation (VHA/University Health Consortium) is GE's major contract. It's tough (not impossible, but tough) to get business in your competitors' contract accounts. Coviden/Mallinckrodt is able to tie both products to their power injector line (Liebel; used in CT scanning, special procedures/cath labs, and MRI) which are a capital product and have disposables of their own (injector syringes or prefilled syringes with contrast), and that can be effective in keeping your contrast used in an account, but the balancing act is trying to make money on both products.
I appreciate your insight. You are correct about the territory--it's fairly large. I've been fairly fortunate to have mostly avoided GPOs up until this point, so that's interesting. That really can change the equation, as there's probably little growth if customers are locked in. Is it mostly maintenance and upsell or does corporate expect wins at Novation accounts--as you've said that can be tough. From your experience, is the comp plan realistic and can I make $100k?
Can I realistically make $100k? I understand what you are saying about the GPOs, so is there much growth or is this basically maintenance and upsell capital? How is management and the culture in this division? Thanks for your insight!
It's been a couple years since I've been in the business (and I was with a competitor), but I saw the Mallinckrodt/Liebel sales team being aggressive in ALL accounts, even those with competitive contrast products ... sometimes using the stick of bringing in equipment to try and pry away the contrast business. Often, they would use the idea of getting an injector at no up-front cost with purchase of contrast. Not a bad strategy. What you're often doing is selling the injector to upgrade an existing unit as the injector is often packaged with new equipment (such as a CT unit; although if the account likes your product they can arrange to use a Liebel injector in the deal instead of Medrad) because it's easier to finance the deal in one package ... buying that equipment is much like buying a car -- you get a book of options you can choose/purchase/add-on to your purchase, be it injectors, software packages, service agreements, accessories, etc. Think of it this way, it's easier to get administration to sign off on a $2 million equipment purchase than to sign off on a $1.85 million deal and then going back to the CFO asking him/her to sign off for $20,000 here, $35,000 there ... Although the problem is that few facilities are buying new equipment; anyone opening a stand-alone imaging center today is a fool -- much of it because of questions about the effect of Obamacare. Just read something in the local paper yesterday that a specialty hospital just sold out to one of the area hospital chains; the owner of this hospital (who also owns about a dozen other specialty hospitals around the country) is in the process of selling out their hospitals because healthcare "reform" has severely limited their options to expand. And many physician groups are selling their practices and assets to hospital systems, thinking it's better for them to be in the doctor business instead of the running a healthcare business-business.
Once again, thanks for sharing your experience and prospective; I've been in device for sometime, but never these call points. Yeah, I'm not sure about all the implications of healthcare reform and its affects on our business. I'd like to think things will change for the better, but everything is seemingly more complicated these days.
Excellent Recruiter Vicki McCarthy 636-230-0717 http://www.linkedin.com/in/medrecruiter4u She's Awesome! And well respected in the medical sales recruiting community.
I worked there prior to downsizing and also came through Vicki McCarthy. Good job...nowhere near what it used to be. R&D is non-existent. 2-3 years to get into industry, IR, cath lab, etc. could be a good move. 90K-120K from what I am hearing. Good luck.
Vicki is awesome; we worked together recently and I've hot nothing but good things to say about her. Best of luck out there!
