Dear WhoeverZ (area directorZ, Nan, Pedro, I don’t care who, I know you read this), While you’re on conference callZ telling us how exciting things are, pushing out promotions that require 16 pages of pdfZ to understand - we are STREZZED! I don’t think you know the burden we carry in the field right now. Just going in and out of offices is a major ordeal. Trying to respect COVID policies, that vary in each office, is a major headache. Being yelled at for not using the hand sanitizerZ often enough, because you touched a desk, and then a pen, and then a door handle - it suckZ. Having our pictureZ taken by the Mask NaZi patients, and blasted on social media - it’s just a bit stressful. Finding out that staff memberZ have been exposed, when THEY refuse to respect the 6 foot distance recommendation, and feeling their spit land on your arm - not the best feeling. And I haven’t even mentioned the stareZ and glareZ we get, just for being there and trying to do our jobZ. Guess who else is stressed? Our doctorZ. Our ITCs. Our office managerZ . All those people you want us to talk to about EducationZ, and iTeroZ, and CompetitorZ, and the dog of all dogZ - Implant ConZierge. We are just barely treading waterZ. Stop pushing us under. Back off, please, just a little. Zign me, a sales rep who just swallowed a giant mouthful of lake water, and is begging you to let me come up for airZ
Nan, Pedro, Ivan, Area Sales Directors- Please read the above message. It captures the feelings of every sales rep i know in our company and they are all expressing it to each other. Obviously product managers are trying to push their projects through and that is understandable. But not every idea is a good idea. Here are a few good ideas: *PartnerZ swap. None of the paperwork, but the good old fashioned field swap. *Adjusted sales quotas. Maybe word hasn’t reached the corporate office yet, but America is shut down. All those cases that were on the schedule remain on the schedule. Our doctors already schedule themselves at 100% capacity, so those sales dollars are not coming back. Those are all lost dollars, and when things get back to normal some time next year we will get back to where we were last year. *Improving and refining our extremely bloated catalog, and refreshing products before our suppliers discontinue them, (Contra Angle Torque Wrench). *Listen to the reps in the field, not to the Area directors that are being paid to just tell you what you want to hear. The field has not reopened fully, and acting like it has is counterproductive and damages employee morale. Here are a few bad ideas: *iTero *iTero *iTero, this has been discussed plenty already by others on this board. It was just such a stupid idea to sign a distributor ship deal with this company that is on its last leg. Clearly you weren’t around for the Renishaw debacle. Really so so dumb. And even more dumb was the idea that we should leverage our good relationships with our doctors to try to get them to buy these things. The reason we have good relationships with our doctors is because we don’t sell them shit they don’t want or need. We are in the business of creating and providing solutions to our doctors. Selling a doctor that isn’t in the market for a scanner an iTero scanner is not creating and providing a solution, it is creating a liability and a problem. If you are trying to sell an iTero to a doctor that is in the market for a scanner you have to find that doctor. So now your Salesforce is out cold calling doctors for scanners, a tiny ancillary part of our business, and neglecting the bread and butter products that we need to focus on to make our company profitable. *Implant Concierge. How does it make any business sense to purchase a company our doctors already have access to, and continue to charge our doctors for those services? How does it make sense to keep making Implant Concierge available to our competitors? If it is truly the earth shaking opportunity that you keep suggesting to us, why would we want to offer it to our competitors to use? Why are we building up their business for them??? *PartnerZ. A great program that is so complicated and over programmed that it is far easier to just discount our products and let the doctors keep their old products. *Pain Management. A total disappointment and disgrace. We, Zimmer Biomet Dental is better than this disgusting cash grab at the expense of the patients and clinicians we purport to support and care about. *In-person education and trade shows. How clueless and out of touch would we have to be to push our reps and doctors into a classroom or convention center so that they can all be exposed and infected by COVID-19? Get. A. Clue. Nan, the reps love you. At least most of them used to love you. Don’t allow these short sighted product managers to cause our team to lose all momentum. We are counting on you to be a TRUE leader. We haven’t had one of those for years. Do the right thing, especially when it is the hard thing. That what makes a leader a leader. Quit letting people bastardize our company and our brand.
