Sales Force Stability

Discussion in 'Wright Medical' started by Anonymous, May 23, 2011 at 12:30 PM.

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  1. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    I'm looking at an opportunity with Wright Medical but I'm concerned about the CEO departure, the compliance issues, and potential for the company to be bought.

    Can anyone at the company share what the general mood is there? Has sales force turnover increased? Are you thinking about leaving the company? Are any other ortho firms hiring sales reps right now? Not trying to start a bitchfest, just want an honest assessment. Thanks.
     

  2. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    there are basically two groups of reps at Wright, the reps who sell foot and ankle and the ones who don't. Don't take the position if you won't have foot and ankle in your bag. Wright is putting all their money into foot and ankle.
     
  3. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest


    Thousand dollar cases are da bomb $$$$!
     
  4. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    Bad time to join wright. We are loosing great upper management to other companies that pay better, the competition is really stiff with all of the me-to products everyone is coming out with, we screwed up AGAIN with the doj which means more penalties, fines, loss of training and god forbid if you can actually entertain a doctor anymore. Bottom line is, it was great being a foot and ankle rep 4 years ago, now it's turning into too much of a commodity sale. Try pushing 25k total ankle cases and 1000 screws... Look somewhere else, j&j with the buying of Synthes is really going to hurt small joint business. The accounts I have been in for years and have amazing relationships are telling me to expect a 30-40% decrease in my prices to compete.
     
  5. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    Sorry to hear your ankle cases are going to be 15k. Maybe you should try the competition and handle 3k knee & hip caes. True there may be some trouble ahead with doj. Maybe a fine or extension of DPA is possible. Training though is top notch and won't change.
     
  6. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    I just left Wright because it was such a mess.
    It was getting hard to compete in large joints. There were only a couple meetings a year for hip/knee and they suck compared with the big boys meetings they have just about every month. There are still huge wholes in the product lines. My manager for ortho recon covered 8 or so states and was always on the golf course. When I finally got guys interested in our products I kept getting shut down due to compliance for things like peer to peer, factory tour, big meetings, etc. What you will find is that most people using Wright joints are on pay roll or have been really close with the distributor/rep for a long time.

    the difference between a 15k ankle and 3k knees/hips is the volume. In a large city depending on how many FA Ortho MDs you have you could expect 1 ankle a month maybe 2. The issue is that Wright's foot and ankle stuff is expensive. You could charge list at most places and not get much push back except for maybe DBM and cannulated screws. Most hospitals are looking to cut cost and bringing in a bunch of expensive foot and ankle stuff isn't going to fly anymore, especially with Smith and Nephew, Depuy, Stryker, Synthes all launching foot plating systems. I know we were getting hit hard with foot and ankle pricing in my area.

    The managers for Wright are typically young and inexperienced. If you need advice for large joints you will find yourself calling a rep in another part of the country because the managers don't know and the product managers are a joke. Foot and ankle manager are typically people from corporate who wanted to get out into the field. It doesn't take a rocket scientist and you don't need a lot of experience to sell or manage foot and ankle.

    To say that the training at Wright is top notch is a joke. The only part of Wrights training program for reps that is better than the competition is foot and ankle and that is just because other companies don't have a specialized foot/ankle sales force to train.

    I would bet that once Wright gets this DOJ stuff straight, if they ever do, that they will be purchased by one of big boys.