Income Potential ?? Clinical Sales Representative: Ethicon Products

What is the income potential for this position?

-salary
-incentive
-company vehicle ??

 

I'm typing all of this because I wish I'd had an honest breakdown before I accepted. Feel free to ask any further questions.

Salary: 45K to 55K, depending on your experience in the industry
Vehicle: Except for roughly $400/yr tax, you'll get a company vehicle w/ all expenses are paid. I have a Camry Hybrid, as do many of my coworkers. However, other coworkers recently had to pay out of pocket, $2,000 - $4,000, for anything better than a Ford Focus.

Incentive: In the Central Atlantic Region (NC to PA out to OH) in 2009, here are some stats
35 CSR's
Top made 262K in commission
Bottom made 11K in commission
Average commission was 75K
22 reps were below 75K
14 reps were below 58K, so roughly below 100K in base + commission

The Deal:

The top rep in 2009 hated this job, and was actually unable to pay for her apartment her first year doing this job. She made her money in 2009 with a Plus suture conversion on a $1,000,000+ hospital system that took her more than 2 years to close. She made her money in 2008 on Proceed mesh, when it still had more of a wow factor, and Dermabond. She now sells neuromodulation devices for pain w/ MDT.

You will NEVER make the money even in the top half of the above breakdown unless you have a significant system to convert to Ethicon away from competitive business. If you do have a significant system to convert, it will take you awhile, probably more than a year. The bigger the system, the more the business, and the longer it will take.

Most likely, you will spend your first year simply running around your territory in endless circles defending the business you already have from the myriad of lower-cost competitors. You will feel like a schmuck as you encounter surgeon after surgeon who couldn't care less one way or the other about his/her hospital's use of your products. The reason you will do this is because CSR's are paid for business above baseline, so you have to maintain your entire book of business just to get paid on that one surgeon, or department, you converted to whatever. You HAVE to keep all the business you already have. These examples actually happened. Example 1: your territory has $700K in Dermabond, and you just converted a busy L&D to close C sections w/ Dermabond for an annual increase of $80K. Next month, your largest hospital system in your territory takes a consultant's advice to do a trial of competitive topical skin adhesives for an annual loss of $150K. Now, you not only won't get paid on all your work with the L&D you converted, which took 2 months, but you are $90K in the hole, your regional is upset with you, and there's no way to get that business back anywhere in that system trialing competitive products. Example 2: you convert a hospital to Plus suture from standard PDS, Vicryl, and Monocryl that is worth $110K/yr in Plus suture. Next month, the Value Analysis committee at another hospital meets, decides that the extra money they're paying for Plus suture isn't justified, and stops ordering Plus suture. They're worth $100K. So, your $110K growth just shrank to $10K. If you have no larger systems to convert, there's nothing to do to recover the loss. You also lost all the time you spent converting the first system.

The above examples are the same for every one of our products. The most opportunity in this job is a territory that has ZERO or VERY LITTLE current penetration of products in this order: Plus suture, Mesh, Dermabond, CV suture, then FlexHD. You want an extremely low baseline. You want to spend as little of your time chasing influential surgeons just to defend your business. You make no money in defense. You make money in conversions.

Mesh (synthetic) might be slightly different because just 2 busy surgeons can use a lot of mesh, but mesh probably involves the greatest amount of defense work because there are so many decent options with decent reps selling them. Supposedly our new mesh is a game changer, but we'll just wait and see on that one.

The questions you need to ask during the interview process:

Ask the rep doing your field ride to run a report in EVIA by Individual Account for each of your compensation categories -- Plus suture, Total suture, CV suture, Dermabond, and Proceed --by month back to 2008. This will take this rep 5 minutes. You want a robust purchasing history so you can ask intelligent questions about that accounts you'll be taking on.

Ask how many hospitals are converted to Plus and how many are unconverted. The higher number of unconverted, the better.

Ask for the percentage of Dermabond to Total Suture in the entire territory. The lower, the better.

Ask how many hospitals do CV surgery. Then, ask how many are upgraded to BV175 and Valve suture. Ideally, you want a high number of CV shops with a low or ZERO penetration rate of upgraded CV suture.

If you can find a territory with low penetration, you can make serious bank for 1 or 2 years, but you'll create your enemy because the business you close one year becomes the business you have to defend the next.

 

Last poster my hat is off to you for one of the most informative best posts every written on this shitbag site! Good for you and thank you!

 

post #2....thank you for your genuine advice. it is very rare on this site. i wish there were more people like you. good luck!

 

WHAT????? Real info on this site? Can't be... Poster #2... great post!

 

I work for Ethicon in the SE region. This is very accurate. And the girl that was #1 2009 was an awesome rep. She got screwed by the company too and put up with some bs being owed roughly $50K in PROCEED because of reporting issues of unlocking that product category due to lagged suture sales reporting. Last I spoke to her she never got paid on it either.

 

Thanks for taking time to explain the deal. Pretty much the same situation at Ethicon Endo-Surgery.

 

excellent post! thank you for the inside scoop on sales. I'm looking at a spot and now I have more questions to ask.

again - thank you for the informative and professional response!

 

What is base pay range for experienced reps and is there a ramp up period. Thx.

 

45-55K, 3 month ramp up.

 

Wow, that's not at all what I was told. Thanks for the feedback. Good luck to you guys!

 

Just be warned..this company has a bad habit of screwing a lot of their employees usually due to poor management. In the end, you are alone and there is no help if you need it.

 

this job fucking blows

 

Is a Clinical Sales Rep the same as a full line rep?

It's not a separate, lower paid clinical rep, is it?

 

CSR's only have suture, dermabond, flexHD and tissue seperating mesh in their bag. full line reps have all synthetic mesh ex. inguinal devices, flat mesh
pay should be about the same. Full Line may make a bit more

 

I am seeing many Ethicon postings. Despite rumors. Are you guys really hiring or fishing for resumes?

 

#2 poster: dead on, you da man or woman.

#6 poser: she got screwed royally. ethicon will screw you in a heartbeat. you have to be ON TOP of your data at all times. sometimes the most important relationship you can have is with your distributors, materials managment, and hospital purchasing so you can validate PO's to get the credit Ethicon wants to take away from you.

Follow Post #2's advice and do the most thorough analysis of your potential opportunity you can before taking a territory. Have a current Ethicon CSR help you.

All that said, this can be a good gig if you have a territory with a major conversion opportunity, ie little current sales in any category and/or a big account or two that isn't currently Ethicon. They love big hospitals to convert and will throw lots of money and support your way to help you convert.

Also, Physiomesh and Secure Strap kick fucking ass. Super competitive markets, but a trial can go a long way. The first time I've actually gotten "Wow's" in the OR.

 

Well, I'm new at EP and trying to figure things out. Will someone offer some honest feedback on what this role looks like for successfully reps? I want to work, sell smart and be productive. How many cases a week are most reps in? What you are doing to provide value to surgeons?

 

Wow, how did you get this job without knowing the answers to these questions?

Anyway, post #2 dead on. Maintain exisiting business to get paid on new or converted business. Surgeones don't care about you at all and it'll be at least a year before you can add value. Just buy people food, bullshit and make friends, and learn who at your accounts does the ordering so you can get the inevitable favors you need to keep your head above water.

But, with the way you phrased your question, I'll bet you miss your draw soon enough, get hammered by your manager to defend, defend, defend, and get totally frustrated and miserable. Welcome to EP!

 

Oh, my God. Some of us on the West Coast just got wind of the 2011 comp plan. It's pretty bad. Almost all categories pay significantly less and the targets are higher. There will be an exodus.