Territory Portfolio Manager
Midmark Corporation
Lodi, California
Fifteen years in medical sales
Snapshot:
- Born/raised: Born in Sacramento, California. Raised in Lodi, California.
- Undergraduate degree: BA, Communication Studies, California State University, Sacramento
- First “real” job: Sports marketing, California State University, Sacramento. (Fun fact: Was offered a sports marketing job with the Sacramento Kings basketball team ON THE SAME DAY he was offered a sales job with Midmark. Still grateful to have chosen the latter.)
- Favorite restaurant: Love trying out new restaurants, but a big fan of steak houses, Italian and Mexican cuisines.
- Family info: Married seven years to my beautiful wife, Kirsten. Three children (two girls, one boy): Addy is 5, Bennett is 4, and Sutton is 1. Can’t forget about Tucker, our Welsh Corgi.
- Hobbies/activities: Love to golf, travel, watch/play all sports, and spend quality time with my family
Repertoire: What are the most important things you do for your distributor reps to enhance their sales?
Bernhoft:
- Continuous education and insight regarding our changing healthcare system and strategic ways to teach our customers.
- Helping to tailor our unique value proposition to our customers and finding ways to improve patient care and the patient experience while reducing cost.
- Being the expert, displaying value and helping our distributors teach and tailor this message.
Our daily goal is make healthcare a positive experience for all. By being genuine, passionate and adding educational insight to our customers, sales will increase.
Repertoire: Name some ways distributor reps help you add value to their accounts and increase sales.
Bernhoft: Finding the right mobilizers inside our mutual accounts is key. By working together and tracking them down, we are able to help teach and tailor our commercial insight. Having the right conversations with key mobilizers to position our unique value and move forward with the sales process is crucial. Working together as a team to find these mobilizers will increase our sales and allow us the opportunity to improve patient care and the patient experience.
Repertoire: What is the biggest change you anticipate in medical products sales in the next 5 years?
Bernhoft: Our value-based healthcare system and importance of patient satisfaction scores are driving great change in healthcare. It’s not about a product; it’s about work flow, clinical design, process of conveyance, improving patient care, the patient experience, equal access to all, accessibility, technology, standardization and making the healthcare experience excellent for everyone. Healthcare systems are looking to develop strategic partnerships with companies who are aligned with these outcomes. Our ever-changing healthcare environment will continue to focus on clinical work flow/design and favor companies heading in this shared direction.
Repertoire: Ride-days with distributor reps: What do you like? What don’t you like?
Bernhoft: Being able to spend time with my friends is a privilege, and I am very grateful for the opportunity. Having the ability to spend one-on-one time and discuss current healthcare insights, updated regulations, requirements, case studies, success stories and other educational info to help them succeed is a blessing. We share educational info with one another and help each other grow and become better consultants. Together we are able to track down key mobilizers and position ourselves for the next sale.
Repertoire: Do you have a favorite ride-day story to share?
Bernhoft: Ten years ago I spent a couple of days in Redding, California, with the legendary Don Hill with McKesson. Our Barrier Free Promotion had just kicked off, and Don wanted to sell more Barrier Free Chairs than anyone in the country during his final year before retirement. We met at the Red Lobster in Redding, ate way too much food and then put together a strategic game plan, tailored to his specific territory/accounts.
Don Hill was the master of Sales 101 and made sure he lived and breathed every one of his trained sales techniques. Don believed in our Barrier Free story, was extremely passionate, didn’t prequalify anyone, educated himself on current regulations, was beyond prepared for every account, was dialed in with insight to educate his customers, and didn’t take no for answer. He set a record that year, and the record might still stand.
He sold close to 100 Barrier Free exam chairs, and none were for new clinics opening up a new site. One hundred percent were replacement exam chair sales, and no more than four each to one account. Plus, Don didn’t silo our exam chairs; he wanted to improve patient care and improve his customers’ entire exam room work flow process with our leading diagnostic EHR integration solutions and flexible cabinetry design layouts. Don became the clinical exam room expert that week and for the rest of his career. Don’s numbers during that promotion were legendary and still are to this day. The Legendary Don Hill Story will stay alive forever!