Distributor reps have many opportunities to succeed, but they must adopt the right approach going forward
By Joseph Rini
Having had the pleasure of working alongside hundreds of distributor reps spanning three decades, I’ve recognized common traits that the best of the best exhibit. Their job titles can range from acute care rep, to physician office account manager, to lab specialty sales, to long-term-care specialist, to veterinary clinic rep and the like. But the successful behavior patterns among them are, in large part, universal. And here’s the most important point: These traits remain consistent even in times such as the present, when dramatic –some would say cataclysmic – storms in the marketplace are knocking all but the most sure-footed off their bearings.
Once competitors, now coworkers
We can agree that our supply-chain world is a fundamentally altered version of its former self. It has morphed into a massive cog, which bears little resemblance to what some have dubbed the ‘heyday’ of healthcare sales. Competition among distributors is at an all-time high, in part due to a recent surge of mergers and acquisitions. Such unions have yielded an unusual (and sometimes uncomfortable) aftermath: The reps in your territory who were once your sworn enemies are now your teammates.
This is far from ideal for any rep who has worked tooth-and-nail to secure business away from the very people who are now their comrades-in-arms. But battleground skirmishes aside, such mergers have resulted in heightened customer service, due in large part to newly improved logistical capacities. This marriage of the giants has created a perfect mix for future productivity, which will result in enhanced quality of customer service for the health systems that they serve.
So the opportunity for acute care reps is limitless. But when taking into account the trend of IDNs and emerging health systems toward acquiring private practices, will our non-acute friends and colleagues be left out in the cold, feasting on whatever is left over? Or can these non-acute players maintain their businesses before all of their hard-earned accounts wind up in the hands of acute sales teams, just by default?
I believe distributor reps have many opportunities, but they must adopt the right approach going forward.
Meet Mr. Wonderful
The real winners in the world of distributor reps have a few things in common – sort of old-fashioned virtues that have become even more important and lend stability in these days of accelerating change. I would count among them the ability to form lasting relationships; accountability; a penchant for problem-solving; attention to details like punctuality, appearance and good manners; and an unfailing dedication to customer service. Plenty of good reps still pride themselves in displaying these virtues.
Case in point: an exemplary distributor rep who, over years of hard work and relationship-building, earned the informal title “Mr. Wonderful.”
Mr. Wonderful is a powerhouse hospital rep with whom I worked dozens of times during my days as a manufacturer’s rep, and whom I still use in a consulting capacity to this day. The identity of this rep shall remain anonymous because, quite frankly, he’s far too modest for his own good. Suffice it to say that his reputation garnered him the nickname “Mr. Wonderful” because of the superior service he provided his customers.
How amusing, I thought privately, after witnessing multiple contacts within one hospital refer to him by this moniker. But I soon learned that his nickname had gone viral. Every major hospital account in the city gave him the very same designation. He had indisputably come to own the virtues mentioned above.
As a result of providing excellent service, Mr. Wonderful’s customers all but idolized him. They breathed a collective sigh of relief every time he walked in the door. He had all the answers, and he made their lives easier. They knew, with conviction, that they needed this person in order to effectively perform the duties of their jobs, and thus they looked after him in return.
Above all, he listened intently whenever his customers spoke. With laser-like focus, he worked to assess their needs in the most time-sensitive – yet thorough – manner. This problem-solving mentality is the single most important trait possessed by reps who are “winners.” With the constantly increasing demands our customers now face, having a partner in the form of a top-notch distribution rep is an invaluable asset. People in the position of ordering healthcare supplies are finding it critical to have a relationship with someone who genuinely cares about their needs and the needs of their facilities. It is especially valuable to be associated with someone who has a broad range of knowledge about most or all of the products on a facility’s list.
Customers have come to know that Mr. Wonderful wouldn’t even consider bringing in a product that he hadn’t personally vetted. Customers learn to trust this rep; they are confident he won’t steer them wrong. They also know from experience that if anything were to go wrong with the product, Mr. Wonderful would go above and beyond to make things right. He’d fix the problem, just as he always has.
From my vantage point, reps operating at this level appear to be less affected by the industry’s reform than others. They are motivated more by customer satisfaction than the bottom line, and thus they don’t operate from a place of stress, but rather from a place of service. These people are malleable – they roll with the punches, and consistently look for new opportunities to keep their value propositions in line with their clients’ changing needs.
E-commerce: Friend or foe
As a distributor rep, perhaps your greatest nemesis hasn’t been mergers or acquisitions, but rather, a more omnipotent beast that we all love to hate – the Internet. In fact, e-commerce may be the greater opponent of all of the thousands of distributor reps out there. Will healthcare e-commerce sites be the category-killer for reps? Will they be the equivalent of Netflix to the movie industry’s Blockbuster Video, or Amazon.com to Barnes & Noble in the book world?
There’s no denying the harsh reality that today’s purchasers can “just Google it.” Use of this mammoth search engine has undoubtedly stripped profits (and probably sleep) from hardworking and once beloved private practice reps.
Reps who serve physician offices and other alternate site clinics have been the most affected by e-commerce. Reps who service acute care accounts have the luxury of working with customers who are more contract-driven; consequently, those reps haven’t felt quite as much heat as those who are at the whim of a time-strapped office manager with a laptop and a credit card. (That said, I can’t dispute the havoc that a savvy Internet user in a hospital procurement office can wreak on even the most established hospital distributor rep.)
The practice of system-wide standardization and the ease of online shopping aren’t going away anytime soon. In fact they’ll almost certainly be a part of our industry’s model moving forward. So how are the most ambitious distributor reps thriving? You might ask distributor reps who are in the trenches, day in and day out, and who are still at the top of their game. Chances are they’ll tell you they’re continuing to thrive by religiously applying the old-fashioned virtues we’ve mentioned above: relationship-building, accountability and unfailing customer service.
Customer loyalty goes a long way
E-commerce aside, even flesh-and-blood competitors weren’t able to draw business away from Mr. Wonderful – not even with their promises of price slashing. No, the relationships that he’d garnered within his accounts had transcended business; they had gotten personal. And they were built on a hard-earned trust that was formed over years of problem-solving, dedication to introducing new and worthwhile products, and good old-fashioned, quality customer service.
I’ve been privy to conversations in which distributor reps were extolled for their efforts, and other conversations in which they have been maligned as nothing but “order takers.” The latter is an unfair generalization, which might have surfaced after one bad grape in the bunch failed to fulfill his or her duty as a trusted confidante to a purchaser or provider. I still believe that the best-of-the-best in the distribution rep world are fundamentally interested in getting the right products into the hands of their customers. Mr. Wonderful and other winning reps understood that the products that they’d bring me in to demo played an important role within their accounts, whether that role was employee satisfaction, patient comfort, disease detection, pain management or saving a life.
Instead of brushing them off, winners show profound appreciation for the efforts of those who had the vision to create original products, and the hustle of those who are hitting the pavement trying to place them. They notice things like innovative engineering, and can instantly connect the state-of-the-art utility of a certain product with a particular customer who would benefit from using it. Winners always have their customers’ needs at the forefront of their minds.
Order takers? No way. Not the winners. Problem-solving, listening more than they speak, and keeping abreast of market trends combined with good old-fashioned PK (product knowledge) is the perfect one-two punch for a distributor rep to win the race, every time.
Manufacturer reps
It’s been the better part of two decades since manufacturer reps spent Sunday nights calling distributor reps at home, trying to set up ride-alongs and demos for the coming week. Back then, this practice was an effective one. But now I hear far too often that distributor reps won’t even return manufacturer’s reps’ phone calls.
Winning distributor reps, on the other hand, have established small armies of manufacturer’s reps, ready to strike at their command. The winners rely on this team of product specialists to fill in the gaps. They realize the value to their customers of pairing with someone who knows a certain product inside and out, and they will use that person to provide an even greater level of customer service. An effective rep might even send a manufacturer’s rep to meet with a customer on his or her behalf, effectively allowing them to be in two places at one time. No domain name in the world can compete with that level of customer service. Only someone who isn’t putting their customers’ interests first would fail to use this very obvious tool. Dare I say, only an order-taker?
And for what it’s worth, manufacturers and their field reps get no greater thrill in business than when distributor reps (and, of course, end users) get really excited about their product offerings. As you might guess, in the manufacturing world, we live by the motto that “No one sells anything until someone makes something.” And distributor reps who have turned their backs on exposing customers to ground-breaking new products in exchange for simply moving tonnage are the same ones who complain the most about how monotonous their daily grind has become.
Winners believe in creating solutions. They know that providing the best options within a specific product category (after some consideration and research) is vital, and that using an expert from a certain manufacturer to help better educate a customer is of equal benefit. Treating a customer’s needs as if they were one’s own is what will earn a rep nicknames like Mr. or Ms. Wonderful. And maintaining the mindset that, ultimately, this is still a people business will pay off in spades.
So to distributor reps who lie awake at night fretting over just how they can convince clients to keep them onboard with the perfect storm of changes that they’ve been handed, I will say this – commit to exceptional customer service every day and don’t just take orders. Think outside the box and offer solutions that your customer may not have known were even possible. (They’re out there – maybe in the form of the manufacturer’s rep who you keep blowing off.) Know your customer’s needs inside and out; know them so well that you can start to predict them.
Soon enough, you’ll be your own version of Mr. Wonderful.
Editor’s note: Joseph Rini Consulting has a long history of developing successful healthcare product manufacturers. Visit www.riniconsulting.com