Baxter’s Draven Chisholm shares how college athletics helped cultivate a competitive fire that continues to burn in her sales career.
By Jenna Hughes
A successful salesperson must be strong, resilient – and much like an athlete – driven to win.
Indeed, Draven Chisholm was inspired to pursue a career in medical sales by her experience as a collegiate student athlete. After realizing that she wanted to work in a competitive team environment, Chisholm began networking in the medical industry during her senior year at Georgia Tech. Following graduation in 2018, she landed a job as an associate sales representative for an orthopedics manufacturer.
Now, as the territory manager at Baxter for the Greater Atlanta Area, Chisholm is responsible for the company’s full legacy well of frontline care products, which includes everything from patient monitoring, ENT supplies, ENT blood pressure and cardiopulmonary, ophthalmic products, physical assessment products, and more.
Chisholm also works closely with local primary care and ambulatory care accounts alongside distribution partners by educating and promoting Baxter’s many solutions.
“To be successful in sales, you must have personal, internal motivators, because there is so much flexibility in the role,” said Chisholm. “Individuals in the position can either take advantage of the flexibility and not do as much as they could, or it can drive them to succeed and take leadership of their business.”
Success in a dynamic industry
As a student athlete, Chisholm learned the value of time management, motivation, and balance. Calling on those soft skills, she was able to translate them into the medical field. In Chisholm’s previous role in the OR, 90% of her workday was spent directly with the customer, usually a surgeon operating on a patient. In transitioning to her role as territory manager, she again had to lean on her skills honed as a student athlete to succeed at the expectations required by physician offices.
“In my current role, it was a fun challenge early on to try to navigate how to balance my time. My former manager, Christopher Allen, and now Nicole Gibson (who was in my role previously) have been great assets in helping me to balance my time with channel partners, customers directly in the field, planning follow up and planning my day back in the office,” said Chisholm.
Once Chisholm understood the balance required of territory managers better, she felt comfortable at work and really began to thrive at Baxter. “I’m passionate about our company, products, and solutions, and about bringing expertise to our customers, specific to what they’re facing and their business goals. This includes their value drivers to enable their success at the point of care with our channel partners,” she said.
Closing care gaps
In terms of sales success, something that Baxter as a company really believes in, and that Chisholm spends a lot of time just trying to embody, is determining customer needs. “To begin to position our solutions for a customer, I as a sales rep, first have to understand what they are facing and how our solutions can tailor to that,” she said.
Having a customer-oriented mentality, knowing all of your customer’s stories, staying updated with the latest trends, consistently reading, following influencers, and more are all great sales resources according to Chisholm, and allows you to improve as a sales rep.
Chisholm is a big proponent of relationship selling. “If your customer trusts you, if you build that relationship from the foundation of cultivating that strong connection of transparency, honesty, then they’re ultimately going to listen to you first and foremost.”
To deliver the best service possible in a post pandemic marketplace, manufacturer sales reps and their distributors must have open, honest conversations with customers about product availability. Transparency is paramount to building trust with physician offices.
Staff shortages are also an ongoing challenge for customers, and something that the prepared sales rep can consult on. “Our job as sales reps is to figure out solutions, so we can bring them to the table to combat labor shortages and enhance staff satisfaction.”
According to Chisholm, those solutions can include easier-to-use products that streamline workflows and lead to time savings. These products allow customers to spend more time with the patients, thus closing care gaps.
To understand how best to assist distributor reps in the field, Chisholm says, “being consistent and understanding how many directions distributor reps get pulled in and making sure to have consistent communication with them with that knowledge, whether monthly or quarterly, is important.”
Empowerment
A great company to work for invests in its employees and considers each individual crucial to the organization’s overall success, said Chisholm.
“I really enjoy working for Baxter, because the company surrounds each individual with the culture of winning. They celebrate your individual and team success, and empower career growth,” she said. “The company also surrounds each employee with an endless supply of resources and support to help ensure our success.”
In terms of future career goals, Chisholm says that she would love to eventually lead a sales team. June will marked two years at Baxter.
“I think just having that opportunity to invest in others and build upon that momentum that you once saw as a rep, and to have those rewards investing in the people on your team, I would love to be able to do,” said Chisholm. “But for now, I’m focused on building this Greater Atlanta territory this year and for years to come.”