Forty years after beginning his medical sales career, despite all the changes that have occurred in the industry, Tom Pruitt has clung to one essential element in sales: Always be a gentleman. It is a lesson he learned from two mentors — his older brother, Lee, and another independent rep, Lee Walters.
“They gave me a selling style that was used when they started, and it has served me well all these years,” he says. “An independent rep stays in a territory for decades. A lot of customers become friends. Just always treat everybody the way you would like to be treated.”
Pruitt was awarded the Lee Walters Award at the recent HIRA/IMDA Annual Conference in Chicago. (Walters was the first president of the Health Industry Representatives Association.)
Pruitt was born in 1952 at Letterman Army Medical Center in San Francisco. His father, Francis, was a career Army physician. It was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Tom and Lee Pruitt were raised by Francis and their mother, Mae.
Twenty-three years his senior, brother Lee got into medical sales with national distributor Will Ross in 1952. There, he negotiated the first GPO agreement in the country, with a group of hospitals in Denver, in the 1960s, says Tom. Lee left Will Ross in 1971 and formed EP Industries, an independent rep firm with Bob Elliott (who previously had been a partner in another firm with Lee Walters). They covered Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana.
Tom began working for EP Industries in 1979, covering Oklahoma and Arkansas. In 1988, he left EP to form his own firm.
“I have operated as a sole proprietor until recently,” he says. “My daughter, Sarah, started working in the medical sales business approximately three years ago, and we recently formed Pruitt Medical Sales, LLC.
“When Sarah joined me it meant there are three generations of Pruitts in the medical sales business,” he adds. “Counting our father, there has been a Pruitt in healthcare since 1928.”
The hospital distribution business has changed much since he began selling in 1979, says Pruitt. “When I started there were 10 distributors with brick and mortar operations in Oklahoma. Now there is one. But the relationship has always been about trust. If a distribution rep asks you to work on a project, and another distribution rep wants to work on the same project later, you need to use the Darrell Royal rule: ‘You gotta dance with the one that brung you.’”
Personal relationships with providers still matter too, despite the consolidation among hospitals and health systems. Reps who believe that the average OR nurse lacks sway in OR product decisions are missing the boat, he says. “That’s way, way wrong. They do – but you gotta know them.”
Pruitt is enjoying selling and working with his daughter, and he has no plans for retirement. That said, he points out that the rep industry is crying for young people. “Most of us are 50-plus, so there’s opportunity. You can make a nice living, and more important, you get to be your own boss. You get to sell what you want, for the most part, choosing companies and products you want to associate with.”
Now 90 years old, Lee Pruitt remains an important part of his brother Tom’s life. “He gave me a chance with the rep business and taught me to sell and run a rep business. and I will always be grateful. He is 90 now, and I still look to him for advice, both personal and professional.”
Tom is also grateful for his wife, Nancy, a recently retired attorney and wife of 42 years; and his daughter, Sarah, “who is becoming a great salesperson.”
Then there’s life in Tulsa, “the best city that no one knows about.”