How B. Braun’s Joe Grispo has championed the unique partnership between
distributors and manufacturers.
By Pete Mercer
Leaders aren’t born, they’re made. That is to say that anyone can be a leader – the potential for leadership is within all of us – but it requires an incredible amount of work and commitment to get to where you can be effective as a leader.
Repertoire Magazine recently spoke to Joe Grispo, Senior Vice President and Chief Sales Officer for B. Braun Medical Inc., about his leadership journey at B. Braun, winning the 2023 John F. Sasen Leadership Award, and what it takes to be a leader in today’s dynamic and challenging business environment.
Better together
During Grispo’s nearly 30-year career in the medical/surgery industry, he’s seen repeated examples of how distribution partners (both distributors and manufacturers) are better together when finding solutions for our nation’s caregivers. “In the end, we’re jointly trying to serve the same customers, and at the end of the customer line are the patients,” he said. “They’re the most important. Our distributor partnerships have been good for us – they provide duplicity of our capacity of products. So, we carry our own inventories. They also carry an additional inventory, and they have the inventory out there closest to where the customer is.”
This strength in numbers became even more evident amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Almost overnight, an already weakened and vulnerable supply chain was hit hardest when it was needed most, making it more difficult to get medical products where they needed to be. Without these distributor partnerships, it would have been even more challenging to provide these very much needed supplies to B. Braun’s customers.
“We provided each other with a view of what was going on,” Grispo said. “We were constantly talking, whether it was one-on-one with the distributors or as a group, trying to provide a sense of clarity. I think we collectively found ourselves in a position where we have never been through this, and we needed to figure it out together.”
Part of the opportunity that the pandemic provided distribution reps and national account executives is a new avenue of communication. Pre-pandemic, everything was done in a face-to-face setting. Once the pandemic hit, it forced all professional communications to go virtual. While it may never replace the face-to-face dynamic, Grispo said that virtual communication allows a different level of communication and many more touchpoints than there would normally be.
He said, “I think it’s actually made our communication link stronger, and it allows us to
have more dialogue in our negotiations. It’s opened up the line of communications transparency.”
Industry efforts and recognition
In September 2023, Grispo was awarded the 2023 John F. Sasen Leadership Award by HIDA. This award recognizes those who demonstrate exemplary leadership, commitment and service to the medical distribution industry and HIDA.
Having served on the HIDA Educational Foundation Board of Directors since 2010, his experience and leadership has played a huge role in the success of the Educational Foundation. In a media release, HIDA President and CEO Matthew J. Rowan said, “Joe is an all-in leader who has played a pivotal role in championing the role of distributors in the medical marketplace. He stays exceptionally close to the customer and has in-depth knowledge of how partners collaborate to create real value for providers.”
Named after industry stalwart John Sasen, this award highlights people that exemplify the same passion and dedication to the industry.
The Educational Foundation Board is a non-profit education and research organization that works to continuously improve the healthcare supply channel. One recent project of the Board was to highlight the value of distribution to hospitals. Describing the initiative, Grispo said, “I think we moved the needle quite a bit going through that project and being able to shine a light on what they do, why they are so important, and how we can work together to make sure that we’re providing product to the caregivers that are delivering care when they need it, where they need it.”
Transitioning from rep to leader
Part of the challenge of transitioning from a sales rep to a leadership role is undergoing the journey along the way. For many, it’s plagued with uncertainty and a lack of clarity for what the next step should be. Grispo’s advice for those who may be in the field as reps and looking for a leadership position in the future is to take charge and not wait around for someone to give you a hand up. He said, “If you’re going to wait around for someone to bring you an opportunity or help you do something, you’re probably not going to progress. As an individual, you’ve got to take charge of your career.”
Finding a mentor to help you make the right decisions along the way is a key component to this journey. Insights from someone who has gone from rep to leader are an invaluable resource and should not be ignored. Grispo said that it’s hard work to progress in any career, but if you focus on working hard and learning from successes and mistakes, you can climb the ranks in an organization.
As a leader, Grispo finds himself over a group of people who are looking for that sense of mentorship that he experienced. He said, “Our organization is only as good as the people that are coming up to take over next. I firmly believe in leaving an organization better than I found it, and the best way to do that is to pour into the people that are coming up.”
He believes that people in roles like his are responsible for putting together programs that allow those who are looking to advance their careers the opportunity to grow and develop professionally. Building development programs can put potential leaders through a sort of ringer that assesses the talent and leadership skills that are needed for the role.
The kinds of people that Grispo is looking for need to have a track record of success, proving time and time again that they can deliver the results needed. “I like to find those people that are really just relentless in their pursuit of excellence,” he said. “They aren’t happy with the status quo or being just okay at what they do. They want to be great, and they want the company to be great.”
While good leadership can be built from within, servant leadership is a totally different approach to the leadership game. Servant leadership is a people-first approach that emphasizes the potential seen in others rather than taking power for themselves. “You can’t be trained to be a servant leader,” Grispo said. “Either you are or you aren’t. Those are the people that are constantly pouring in the people around you. Even at the rep level, you can see when they are constantly helping and pouring into the people around them.”
The increase in home care for the outpatient market
The industry is constantly in a state of change as innovations emerge and processes improve
for providing care to patients in need. From Grispo’s perspective, 2024 will continue to see a shift in patients from the hospital to the outpatient market – things like ambulatory surgery centers and oncology suites are significant reasons for this. Home care has become a significant contender recently as well, adding another layer of complexity to the whole dynamic.
As the patient population continues to shift, it’s important to note how and where the shift is happening. He said, “The outpatient market has grown into the double digits. Where are those patients going? For manufacturers and distributors, we now have to focus on how our products and services are delivered in the outpatient locations because they are vastly different.”
As home care continues to grow, so do the different types of caregivers – the caregiver may be a husband, wife, or child. Grispo pointed out that baby boomers, a larger generational component of the population, are rapidly approaching the age where they will need more healthcare. The drop in nursing homes and caregivers working in those nursing homes is going to significantly impact the standard of care that this population is going to receive.
It seems as if the shift in the healthcare market is going to continue to trend towards meeting patients and caregivers where they are at, especially in a home-care setting. How can all the technology, processes, and training shift towards where the patient and caregivers are going? “Anything we can do to save them time allows them to see more patients and raise the level of care,” Grispo said.