For Atlantic Medical Solutions, prioritizing the customer experience has led to growth and more opportunities over the last two decades.
By Pete Mercer
Atlantic Medical Solutions is an independent distributor that covers parts of the southeast, selling instrumentation, equipment, and supplies in the physician market. Repertoire Magazine talked with Jim Macholz about the founding of Atlantic Medical Solutions, how he works to provide value to his customer base, and what up-and-coming sales reps can do to navigate a challenging industry. Prior to starting his own company, Macholz cut his teeth working for Midmark and Quidel, where he developed a better understanding of what it takes to own and operate an organization in this industry.
The start of Atlantic Medical Solutions
AMS was founded by Macholz in 2004, based in Charlotte, North Carolina. “We are a sales organization that focuses on the physician market space – we call on anything from multi-specialty clinics, laboratory spaces, and primary care. Every specialty outside the walls of the hospital. We also work with a lot of IDNs in the southeast, but we are mainly focused on that physician market space,” he said.
When he started AMS in 2004, Macholz was looking to provide a solution for the physician space that prioritized the customer experience. He sees that as their biggest opportunity to provide value to their 1000+ customer base.
Macholz sees the personal touch provided by his AMS team as a differentiator in the industry. When asked how his organization provides value, he said, “I know this sounds crazy, but we answer the phone. We answer our emails, and we answer our texts. We actively answer incoming communications.”
His sales reps implement what some might consider an “old school style of selling” where they are out in the field, showing and detailing the products that will improve the workflows and patient care processes for physicians.
Building a family-oriented organization
AMS is a family-oriented business, which is a significant point of pride for Macholz. With about 42 employees, it’s easier to maintain this kind of culture where everyone feels like an integral part of the team.
He said, “We’re a family-oriented business – that’s first. We believe in our people. I think we have some awesome people that work with us. While we still consider ourselves teammates, our group is small enough to where everybody knows each other, and we can still have some fun together. We’re all trying to help each other be better every day.”
That family-oriented approach to the internal operations of the company bleeds out into the customer relations side of the business. AMS offers a personalized approach to meeting the needs of their customers, offering different programs for their customer base to take advantage of.
“The most rewarding thing is that we have some great people that work with us. We still like coming to work every day. Our people just make it a lot easier to come to work,” Macholz said.
Additionally, they provide a personalized approach to their communication processes. “The communication factor is so much more streamlined and easier to process with text, email, phone call, and social media,” he said. “The level of communication we have today is amazing, and online ordering is so much easier for our customers – but we still need to find ways to create value. Finding ways to create value with what we do is where we end up working the hardest.”
Meeting the customer where they are
The world, healthcare in particular, has gone through significant changes since AMS launched in 2004. When they started, AMS was hyper-focused on the hospital laboratory – point-of-care testing, hematology, chemistry, amino assays, etc. While they were successful selling lab, one of their customers approached Macholz and asked if they could sell more products that are consumed more regularly.
“After a few years of just focusing on the lab, we went to a full line distributor model. Just like the big box guys, we were selling your commoditized supplies like table paper, band-aids, gloves, and gauze. After that point, about 17 years later, we are still here and still thriving.”
Many companies pivot their strategy at some point to better serve their customers and their market, often by necessity. For AMS, this move was not necessarily born of necessity, but more because their customers asked them to provide a wider range of products.
A huge part of meeting the customer where they are is adapting to the world around us – as things like technology change, we need to be prepared to adapt to the new normal to meet the needs of the customer. From 2004 to 2024, the world looks significantly different, especially in regard to technology.
“We really try our best to keep up with technology,” Macholz said. “That seems like it changes every year. Something’s always a little different with the website: you try to make sure that everything you offer is the very best you can provide for your customers.”
Tips for upcoming sales reps
After operating his own company for 20 years, Macholz intimately understands the challenges that sales reps face in getting past the gatekeepers and decision makers at healthcare organizations.
For Macholz, the first step is establishing a regular cadence with communication. He said, “They have to know you’re coming back. If you think about it from their perspective, these organizations are putting their practice on the line by trusting someone. They have to have these medical supplies daily – if they go with an interruption, that’s not good for them.”
Navigating hiccups and challenges in securing orders and supplies for the customers is just another part of the job for a medical sales rep, making a certain level of flexibility an essential skillset for sales reps.
“Even if there’s a back order of something, we always try to provide an alternate solution. A back order could be anything from something that we don’t have in stock or all the way to a manufacturing back order. It might even be supply chain issues. It’s all about offering options and open communications,” Macholz said.