By Brian Sullivan, CSP
Smart reps win by showing up, asking questions and staying present when opportunity strikes.
May 6, 2026- I hear it all the time. “Everyone in this system already has a vendor.” “That IDN has been locked up for years.” “Their current rep is their best friend. There’s no way in.”
I nod. I listen. And then I ask the same question I always ask: “How do you know?”
The answer is almost always silence. Because most reps don’t actually know. They assumed. They drove past the account, saw a competitor’s car in the lot, and wrote it off. They heard the contract was locked. They called once, got a cold reception and quietly decided the territory was full.
Here’s the reality: markets rarely saturate. Salespeople do.
The story reps tell themselves
There’s a mental model that develops over time in medical distribution. A rep comes in, works the territory hard for a year or two, identifies the accounts that feel winnable and then quietly stops pursuing the ones that don’t. The locked accounts. The loyal accounts. The ones where someone else got there first. On the surface, that sounds like smart prioritization. It isn’t. It’s retreat dressed up as strategy.
The problem isn’t that those accounts are closed. The problem is that the rep stopped asking why – and stopped asking what it would take to change it. Accounts that look impenetrable from the outside are almost never as solid as they appear. Vendors make mistakes. Reps get promoted or leave. New decision-makers come in with zero loyalty to anyone. Contracts expire. Supply chain problems erode trust. Budget pressure forces buyers to rethink everything they’ve taken for granted. The rep who isn’t showing up when those cracks appear isn’t going to get the call. That’s just the reality of this business.
Continue Reading in the latest issue of Repertoire Magazine.