Medical Device Link.

ADVERTISING, DISTRIBUTION, & SALES

Independent sales reps are all businesses in their own right, offering a level of experience and an objective market perspective that direct reps generally do not. Advantages they can bring to medtech companies with which they contract include the following.

• Selling in one territory is their life. This means they offer the attractions of customer continuity, closeness to those customers, and knowledge of customer processes. They usually have a proven ability to manage relationships.
• Independent reps, because they are selling a number of product lines, can theoretically lend synergistic strength to the sales effort. They provide the potential for more selling hours devoted to the company's products, in-depth coverage of accounts, the ability to package products into systems, and extra advertising and promotional leverage. As independent businesspeople, they may give the medtech company's executives more-objective feedback than direct reps will.
• They are willing to supply systems or turnkey solutions that satisfy local needs.
• They can provide fast access to new or marginal markets.
• Financial advantages accrue from the use of independent reps because of their nonemployee status. They do not restrict cash flow, they represent a variable rather than fixed expense that is tied entirely to sales success, and they influence the balance sheet only positively.
• Their experience qualifies independent reps as a business advisory source.
• The company can benefit from positioning with complementary products.