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Question

What does the sales career progression at Medtronic typically entail for employees looking to advance in their roles?

Current Employee · Accepted Answer

95% of CRDM sales reps stay in their role for decades.  Most of the CRDM (pacemaker, ICD, CRT-D) field is comprised of clinical specialists.  The clinicals are further divided in Senior and Principle.  It usually takes about 7 years to make it to the Principle Level with Medtronic.  It is nearly impossible to become a full blown Account Sales Manager in CRDM once hired on as a Clinical.  Most Clinical Specialists are hired from a nursing position, NP, PA, or relatively recently they are hiring Biomedical Engineers directly from graduation (as their first job).  This last recruiting decision (Hiring new Biomedical graduates gives insight into how low Medtronic views the role of the clinical specialist.  An average clinical specialist is paid right around 80K/year and that includes sales bonus'.  This amount does slowly go up, but it takes years of dedicated service.  Most years you won't even receive a cost of living adjustment.  Once a Clinical reaches around 5 years of experience they usually have met the requirements to get promoted to a Senior Clinical Specialist.  I would safely say that by 4 or 5 years as a Clinical Specialist (earlier for those who are ambitious) there is very little if any difference between what an Account/Territory Manager does compared to a Clinical Specialist.  But here's the main difference: The Territory Manager with a 10 Mil territory  makes about 400K to over 500K per year!  A Principle Clinical Specialist (top of the Clinical promotion ladder) makes about 145K which includes bonus'.  You have to understand, most of the customers in the Territory cannot differentiate between the Sales Rep and the Clinical in any practical sense.  I have argued that customers often would rather work with a good Clinical over most Sales Reps.  The sales rep's arguments for the crazy pay difference is that they are the one responsible to make plan every quarter.  I guarantee that the Sales Reps are absolutely NOT accountable for anything!  They would literally have to show up drunk to an account and blatantly hurt a patient during a case to get reprimanded.  None of the sales reps in my 10 years in CRDM ever got let go for not making plan.
As a Clinical you will be required to start work when the sales reps deems fit, so no official start time.  You also will be required to stay in the territory until all cases are finished.  Sales reps are technically the ones who are supposed to stay late 4 out of 5 days of the week.  Once friday hits, we are on a call rotation, so from Friday to Monday morning at any time or hour you will need to cover cases or go to a hospital to assess a patient's device. Clinicals are required to cross cover into other territories.  So if its my call week and there are multiple cases going late in another territory then I get to work late, even if its during the weekday.  This also happens if the Sales reps is on vacation and I'm on call that week that he/she is gone.  If its my week then I also get to cover all of his territory for the entire week and weekend AND I still have to cross-cover other territories during this time.  The sales reps are exempt from cross covering in any territory besides their own.  They also can make up anything if they want to get off and out of the territory early.  Clinicals have no power or authority to be able to do the same.  The MAIN way to get a promotion from Clinical to Sales rep and start making over 350K is to come in thru Medtronics' MINORITY PROGRAM.  Most of these candidates make it to a full fledged Sales Reps  within 2 years of their hire date.  The average time in employment for a Clinical Specialist to finally get promoted to a Sales Rep position is over 15 years!  Medtronic also started another program where you get 6 months paid leave for having a baby.  Here's the thing, they failed to have any plan in place for WHO will cover all of those employees positions when they are off for 6 months.  The cases keep coming in despite who is off.  You have to remember, these are CARDIAC patients with serious medical issues that become extremely critical at ANY time of day.  Our customers DEMAND our presence and expertise in EVERY implant; no matter the time or day. With this in mind, you can see how stressful and demanding this role can be.  So when multiple people are off for 6 months or longer (with full pay and benefits) it puts INTENSE pressure on the Clinical role to cover all cases, clinics, emergency hospital call for existing patients, ect...  Medtronic does not care! They will extract every ounce of energy and effort out of you and then NOT increase your pay or give you an EARNED promotion.  My recommendation is to RUN the other way!  This job is not work the stress and toll it will take on you.  Unless you are a minority it's just not work it anymore...if it ever was.

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What does the sales career progression at Medtronic typically entail for employees looking to advance in their roles?

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