you are either naive, or not familiar with this industry. Which is it? There are no morals, ethics or integrity in any sales people here or most of the surgeons! Greed is good, in fact, you are out if you don't get onboard.
They're still room for ethics in sells, matter of fact most of the reps that take short cuts end up out of the business quickly. Stryker Spine has two models, distributors and direct reps. The distributors do fairly well. They benefit from Stryker's size and can fill in the product gaps with various other spine companies. Direct rep., you are kind of screwed. The direct model leaves you only selling Stryker Spine. You get the benefit of health insurance (8-10k value), 401K (6K Value), SS paid, (6 or 12K value), employee stock plan (Value TBD) and 10%-15%-10% plan (commissions, growth, bonus for quota). So lets say with current pricing you are a 1.75mil spine rep. Your income with no growth and not hitting quota is 175K. Take out 14k for non reimbursed expense (car, computer, parking, tolls) now pre tax deductions; 7k (401K) 8K (insurance family plan) 9k (401K). Your take home now is: 137k. Your probably covering between 17-19 cases a month, your avg. case about 7k. This works out to about $71 dollars an hour, assuming a 40 hour week. Your week is not 40hrs, it's like 70-75 with that case load. You can't afford a jr. rep anymore so you are doing all the set up on your own, returning trays, shipping and billing etc. Your down to about $40 an hour. Do the same math as a principal distributor: 1.75ml at 25%= 437,500. Take out all those expenses and in another 10k in shipping cost: Your down to about 375K. Your hourly rate is quadrupled, you don't have all the BS compliance issues of a big company... etc. So, why is a Stryker Spine Rep. also rep. Centennial Spine? Because the math of a direct employee does not work out, and they are probably in the process of transitioning to being their own distributor.
Rep of the year a few years ago was out of NC. He started carrying so much stuff on the side Stryker sued him I heard. He also made millions over the course of a few years while doing that.
