Medline Truth

Medline will start you off with a teritory mostly made up of the dud accounts that other reps didn't call on because they were a pain in the ass. Starting salary is $36,000 + $550 car alowance. They will give you 1/3 of the comission to start. First year you will be lucky to make $50,000. You will work you ass off and find that half or more of your accounts already used Medline and had a shitty experience due to poor quality etc. If you want to stick it out you will have to make friends with everyone in a hospital. Hopefully by two years you can find 4-5 accounts that like you enough to give you a shot. By three years hopefully you will have generated enough business by working your ass off to go on straight comission. By that time you will be making around $100K. By Five years you can definately make $200K if you want. Year end bonus will yield you another $25-$60K. Stay there for life and its possible (although unlikely) you can make as much as $900K. Old school reps don't do shit! Guys who have been with the company 10 years have 3-4 bread and butter accounts that love them and are doing $1 million + in business. Medline hazes you for the first three years if you survive and decide its what you want to do you can get them back by making solid (Medtronic, Synthes) type money with half the work. It will be unlike any other company you ever work for. You will spend at least 8 hours a week going over reports to ensure that Medline is not nickel and dimeing you. They still will charging you freight on customer orders, not paying if you send them something, charging you for samples, and everything else under the sun that you can imagine. Over Half the shit you sell you wont make any comission on. About 10-15% of the stuff you sell you will be making over 10% comission on and that is essentially what you will be living off. Over all you will be luck to average 3-4% on your total teritory. If you take on distribution you will work a lot harder, not get paid on the business, and if you don't manage the inventory like the owner of a warehouse you will loose money. On the flip if you manage the inventory right you will make money! If your managers hand you an account from a rep that leaves chances are you will only get half the comisison and they will take the rest so don't count on that. Ultimately, they will give you every resource to go out and sell and they will beat competitors prices 9/10. Its not a bad company to work for but you just have to know what your getting yourself into.

 

Well said. I survived 7 years before moving on to device. Another consideration is the corporate culture. Being a family run company, there is not much restraint with regards to communication. Expect lots of F bombs, screaming, cussing and God damin its. Also, you will be pushed hard to entertain (dinners with spuses, happy hours, strip clubs, golf, etc) but no expense account for full commission reps. The philosophy is that if you care about your business, you will make the personal investment by entertaining on your own dime. At the end of the day, expect 30% of you income to go back to teh company in the form of penalties and entertainment. Also, Medline has a sleezy reputation and was certainly a roadblock for me as I was interviewing with more conservative device companies. I would stay away.

 

How did you make the transition into device from Medline?

 

I killed it as a rep for 3 1/2 years then as a DM for 3 1/2 years. I interviewd with about 8 companies over a year period and finally made it happen. The toughest part was that Medline had a reputation for sleaziness and selling on price which I had to overcome. Lots of Medline reps have moved into device sales. Even one of my local MDT pacer reps is an ex Medline guy.

 

what area

 

Now that might compromise my anonymity, wouldn't it?

 

I don't understand why so many people on here have such harsh words towards Medline. I was with the company for 4 years. I recently left for a device job. I had nothing but positive experiences with Medline. I sold on the healthcare (long term care) side of the company. It's not a bad place to work. There are alot of sales reps that have been around for a while, and have made it a career. It can also be a place to get good experience and move on, as alot of companies are. If you're thinking about interviewing with them, give it a shot. I believe I'm a better sales rep because of working there. They spend alot of time training you. I don't think I'd be as successful at my current job without that training.

 

That's refreshing to hear that you able to move on into device sales having worked on the healthcare side. Which company did you move to?

 

x- medline healthcare reps I know work for the following companies:

Stryker
Linvatec
Bard Peripheral Vascular
Spectranetics
Medtronic
Boston Scientific
Ligasure
Nuance
Tyco Kendall
KCI

 

The real truth is that to Medline you are just another rep. I had a territory with little going on and business dwindling due to poor service and no follow-up. I helped to rebuild Medline's reputation and subsequently booming sales, but it was never enough. Management worked in chaos and I received a number of calls from Glade French when he was near tears after getting reamed out by Corporate. His little bitch "Dean Dean the Dancing Machine" was worse. never have I met such a negative, heartless little bitch boy.
Thankfully I moved on and making 25% more with much less drama. I have not seen the 2 CARNIES that took my place at any of my facilities that I still call on, except for the time that they had someone from SPD here and the rep could not find the OR after being with Medline a year. GOOD JOB DEANO!

 

The reason Medline has a reputation for being sleazy and unethical is because Medline is sleazy and unethical. Keep buying your accounts..AdvaMed will get you eventually.

 

Glade French is still with Medline? Really??

 

Isn't the headline to this post an Oxymoron?

When has Medline ever been honest, i.e. saying an item is backordered just so they can bring a Medline product in, changing kit configs without consent from the customer.

Medline is the epitome of over promising and under delivering.

However, the facilities that like medline truly love them, but there is no middle ground. They are either loved or hated!

 

Or how about when they keep an item from being listed on your backorder report in order to keep from having to pay you a @ 'Top 1000' bonus, for that item being backordered. They do it all the time so they do not have to pay you. And the only way you ever find out is when a customer calls you looking for an item and you do not see it on your back order report. They are just stealing pennies from you this way. And not the $$'s they normally steal from you.

 

I interviewed for a job at Medline a few years ago. Went through the ringer with several face to face interviews, two days on the road "shadowing" with another rep, dinner with my potential boss, and eventually a flight to Chicago where I supposed to go through three more interviews and several tests. At no time in the process would they ever tell me what the base was or how that paid - no details at all except for telling me that if I was a good salesman, I'd make well over six figures my first year. One rep that I shadowed showed me his gross earning for the previous year and it was about $120K. What he never told me was his expenses. He was totally vague about all of that and kept telling me I had to be aggressive - it takes money to make money and all that.
When I got to Chicago, I finally pressed the first guy (some dickhead VP) about the compensation plan. I had been in sales for over 20 years and knew every trick in the book. I was civil, but firm and I wanted to show him that I can be "aggressive" when it came to making money.
End result was that I never got the other two interviews and I was sent back to the airport and I took the return flight home.
I saw all I needed to see and I guess they did to. I wanted no part of a sleazy pay plan and they wanted no part of anyone who could identify one.

 

This is why they don't hire reps that have any sales or medical experience. The newest trend is to hire people without any business experience. You are lucky they only wasted a few days of your time instead of many years.

 

Boy, has Medline changed that much? I don't think so. You folks sound like a bunch of babies,...get out there and get it done. I worked for Medline back in the days with Dave Roeske, Bob Allison, Tyler Shuler(he was a peach), Terry Hunt, Stan Faison, Robin Strube, David Krause, Court Larkin, AL Levin, Bart Hubay. Any of you guys out there to bitch slap some of these primadonnas. You got a job in medical sales and an opportunity,..you knew what you were getting into or you didn't do your homework. Either way, make friends ,have fun or get out. We had a blast back in the early 80s. This business is great wherever you end up and be thankful you didn't follow your dad into the GM assembly line. Any old-timers still out there?

 

Don't feed the trolls.

 

At least great articles on Medline's expansion into the physician office market can be found in the new edition of Repertoire magazine.

Good Selling!

 

I worked for Medline from 1978 until 1983. I seems from the comments I've read that Medline hasn't changed in it's treatment of sales reps. I did win a 2 week vacation to Hawaii one year but after that it was down hill.
Medline raised prices and cut commissions. To make the same commission you had to double your price. If you couldn't do that your commission was half.
It's a good company to get experience but get out after 3 years.