Anonymous
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Anonymous
Guest
First I will start off by saying I am not pro-Applied or anti-Applied. I am merely here to give a realistic perspective of Applied. I will break it down into various parts and then people can at least see what I feel is a realistic view of the company. I left in the past 4 months so this is a pretty recent view of what I saw
Management:
First I will start off saying management has done an exceptional job to figure out well ahead of competitors Covidien and Ethicon that trocars, bags, clip appliers, etc. will be seen as commodities and that things are moving away from allowing doctors to choose and moving to hospitals deciding what is used. This is where things are going and I commend them for seeing this. It is how they have captured such great market share so fast. If they ever get energy they will capture a greater amount of market share because of the significant cost savings.
As far as field managers go it is like most companies. There are some District Managers and Zone Managers that have no business being in the roles they are in. They have no clue what they are doing. There are some very good ones. It just depends on where you are and who your manager will be. I wish I could help paint a better picture, but that is the reality. Above the 2 gentlemen that run sales the upper-upper management is run by people who think they know an ounce about sales, but are more tailored for engineering than sales. When I discuss the comp plan and products this should make more sense.
Products:
They have some very good products and some products that are not so good. Gel, bags, and Alexis are very good products. Trocars are neither bad nor good, they simply are acceptable and get the job done. 5mm clip applier is terrible. Most doctors hate it, it misfires way more than it should and it is clunky. Across the nation doctors have proven (by what they use) that they do not need a 10mm clip delivered in a 5mm solution. To try and sell that they can get a 10mm clip with a 5mm applier is pointless since they don’t want it or need it. Where it can be sold like that is when you come across a physician who uses a 10 and when asked why, he states he feels more comfortable with a bigger, stronger clip. That is a great target for the 5mm clip applier, but those a few and far between. Almost every doctor would tell you that if he wanted a bigger stronger clip he would use a 10mm clip applier. If Applied is so vertically integrated then they should make the changes that allow for a less clunkier delivery system. That is what the market wants. Vertically integrated companies should be able to make that change easily.
Comp Plan:
While I would agree that if you look at a successful Applied rep and a successful Ethicon rep the comp overall for the year is only slightly less the problem occurs with the comp plan itself. You can tell no person ever involved in sales came up with this. It is a mess. At not time could any rep tell you about what they are going to make for the quarter. You have all these categories. If you sell product A you get 28%, product B 23%, but if you bundle them you get 18%, and if it goes out on a Tuesday then it is 12%, but if it is the third Tuesday then it is 16%, but only if the sun is still up when it ships. It literally is that complicated. Almost every other company simply pays by a table such as 100% of quota and you get 100% of commission, 90% of quota and you get 80% of commission, etc. The other way would be you get XX% of existing business and XX % (higher amount) of new business. It is an absolute joke that you can have two people hit quota (100% each) and one can make $8000 per quarter and the other $18,000 per quarter. From my understanding of the specialists they aren’t even close to hitting what they were told comp would be. Pretty much every specialist is drastically underpaid from what I hear.
Career Path:
This is where I think Applied does a pretty good job. If you want to move around in the organization or move up they do a pretty decent job of promoting within. Not much to say here beyond that.
Business Model:
I truly believe the business model is to bring in a rep in a struggling territory. They build it up over the next 12-24 months. It peaks from a growth standpoint so the rep starts to lose income exponentially. They leave, the territory falls and they rinse and repeat. They end up bringing someone in for far cheaper and even though business is lost the reduction in having to pay the new employee balances it out.
What Applied seems like to me is a manufacturing and distribution company that happens to have a sales force.
Management:
First I will start off saying management has done an exceptional job to figure out well ahead of competitors Covidien and Ethicon that trocars, bags, clip appliers, etc. will be seen as commodities and that things are moving away from allowing doctors to choose and moving to hospitals deciding what is used. This is where things are going and I commend them for seeing this. It is how they have captured such great market share so fast. If they ever get energy they will capture a greater amount of market share because of the significant cost savings.
As far as field managers go it is like most companies. There are some District Managers and Zone Managers that have no business being in the roles they are in. They have no clue what they are doing. There are some very good ones. It just depends on where you are and who your manager will be. I wish I could help paint a better picture, but that is the reality. Above the 2 gentlemen that run sales the upper-upper management is run by people who think they know an ounce about sales, but are more tailored for engineering than sales. When I discuss the comp plan and products this should make more sense.
Products:
They have some very good products and some products that are not so good. Gel, bags, and Alexis are very good products. Trocars are neither bad nor good, they simply are acceptable and get the job done. 5mm clip applier is terrible. Most doctors hate it, it misfires way more than it should and it is clunky. Across the nation doctors have proven (by what they use) that they do not need a 10mm clip delivered in a 5mm solution. To try and sell that they can get a 10mm clip with a 5mm applier is pointless since they don’t want it or need it. Where it can be sold like that is when you come across a physician who uses a 10 and when asked why, he states he feels more comfortable with a bigger, stronger clip. That is a great target for the 5mm clip applier, but those a few and far between. Almost every doctor would tell you that if he wanted a bigger stronger clip he would use a 10mm clip applier. If Applied is so vertically integrated then they should make the changes that allow for a less clunkier delivery system. That is what the market wants. Vertically integrated companies should be able to make that change easily.
Comp Plan:
While I would agree that if you look at a successful Applied rep and a successful Ethicon rep the comp overall for the year is only slightly less the problem occurs with the comp plan itself. You can tell no person ever involved in sales came up with this. It is a mess. At not time could any rep tell you about what they are going to make for the quarter. You have all these categories. If you sell product A you get 28%, product B 23%, but if you bundle them you get 18%, and if it goes out on a Tuesday then it is 12%, but if it is the third Tuesday then it is 16%, but only if the sun is still up when it ships. It literally is that complicated. Almost every other company simply pays by a table such as 100% of quota and you get 100% of commission, 90% of quota and you get 80% of commission, etc. The other way would be you get XX% of existing business and XX % (higher amount) of new business. It is an absolute joke that you can have two people hit quota (100% each) and one can make $8000 per quarter and the other $18,000 per quarter. From my understanding of the specialists they aren’t even close to hitting what they were told comp would be. Pretty much every specialist is drastically underpaid from what I hear.
Career Path:
This is where I think Applied does a pretty good job. If you want to move around in the organization or move up they do a pretty decent job of promoting within. Not much to say here beyond that.
Business Model:
I truly believe the business model is to bring in a rep in a struggling territory. They build it up over the next 12-24 months. It peaks from a growth standpoint so the rep starts to lose income exponentially. They leave, the territory falls and they rinse and repeat. They end up bringing someone in for far cheaper and even though business is lost the reduction in having to pay the new employee balances it out.
What Applied seems like to me is a manufacturing and distribution company that happens to have a sales force.