I agree with the above poster... A little negative but very true. There is a ton of information throughout the threads here on CP. Here are a couple of my posts from a few years ago when I worked for Patterson that might give you a better idea about what the job entails:
The dealer rep job is different than any other job in the industry. Although you are an employee of the company you work almost like a contractor. The upside of that is that there is no cap on pay - top reps in the companies make upwards of 200-300k. Mind you these are the top 10 in each company and there are probably several thousand dealer reps at any given time. About half of the reps in my branch (13 total) make over 100k, but you have to work your ass off for a couple of years to get to that point. The top rep locally makes 15k/mo. After the initial business development period much of your business is residual so you might not have to work so hard at continually trying to prospect for new business.
With your background I would suggest that you negotiate with the manager and see if you can get a 50k or so base and an established territory. It is hard to get established accounts when you first start because they are not available for you unless someone has just left the company or retired. The current base comp plan gives you 5% of the GM of anything you sell as a bonus.
Patterson is a good company overall, with a good philosophy about taking care of the customer. Burkhart has a very similar business model.
The opportunity might be good or might not be worth your time. It is very dependent on the territory and the manager. Make sure you do your homework first before taking the job!
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Patterson is a distributor, so the products you sell are manufactured by other companies (Kerr, 3M, Dentsply, Coltene Whaledent - to name a few). You basically have several thousand products that you can sell. The idea behind a dental distributor is that it makes no sense for the dentist to purchase products seperately from every manufacturer out there, so you are a middle man that gets them what they need from one place. It is supposed to be a single source solution. You also sell equipment, software and technology products, although there are specialists that help you with those sales (and who get about half of the commission from them).
Depending on the area you are in Henry Schein will be your main competitor. Other competitors are Burkhart and Benco. Unfortunately there is little differentiation between the consumable products each company sells. The main differences are in the equipment each company sells. Patterson sells a lot of A-dec, which Schein can't sell, but they sell a lot of Pelton & Crane equipment which Patterson cannot sell. Burkhart sells both lines. As far as digital x-rays go, Patterson has an exclusive with Schick and Schein has an exclusive with Dexis. Patterson owns Eaglesoft (a practice management software), Schein owns Dentrix and Burkhart sells Daisy exclusively.
Each company differs in the technical service they offer as far as equipment repair, installation and support. You should ask dentists in your area who they use and why - that is usually a good place to get info and most of them are friendly enough to give it to you. Patterson has a lot of great tools to help you give your customers great service, but they are stronger in some areas than in others. In the stronger areas it will be easier for you to get and retain customers because they will probably have a good reputation in that area and the customers won't switch from you because of a problem with service or something else beyond your control.
This is a relationship based sale so it does take some time to get your territory off the ground if you are not given any established accounts. Generally people will stick with you after you hook them though, because you know their practice and you know what they use and the type of service they like to get. A lot of customers will stick with their dealer rep for most of their career unless they really mess something up.
It's an entreprenurial position in a sense that you choose when to see your customers and how often, as well as which products you would like to promote at any given time. There are no activity trackers and (this one is crazy) no quotas. Your manager determines how well you are doing - but they want you on full commission as soon as possible. I think 2-3 years is generally a realistic amount of time for that.
Sorry for the novel but there is a ton of info. Hope this helps you!
