Patient Monitoring: Whats the difference between the following two positions?

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Can anyone provide any insight into the differences between an Advanced Parameter Sales Rep and an Account Executive, Respiratory Solutions? Both spots are open in my area, but I'm not sure what how the spots differ... Any feedback about the role, compensation, etc would be great!
 


















Same here... There are two openings in Chicago: Nellcor and Advanced Patient Monitoring. I'm interested to learn more about these openings and which is the better of the two?
 






Account Exc covers Nellcor Pulse OX

APR covers BIS, LiDCO, INVOS

Nellcor has been around for years and is a major component off the R&MS revenue since all admitted patients are put on a pulse ox as a standard of care. It is more commodity/purchasing driven and less surgeon driven.

The APR products are all new to COV and focus mostly on use in the OR and calling on Anesthesia. They are a little tricky because anesthesia doesn't have to use them as a standard of care like pulse OX

Most Acct execs and APRs work together since there is some cross over and under the same regional manager.

Just depends if you are an OR guy or a purchasing/materials management guy. There are upsides and downsides to both.
 












I would stay away from both positions. Covidien is moving towards surgical devices, procedures, therapy and Respiratory products are commodities. Their OR products are not supported well enough with clinical data and they are losing cash quickly. Additionally, Masimo is handing it to them daily and its only a matter of time before a larger company comes in to clean up the mess (ie. Philips or even Mindray).

You don't have to leave, you just can't stay here!
 






In all honesty, over a third of Covidien's Nellcor Patient Monitoring sales force has quit over the past 6 months (on top of the people let go from the Aspect and Somonetics mergers). I am aware of about half of my colleagues in the APR and Account Exec positions who are currently interviewing elsewhere too. For new hires, $150k for one of these sales positions is nearly impossible. Also, watch out for that new hire guarantee period, you're about to get screwed big time on your overage bonus and most of your commissions. I've heard of too many new hire horror stories over the years. By the way, the commission plan has been changed 5 or 6 times over the past year, screwing over everyone. Good stuff. Also, sales reporting is completely off as a result of the acquisitions last year, a poor reporting system, and incompetent people. They even cut everyone a flat $2k commission check one month because they didn't know what everyone was supposed to get paid. Of course, they took it right back later on once they had some numbers (inaccurate) to lean on. Nellcor is run exactly like a pharmaceutical company. You don't sell products, you sell contracts. You write down all of your disposable business and take huge pay cuts in order to secure 5-7 year contracts. Nellcor's response to this is that at least you have that business somewhat secured for those 5-7 years. How many people really stay in the same position for 5-7 years without going for a promotion of some sort? It's certainly not worth taking a $20k-$50k pay cut just to secure the business for the company at your expense. It's a constant give and take between hardware and disposables without any overall growth potential. Nellcor hasn't come out with any new products in years. Their entire national sales meeting was based on the iPads they gave the reps to use. Literally, the iPad was the center of focus during the entire meeting. It might as well have been the Apple national sales meeting. It was the most pathetic scenerio. It would have been nice to see some new products. Also, territories tend to change every year. WARNING: At the end of this year, Nellcor will be merging the APR and Account Execs, firing half of their salesforce again. Sorry to those new hires this year. Nellcor will not look out for you, no matter what the RM sold you on in order to get you to accept the job offer. Be sure to ask the RM why the positions are open. Listen to the glorified answer as the RM tries to sugar coat the reason for the old rep leaving. I absolutely guarantee the old rep left for exactly the reasons explained above.
 






Anonymous said:
In all honesty, over a third of Covidien's Nellcor Patient Monitoring sales force has quit over the past 6 months (on top of the people let go from the Aspect and Somonetics mergers). I am aware of about half of my colleagues in the APR and Account Exec positions who are currently interviewing elsewhere too. For new hires, $150k for one of these sales positions is nearly impossible. Also, watch out for that new hire guarantee period, you're about to get screwed big time on your overage bonus and most of your commissions. I've heard of too many new hire horror stories over the years. By the way, the commission plan has been changed 5 or 6 times over the past year, screwing over everyone. Good stuff. Also, sales reporting is completely off as a result of the acquisitions last year, a poor reporting system, and incompetent people. They even cut everyone a flat $2k commission check one month because they didn't know what everyone was supposed to get paid. Of course, they took it right back later on once they had some numbers (inaccurate) to lean on. Nellcor is run exactly like a pharmaceutical company. You don't sell products, you sell contracts. You write down all of your disposable business and take huge pay cuts in order to secure 5-7 year contracts. Nellcor's response to this is that at least you have that business somewhat secured for those 5-7 years. How many people really stay in the same position for 5-7 years without going for a promotion of some sort? It's certainly not worth taking a $20k-$50k pay cut just to secure the business for the company at your expense. It's a constant give and take between hardware and disposables without any overall growth potential. Nellcor hasn't come out with any new products in years. Their entire national sales meeting was based on the iPads they gave the reps to use. Literally, the iPad was the center of focus during the entire meeting. It might as well have been the Apple national sales meeting. It was the most pathetic scenerio. It would have been nice to see some new products. Also, territories tend to change every year. WARNING: At the end of this year, Nellcor will be merging the APR and Account Execs, firing half of their salesforce again. Sorry to those new hires this year. Nellcor will not look out for you, no matter what the RM sold you on in order to get you to accept the job offer. Be sure to ask the RM why the positions are open. Listen to the glorified answer as the RM tries to sugar coat the reason for the old rep leaving. I absolutely guarantee the old rep left for exactly the reasons explained above.
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Great post!! You nailed it to a T! It is such a bad business model and compensation plan for the reps. It's no fun relying on chance for disposable sales, especially when the company isn't posting accurate sales. Selling contracts is for former pharma reps. Selling equipment is for the real medical sales reps. You won't find real equipment sales at Nellcor. It's painful to see such lazy, soft sales done by most of the ex pharma reps at Nellcor. There is no drive whatsoever. It's a marketing position, which aligns with the marketing-driven company culture. Pharma all the way, very disappointing for a "medical device" company. Nellcor should take some notes from the companies hiring ex college and pro athletes along with a sales-driven culture, not marketing.
 






Reps are forced to spend more time focusing on the BS within the company than being in front of the customer. I bet 3 days a week go into doing chores internally. As a sales rep, the biggest customer is Covidien...it's a mess. If you have a customer with a contract pricing issue, it will take you 3 days to get it sorted out...great use of a rep's time. Reps shouldn't have to focus on this kind of crap. Hire someone to handle pricing contracts like every other medical device company. These types of things slowing a rep down wouldn't happen if it was a sales-driven company. Sales should be telling marketing what they need and what to do.
 
























In all honesty, you're going to run into these issues with any company. Just keep your head up and Covidien will come through. It's been a rough couple of years, I agree, but I have faith it will get better soon.
 






I sure hope so. I heard from marketing that account executives and APR's are getting merged as well later this year...just like Airway was last month. How can someone be motivated about a job when they clearly have no security. I have kids to support. Also, how are we supposed to grow the business without any new products. You can only sell a hospital so many latest-generation monitors before they are tapped out. Contracts expire before new things come out...not a good system.
 






























It sounds like the poster from 07-19-2011, 01:00 PM doesn't even work for Covidien Patient Monitoring as an AE or APR. I love how people post comments about companies and they don't even work there.

I am a rep within this group and I can tell you there is no word about merging AEs and APRs. Actually, they have been expanding the APR group. AEs don't have the time or even the desire to cover the BIS, LiDCO, and INVOS products. Those products require time in the OR securing evaluations and covering those cases. It is outside the realm of materials and purchasing which is where most AEs focus their business efforts.

As stated on this post before, pulse oximetry is a commodities business, just like sutures, sharps, drapes, etc. There isn't a whole lot of clinical development in pulse ox to drive physician preference. HCPs use pulse ox because it's a standard of care and every admitted patient gets monitored. Once any product becomes a standard of care, it's value is diminished and it becomes a pricing battle with contracts and materials management.

The APR product line is a challenging sale. HCPs aren't required to use any of these products so convincing them to utilize these monitors and sensors as a supplement to their current practice can be difficult.

You are also asking hospitals to drop $10-30k on capital in an extremely poor economic environment. Most capital dollars are being allocated to technologies that are required to conduct surgery like drills, navigation systems, and scope equipment.

The poster also stated 1/3 of the AEs had left in the last 6 months. That is also untrue. There has been turnover, as there is at all companies, but it didn't scratch 30%.

The Patient Monitoring division is fine. You certainly will not become rich. You will likely not even hit the $130k that your manager tells you is the comp at plan because they are factoring you hitting your Hardware number, which rarely happens for anyone.

The positive is it's a good quality of life, you'll have all expenses covered, and it's not a very stressful job.

If you're seeking fame and fortune, go jump in the trenches with Synthes and Stryker in ortho trauma. You can still make serious cash there, but you're going to earn it.
 






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