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Patterson Dental

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Anonymous

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I am being pursued by this company and I am unfamiliar with the dental industry as I have more of a clinical/pharm background. Can anyone give me and idea about this company, what it is like in dental sales? Any info in greatly appreciated thank you!
 




Low base about $30K, they give you dead accounts, and pieces of territories that are not performing. You break your balls for two years and make $45-50K a year then get a real a real territory and make $75K, which you will make for the rest of your career at Paterson. Great job right out of college, to get your feet wet, most likely not a career move.
 








Anonymous said:
Low base about $30K, they give you dead accounts, and pieces of territories that are not performing. You break your balls for two years and make $45-50K a year then get a real a real territory and make $75K, which you will make for the rest of your career at Paterson. Great job right out of college, to get your feet wet, most likely not a career move.
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LET'S NOT FORGET THEIR IQ/PERSONALITY TEST> THEY HAVE THE NERVE TO REQUIRE THESE TESTS WHEN THEY'RE PAYING PEANUTS.
 












Anonymous said:
Allowance, and mileage. But you have to buy a new car, its a Runzheimer type plan, can't just pocket the allowance and drive a shit box, money has to go for car payment.
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I never heard of this. Are you pulling my leg? If not, are you buying or leasing through the company somehow. Please explain more. How much $?
 




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!
 




Anonymous said:
I never heard of this. Are you pulling my leg? If not, are you buying or leasing through the company somehow. Please explain more. How much $?
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This is true and no you don't buy or lease the car through the company. You buy your own car and the company gives you a car allowance. They don't "require you to buy a new car" so I don't know what that person was talking about. If your car is less than 3 years old the allowance is tax free. So if the car is over 3 years old you get less. It generally works out to be around $500 - $550 plus you get mileage reimbursement.
 




that is pretty cool I guess. I googled it too. I had a car allowance 2 jobs back and now a co. car but the car allowance was taxed like your normal pay- so this is good way to get around that & car mileage!
 




Anonymous said:
I never heard of this. Are you pulling my leg? If not, are you buying or leasing through the company somehow. Please explain more. How much $?
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This is common, its a plan called a Runzheimer plan. The reasoning is as followings: if you are given a car allowance and income tax is not taken out of that allowance, then there has to be a guarantee that you are spending all that money on a car. Otherwise it would be tax free income, Uncle Sam does not like that tax free income. So Runzheimer, an outside company administers the car plan, you get say $500 a month for a car, no tax taken out, you in turn have to purchase (or must own already) any car you want, as long as it costs a minimum of around $27,000, must keep it for three years, end of three years you have to get another one. The idea is simple, you must spend all the monthly allowance on a car, you can't keep the money as income and drive some shitbox car. Nobel does this. The thing to do is this: buy car for Runzheimer plan, then drive a shit box that you pay cash for, keeping the miles off the new car. This is a very common plan in higher end sales jobs. Whatever you do NEVER try to negotiote this or make a big deal about it. Someone in my training class made a huge deal about having to use the car allowance for a car, well she got herself fired. It is a car allowance, and it is to be used as that, not as an extra income payment every month. You even have to keep minimum insurance levels. If your credit sucks and you can't buy a $27000 car, you will loose the allowance.
 




that would make me feel alot better about having to buy a car if I get on with this co or another that does something like this. I had a co. car my last gig & always have had another vechicle too which I use now. So I would need to buy one as it is not brand new or really pratical; it is a fun vechicle really. Anyway, alot of the car allowances I have seen in my current job search are 400-500 usually, I had one up to 750 in mileage reimb. So to get the car allowance and mileage rocks. Thanks for explaining. And Good Night, I'm about to crash onto this computer and who knows what'll get typed in.
 




OP here...thanks for all of the info, yes I had to take a personality test online and now I have to go into the local office and take another one for about 1.5hrs...honestly this is the most retarded process I have ever seen. I apprecate the bit on negotiating my salary up. 50k would be a good step down and 30k damn I made more at my first job out of college than that...that is crazy! One person said Patterson is a decent company how are the products? Thanks for all the info! Really appreciated!
 




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!
 
















I have reservations about this industry. A friend of mine just got fired from a top company. Here is what happened, the manager had an inside sales guy on salary and he wanted to promote him/get him off the books. He took accounts away from my friend (Shelly) and told her that the doctors were dissappointed with her performance. He told her not to go back to these accounts...as to not make the doctor and staff uncomfortable. He gave them to someone else after Shelly had worked years on developing the accounts. This new guy comes in and very well may get an award or company accolade and he is just stealing from the work Shelly did..at her own expense (she was on 100%commission.) Now, she is fired and the manager looks great. His bottom line looks better(took an inside guy off the books) now he pays his own expenses and the branch has more capital. He has a potential rookie of the year...so he looks good to corporate. This manager's philosophy is why work for it when you can steal it from a good worker. Please understand that not all managers will do this. I am saddened to say this did happen to Shelly and now she will spend years rebuilding her territory. By the way, Shelly had the best year she ever had before she was fired. The criteria to fire can be stacked against you by one goal you did not meet. It will be hard for you to find out if a manager is dishonest because no one will ever say anything bad about them for fear of losing their job in a tough economy. Best way to find out about the manager is find reps. that have gone on to other positions. They may in confidence tell you if the manager is o.k.

Warning sales reps. if your manager says your accounts are calling in complaining of your service, it may not be true. Do not give up just hang in there. If anyone else has had this happen to them please post it. I have a feeling what happened to Shelly may be pervasive in this industry. I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news but I think the truth can help you. Some of the reps. in this industry are some of the finest you can work with. They work extremely hard and care about their doctors. Find out through the back door what the manager is like. Best wishes to you.
 








This industry is just like any other - a lot of BS politics. You have to play the game with your customers and with your co-workers.

There must be more to this "Shelley" story though. I mean a manager just wouldn't fire someone that was producing - it doesn't make logical sense. They would then run the risk of losing that business if Shelley got a job with a competitor or if a competitive rep swooped in and nabbed the account from this new bone head rookie.
 




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