4 min reading time

As originally asked by Bob Leech.

(obviously a lot of factors go into this like sales cycle, training etc – just trying to get a straw poll)

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Erik Kulstad
Associate Professor, Emergency Medicine, UT Southwestern ‖ Co-Founder Attune Medical
Having recently polled as many (primarily US focused, emergency med and critical care, mostly disposables) companies as I could at the Arab Health conference a few weeks back, seems the mean was near 18 months, with a handful saying 36 to 60 months as their own outliers (typically new disruptive/innovative products). It’s rough out there…

Carter Christopher
Senior Account Manager at Univar
I worked in a drug delivery (design from scratch, go through FDA approval, then launch and manufacture and frankly it took an average of a year just to get in the door at these large Pharma companies and get to the right people in R&D and then if I was lucky another year to bid on a project and that’s IF the company followed a design from scratch model vs. buy off the shelf IP. So really interesting challenge.

Daniel Skalko
Senior Director/VP Bern Medical
There are too many variables.

Terry Dowe
Let us be your first resource for your medical devices terry@aspensalesinc.com
Depends on what you are selling. We have some employees that have significant revenue in one month but most take at least a year.

Cliff Ansel
CEO at Respinova Ltd.
Anthony is correct. Most important is the sales cycle for the product. I would add that if it’s a pioneering sale (eg. new product in a new category that your company is the first to address) you can expect the sales cycle to be substantial.

Tamara Calderon
How old you are is your business. How young you look is mine.
6 months.

Jack W Goode
Lifelong Learner – Payment and Cost Control Consultant
This discussion is raising some excellent points to consider. Since the focus of your question is “substantial revenue”, I agree with Anthony that the sales cycle is a critical variable. To illustrate this, let’s create an unrealistically optimistic example. The new salesperson arrives on their start date of January 1st already
prepared with a call list of ideal prospects. They are selling Acme-Omega1, your software implementation that will increase inventory turn by 300%, improve your gross margins by 100% and provide improved cash flow that will explode your client’s growth. They meet with a CEO and CFO the next day and get a signed deal for $8M. Acme-Omega1 takes only 7 months to implement and the client will pay in full at the end of that period. In this hopelessly ideal scenario, the revenue will not happen for at least 7 months because it is bound to the sales cycle.

Betsy Gordon
Business Development | Healthcare & Practice Specialist | Executive Coach & Small Business Expert | Project Manager
6-12 months…all depends on what the sales pipeline looks like when a person is transitioned into an existing territory. If no pipeline or a bare bones pipeline exists, 12-24 months. Have to build momentum first, then work on consistency.

Selvaraj N
Director at Trinity Bio Med Systems
it’s a depends upon a person if he is experience and the product is already known to him he can right away start be effective person in his territory again it’s a complex issue depends upon the product positioning brand position and the persons rapport

Selvaraj N
Director at Trinity Bio Med Systems
it’s all depends upon the person if he is experienced and product.

Damodaran Narasimhulu
Managing Partner – Sales at Biovision Medical Systems
If the product is well accepted in the market and the sales person is smart I don’t think it will take more than 3 months to get the revenue.

Anthony Wunsh
President/CEO at Welcome Marketing, Inc
Having hired thousands of sales people for many companies I have started, this is a loaded question without all the variables to consider. Things like sales cycle, how long does it take to sell the product or service. If it is a six month sales cycle, then it may take two years to get really going. If it is a one call close item, based on knocking on doors, it could be two weeks after proper training on the product and sales process. Best possible answer is ask your new employer what their expectation is and past experience has shown and set a goal to better that.

Dan Golka
CMO at Med Tech Directory
I believe that a salesperson that is experienced in the field has a distinct advantage. The results should start to come in after 90 days.

Ibrahim Elalfy
Hearing instrument specialist
6months.

Ibrahim Elalfy
Hearing instrument specialist
6 months.

Ken Powell
President
Jack – when you know the market, product, features and benefits you have a great advantage (head start). I just had lab experience and great sales ability that I learned selling soap in 1960;)

Emma Xie
Manager
Experience is very important of sales. But if you have sales experience before, I think it would be easy to change other position. I am a sales too.

Jack Gleason
Director JACOR Ventures, LLC
The question is ambiguous. Do you mean a new product or a new rep.? that rep experienced with the product or the marketplace?
Regardless, it can take a few weeks up to a yeR for a new rep to become effective with a new product in an unfamiliar marketplace.

Ken Powell
President
My first health care professional position after returning from Aspen and my freestyle ski career I was selling Commercial Reference Lab services for Upjohn Laboratory Procedures. I was based in Michigan and the lab was in King of Prussia, PA, so I was selling against both local labs and national ones (Check-Up – became National Health labs bought by Pearlman/Relon Healthcare), hospitals and others. My territory was doing approximately $5,000/month. Eleven months later it was doing $110,000/month and I earned a whopping $125 bonus. So I left, went to a small clinical diagnostic company (Roche Diagnostics – $18MM) and earned the Roche President’s Achievement Award in my second year. The rest is a very long and quite interesting story where I was lucky enough to lead the transformation of the practice of medicine numerous times. I just love sales because not only is it the world’s oldest profession, everything isn’t bought – its sold!

Bill Greenblatt
Vice President Business Development at Quest International Inc.
In part it will depend on how experienced the sales person is, along with how long they have been involved in that market. Another factor is if the product is a lower cost and/or disposable, versus high end capital equipment. But in general my experience has been at least 3 months, unless it’s high end capital equipment, then it’s usually closer to a 12 month cycle.