Are you a nurse thinking of a change in career or of a healthcare career outside nursing? Then maybe you should go into medical sales.

Through Navro, we have given hundreds of nurses and people with a clinical background to start successful medical sales careers. We recognize how such nursing skills, knowledge, and experience, together with such dedication to service, can spell success in this industry.

Leading world-class medical device companies like Stryker, CONMED, Smith+Nephew, Arthrex, Zimmer Biomet, and many more hire experienced nurses on a daily basis in medical sales positions, even without any B2B sales experience. These companies recognize the significant value that on-the-ground clinical experience brings to medical sales. Your nursing background differentiates you from other applicants for jobs.

Making Medical Sales with Your Nursing Experience

While your nursing education is a big win for many hiring managers, it's key to understand how to work with experience to your benefit when seeking a job in medical sales.

Let's take a look at five fundamental characteristics to highlight when applying for a medical sales representative job as a nurse.

Strong relationship-building capacity – networking opportunities
Clinical experience – knowledge of clinical dynamics
Medical knowledge – health profession education
Giving mentality – committed to the best patient outcomes and service to others
Credibility - prior clinical experience

Relationship Building

Communication and relationship building form the foundation of success in medical sales. Reps sell medical equipment, products, and services to hospitals, health systems, doctor's offices, and clinics. However, it is not just about selling but selling the best products for their changing needs.

Jobs for med sales representatives include calling on prospects at the location, handling leads and customers in the territory, making product demos, cooperating with the teams of sales, marketing, and support, analyzing the data coming from the field about sales, participating in planning and implementing the strategies, and much more.

All this requires empathy, trust, and clear communication, the building blocks of relationship building. As an experienced nurse, you've got this. Your nursing background makes you particularly suited to build trust and foster fruitful partnerships with your customers and colleagues. You can immediately have knowledgeable conversations about medical issues and challenges and how you can help your customers provide the best healthcare solutions. This is a huge advantage you have over other applicants.

Tell the hiring managers how your experience directly applies to the clinical setting. Be able to discuss the collaborating relationship you have had with the doctors or were part of the decision-making process with healthcare. You can express your commitment to ensuring your patients feel listened to and cared for.

Focus on background information you bring to the position.

Clinical Experience

At Navro, we understand the critical link between clinical experience and sales skills for success. MSI students get hands-on experience in OR Labs and clinical medical device education focusing on the spine, extremities, trauma, and sports medicine.

Knowing the real-life dynamics and etiquette of an OR, as well as other sensitive clinical settings, is a huge plus for medical sales reps. Moreover, nurses are trained in anatomy, physiology, and patient care.

Medical sales is a highly competitive field. What employers seek in a good candidate is the extensive clinical background that you bring along with you. Let them know about this as much as possible. On interview day, learn to bring in your experience and how your nursing skills have been molded into an ideal working relationship with patients, doctors, and colleagues alike.

Basic Medical Knowledge

We can't emphasize enough how a nurse's training and experience inform a rewarding career in medical sales. From the first handshake, you can communicate with healthcare professionals at their level. This is a significant advantage, especially if you don't have sales experience.

A Giving Mentality

You entered nursing because you care. With empathy, patience, knowledge, and care, you worked alongside medical healthcare professionals to affect better health outcomes. In a different capacity, that is what you will do as a medical sales rep. Medical professionals rely on you to educate them on the best products and services for their patients. That requires trust, empathy, and a giving mentality.

Both nursing and medical sales careers offer rewarding opportunities to impact directly on a patient's quality of life, which would change his or her life in ways.

Credibility

Credibility is a strong plus.

You are a physician and are seeing a medical sales representative for the first time. One representative is an excellent and experienced salesperson, warm and knowledgeable about the products he sells. However, he does not have any health or clinical background. Chances are that the physician may be reticent to work with him initially.

Another day finds a former nurse selling and going years back in clinical experience as one might expect from the doctor with whom she is meeting for the first time. Instant credibility. With that comes trust, as well as the possibility of a long-term partnership.

Talk to the hiring manager about how trustworthy you are in the eyes of your previous colleagues and medical professionals. Explain how you understand the challenges of your new customers and how your experience will immediately create credibility and build trust.