Field Sales Leadership Guide

8. Partnering with Independent Reps in Medical Device Sales with Brian Schauer at Novastep

• Map My Customers • Episode 8

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Organizations with indirect sales teams are awarded the scalability and flexibility that come with utilizing contract reps and manufacturer’s agents. This common sales model often used by medical device organizations has its pros and cons. Brian Schauer from Novastep shares how indirect sales teams have helped their business thrive. Learn more about how they train, motivate and stay informed with their sales team.


“The best way to get in with a distributor or independent sales agent is to understand that they are their own business owners. So they're going to obviously want to do what's best for them, and which is going to be successful for their business. What advantages or resources can I provide that business to be successful in their own race?” says Brian Schauer of Novastep.

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About the Podcast

We've lined up for you some of the smartest movers and shakers in sales leadership to share their formulas for success and the tricks of the trade. The Field Sales Leadership Guide podcast discusses with experienced and successful sales leaders what works and what doesn't in the sales profession. Listen in as we tap into high performing sales leaders and their passion for field sales. Join us as we pull back the curtain giving you actionable insights and strategies that you can use with your sales team.



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JT Rimbey  00:02

Welcome to the Field Sales Leadership Guide podcast where we discuss with experienced and successful sales leaders what works and what doesn't in the sales profession. Join us as we tap into high-performing sales leaders and their passion for Field Sales. We've lined up for you some of the smartest movers and shakers in sales leadership to share their formulas for success and the tricks of the trade. Join us as we pull back the curtain giving you actionable insights and strategies that you can use with your sales team. 


So, welcome back to the podcast everyone. We have a bit of a different episode in store for you today. Most sales leaders that we work with not only on this podcast, but with Map My Customers, they lead sales teams that are employed by their company. Today, we get to speak with a sales leader specific to independent reps or 1099 reps. Now, there are some really specific nuances when dealing with 1099 reps. So, I've actually been really excited about this conversation. We're going to be speaking with Brian Schauer. He's the head of product design and business development with Novastep. Brian, welcome to the podcast. I've been really excited for this episode.


Brian Schauer  01:22

I appreciate it. I was really looking forward to this, and I'm glad we finally found the time to meet. 


JT Rimbey  01:27

Absolutely. Okay, so let's dive in. I want to give the listeners and the sales leaders joining us today. Let's give a little bit of a background firstly, about yourself. How did you get into sales? Why sales? I always liked that one as well. And now why sales leadership? 


Brian Schauer  01:43

Sure. So got into sales. I was going to school at Ryder University in Lawrence Township and my Economics professor would come into DeLorenzo's Tomato Pies all the time. If you haven't been there, follow the Barstool Guy, Dave Portnoy is I think his name. I think it's nice that give us a nine three. Awesome, gotta go. So they would come in and literally said to me, you know, you really need to go into sales. You're good at talking and communicating. It just seemed like it came natural to me. And that was kind of the direction that she pointed me in and you got to think back with being school and trying to figure out what do you actually want to do with your life. You kind of take every little bit of mentorship that you can. So that's kind of really how it all started with trying to go into sales. She recommended going with a company called Tyco International. I believe Ryder University had some sort of sales internship with Tyco and I was managing a bar at the time. And one of the guys that used to come in during happy hour basically said to me, you know, he works for Tyco. Couldn't say one bad thing about the company. And ADT was the sister company, just Tyco International was, I guess, commercial, big, large commercial buildings, where ADT was more small office space or residential, you may have one in your home. I do. And when I moved to Arizona, that's pretty much how it all started. Before I got into medical device sales.


JT Rimbey  03:00

I always love hearing people speak into other people's lives, identifying skills, talents, gifts. That's always a great story of somebody recognizing some strengths that you had to point you in the right direction.


Brian Schauer  03:11

Well, I'm just appreciative, because I really had no clue what I was going to do. It was either that or I was just going to continue making pizza for a long time.


JT Rimbey  03:19

That's great. That's great. All right. So let's dive in a little bit about Novastep. Tell us about Novastep product line, who you serve. And what you guys solve.


Brian Schauer  03:28

Novastep is a foot and ankle medical device company started in 2015 in France. Came over to the United States in 2016. So we are a global foot and ankle company for medical device in the foot and ankle space. So we have our international team headed in Wren, France. And then we have our US team based out of Englewood Cliffs just outside of New York City across the river. So we handle everything in the United States. Really the product line is for devices to handle complex fusions or fractures of the foot and ankle and we develop implants as well as instrumentation to really help solve and get better outcomes for the patient. And as well as the surgeon performing the surgery.


JT Rimbey  04:12

And this is hitting home with me right now. I was hoping that you're gonna be able to do something with ligaments because Cooper Kupp on my fantasy roster needs ankle surgery because of torn ligaments in the game just a couple of days back and I've really wanted you to get them back on the field sooner for the fantasy playoffs coming up.


Brian Schauer  04:28

You know, I cannot do anything about soft tissue. That's not an area that we solve, but we really do solve you probably maybe your wife or spouse or family member if they're prone to bunions or have had bunions in the past or need bunion surgery. We really are leading the space in minimally invasive or percutaneous bunion correction. So instead of having you know historically these were done with big large incisions and things like that we started with the the bunion with three stab incisions and patients are actually healing much faster getting back on their feet right after surgery. We're starting to look at other areas in the foot where we can do this such as hammertoes, which is a common deformity in the foot. And that's something that, you know, when I came to Novastep, that was my goal was launching a foot and ankle portfolio for percutaneous surgery, and it started with the bunion. And now it's really expanding out. 


JT Rimbey  05:19

Awesome. Let's talk about the go to market team. How many distributors do you lead? What does that look like? Where are they located? 


Brian Schauer  05:29

We're a national company, right? In the United States, obviously, a global company, but focusing just on the United States, right, we have independent sales agents, or distributors around the country, about 40 to 50. In every state, and they also manage a team, those independent distributors, or you can say that they're their own business, their own business owner, they have a number of reps could be as small as two could be as high as 20 plus, right. So go to market team really starts from internal, you're creating the product, you're creating the marketing, that goes along with it, you're consulting with your surgeon team that advises you on who your market is strategy, what problems you solve, and then you know, you're launching products, right? And it's going out to the distributors, right all around the country, you're training these these reps on your product, so they know how to talk about it well, so whether it be on a webinar or in person, the last thing you want to see happen is the and this happens not to I mean, all too often in this industry, it's a new product, you know, rep calls you the the night before or the morning of and saying I've never seen this before, how do I how do I use this, and you hate getting this calls, but it happens all too often in the industry, and it could be something that's green, that doesn't necessarily mean that you know, surgery is gonna go bad or whatnot, the surgeon is a surgeon, they know how to use the product, but it's more so of, you know, their role in the in the operating room as well. 


JT Rimbey  06:49

So, with these sales agents in the field, what is their go to market like? How many days a week are they in the field? How many meetings a day? Are they doing cold knocks? Are they all scheduled appointments? How do they get in front of the provider? 


Brian Schauer  05:29

And that's a really good question, I'm gonna go back to the kind of my experience with it, because there's so many different strategies of being a salesperson, right? If you're just starting out in a territory, and you you know, have relationships and medical device sales, I would say is relationship, right? It's not a once and done or transactional sale. Like when at my experience ADT, you go in there, you sell the alarm, and then you leave, and you don't talk to that person. Again, there's no point of even coming back. Whereas you know, you go to the surgeon, and you meet with them. So you cold call, right. So typically, you're out you'll go into the office, you'll get past the gatekeeper, which is always the the the front office people, right, typically, it's easier, I think, just to make an appointment and respect the surgeons times, they're most likely in clinic seeing patients, know some surgeon see a physician see 20 patients a day, I know surgeons, and physicians that will see up to 80 patients a day, I have no clue how they do it. But that said their time is valuable. So it's best to set a meeting. And what I've always thought was the best way to do it is you know, I think this is kind of standard throughout the industry. To own an account or to get into an account, it takes about eight to 12 touches, right. So whether you go in there, the first time you introduce yourself, and you show, you know, maybe your premier item, or you just go there to learn about the physician and what the practices and what they're seeing, and then, you know, come back and finding a reason to come back the best to get back to your question of like, what the average sales day is, it's going to vary from levels of experience, right? There could be, like I said, the green person that's just coming out and trying to get their feet wet and new to a territory, or it's going to be the experienced guy that already has the relationship with these surgeons is already working with them. And it's Hey, I have a new product I have to show you. And it can be something as simple as a text message for the next time they're in the car with them at the scrub sink or either before or after. Right? They're showing the product off to that surgeon saying, hey, you know, we did this a couple of weeks ago, this is new, this is gonna make your life easier, do you want to give it a try. Other things may require a cadaver lab in my space, which means you have a specimen or a body part and the surgeon wants to go through the entire procedure like they would before they go to the operating room. And there's also the part of medical education, things like that. Were there CME courses, right, a continuing medical education now industry cannot provide that. But we do put on and other companies do put on industry meetings where you have a group of lectures, right speaking on best practices to tackle a procedure and surgeons go to attend them to answer your question. I mean, it could be as far as wide as you want it to be, it's going to be on obviously the buyer that they're speaking to, as well as the experience of the sales rep. 


JT Rimbey  10:00

So it's a great summary. What I ended up typically likening that to is it's an educational sale that requires the building of a relationship with that provider to get airtime with them. What we typically see in med device med diagnostic space is you're not physically selling the medical device as you walk into the actual practice or before the provider. It's when JT Rimbey needs surgery, and therefore the Novastep product is, is ready to be leveraged by that provider. Is it making certain that you've got the headspace of of Dr. Smith to recall Novastep at the right time?


Brian Schauer  10:28

That's a good question. And I think that maybe I have a different perspective on on sales with medical device, right? But really, at the end of the day, it's it's going to come down to what is going to make your life easier, and give the best positive outcome for the patient. Right? I'm going to uncover and ask you questions, right on what you're doing now, if this is a physician, that I know, everything that they do, and I know what product like what products are using, or what procedures they're doing, right, and I have something that's new, that may make their life easier, because I know the pros and cons of the competitor that they're using, you know, I can go in there and leave with that. But typically, I'm going to sit there and I'm going to ask when I'm with a physician, Hey, what are you using? And typically, I know I do my homework, I'm a product nerd, right? I look at every company's products inside and out. And I can deduce where things may go wrong or may things things may go, right. And if that product, right, or the instrumentation of that product is making their life more difficult, right? And if I can solve that, with a widget that I have, and this is not even Novastep related, this could be anything, right? If I can make their life easier to give them a better patient outcome, that mindset of you're still selling a solution at the end of the day, right? What's going to make their life easier, and what's going to be the best possible outcome for their patient. So that that's kind of the way I look at it is uncovering their pain, and how I can provide something for it.


JT Rimbey  11:55

Yeah, no, that's good color. I appreciate that. Let me turn this slightly and focus on leading an independent sales team or sales agents, distributors, 1099 reps, how do you incentivize, motivate, and make sure that you have you referred to it in one of our prior meetings, shelf space, in the distributor’s head? So that when I'm walking in as as one of your sales agents, one of your distributors into a foot and ankle specialist office? How do you make sure that I'm going to push Novastep versus other product lines? Or competing product lines?


Brian Schauer  12:34

So that's a good question, right? The best way to get in with a distributor or independent sales agent is understand that they are their own business owners. So they're going to obviously want to do what's best for them, and which is going to be successful for their business. Right? So if you think about it, from that perspective, what advantages or resources can I provide that business to be successful in their own base, if I have the best widget in town, but I have poor customer service, and poor resources, it doesn't matter that I have the best widget in town, you have to give the full boat. If you think of it like that, that model of it all comes into circle, right? It from a customer service standpoint, to a resource standpoint. But the end goal is to partner, I don't like the term managing sales agents, right? Because you're not managing them, you're partnering with them. You want them to be a part of your business as much as I want to be a part of their business, right? Because the first customer that we have is the sales agent, or the distributor, right? It's not the surgeon. We have relationships with surgeons, right. But at the end of the day, it goes through the middleman, which is the distributor, right? That's how it gets to the surgery. So that said, I tell everybody that I work with, and this is maybe funny saying but I tell everybody that when I first meet, look, call me once a week, even if it's for two minutes, just tell me that you kicked your dog. Because that way you're on you're in my head, right? I'm thinking about you. And if I don't hear from you, I think of three things. Either your fine numbers are growing, you don't need my help, or B, you know, you're not really into what we're doing. Right, you're pushing something else. And you're not bought in, or everything's fine. You don't need me.


JT Rimbey  14:17

Yeah, what I hear you saying is be easy to work with, be responsive, to take care of the distributor. The distributor understands the product line takes care of the provider, the provider then takes care of the patient. It's a trickle down effect.


Brian Schauer  14:32

Yeah, there's no other way to do it. I mean, obviously, other people have models and ways of going about it. I just think this is it's the most direct way. I mean, if you have a sales rep that you're calling, and you can't get a hold of them, you're gonna call somebody else right? So it's kind of the same game of if you don't answer the phone, someone else will. And that's kind of a good motto. You want to be successful in sales. That's, that's really what you got to do.


JT Rimbey  14:56

There's some stats. Todd Caponi has put this stuff out before that. The Transparency Sale, love following that guy's brilliant recently. He had put out some numbers about the percentage of sales reps that do not respond to phone calls, voicemails, or emails. And you're like, that's like the only thing you can easily control is a response, a lifeline? It absolutely is. Okay. So one of the things that I'm still blown away with in 2022 is the number of sales leaders that lead outside sales teams that do not have access or insight into leading indicators. So I'm going to make an assumption here, and you have to correct me. Anytime I have conversations with sales, sales leaders, where the go to market strategy is done with sales agents, distributors, or 1099 reps, I automatically assume, Brian, that you're going to have retroactive reporting? Well, let's figure out how October went, when it's November 10 and the numbers come out, versus being able to say, “Ooh, I don't like the trends that I'm seeing for October, let's course correct, and implement this strategy or talk to this rep. And coach them how to do this.” So that's a long winded way to say, Do you have the ability to course correct? If so, what kind of data do you use? Or leverage? Or is it literally just trusting that you have the right sales agents on board to do the core blocking and tackling that you need them to?


Brian Schauer  16:28

That's a loaded question but let's let's pick it apart, right? Like this is kind of a good little puzzle, because we deal with that all the time. Right. And I think that's when it's a good thing to have the inside people, right like are for us to be our sales EVPs, as well as our marketing product specialists, and myself with boots on the ground, talking to the sales agents, right? I mean, we live practically on a plane, it's part of the job. But you're able to see the day to day activity and some of the stuff that they bring the points they raise of maybe why something isn't working well or isn't going the way we expected it to, you know, may have some validity to it. Other times, it could just be sheer laziness, right. And it may also be geographical as something that works in the southeast. But I'm just going to use bunion surgery, for example. They're in flip flops all the time. percutaneous bunion surgery for someone living in the southeast, and maybe Florida, right, Miami may be happy to get three poke holes instead of a big long incision. But the guy in North Dakota, who puts on boots every day probably doesn't care. So you have to kind of think outside the box. And sometimes metrics as far as numbers aren't always the best indicator, you know, some people are gonna just say, Oh, we're having a bad month. But it's easy to say all the numbers are down. But then you have to look at the bigger picture of really what the issue behind it was.


JT Rimbey  17:50

Got it. Being head of business development, their positioning slightly with this. What's the recruitment strategy of additional distributors or distributors group or sales agents? What does that like bringing them on?


Brian Schauer  18:02

So I would encourage you to listen to a podcast I did. It's wrote a medical device sales and was a partner of mine in Arizona. And we talked really about, you know, new reps going into either the comp like a big larger company, right where they’re W-2, or going with a 1099. And, you know, for us bring on someone that's new in green, and as a principal distributor, is not going to give us the return that we want initially. There's two ways to go about it. If we have someone that's tenured, and they've been in the area, or been in the industry for five, six years or longer, right, they have the track record of being of being successful, that's gonna be attractive to us. The problem with that also is they're successful. And they have about 10 Other companies knocking on their door, saying, hey, we want you to represent us, then they end up doing that, right. And they're trying to keep 10 different companies happy all at one time. And you're just like getting a piece of their pie, right? You're not getting the whole thing. Or you can go the organic route, right. And Medical Device Sales College has done a great job of helping reps get into the industry, I have my own opinions on them. But they do a good job of kind of giving the reps a good sense of what the day to day life isn't kind of weaning out and giving it to him what the role is. So that said, typically, we would look for someone that's been in the industry for at least three to five years, has a track record. Obviously, they have more experience, obviously, the better and then it also comes into what we need them to do. Right. What focus area, like I can't take someone from spine and put them into foot and ankle surgery. They may have been in the industry for years, right and we'll bring them up to New York and we'll we'll do a training with them in house for about two to three days. And they'll learn all the basics from starting at the forefoot working their way back and really diving into procedures. And it helps to learn the procedure first, and then understanding how the hardware works in conjunction with the procedure that the surgeon is performing at the time.


JT Rimbey  20:09

Brian, you just mentioned, you referenced green reps or reps that are just now cracking in to the med device industry. What advice for maybe for sales leaders or even for a med device? Rep, what would you coach them on, on how to kind of launch into this space on how they would manage their day, what would help them hit the ground running,


Brian Schauer  20:30

it's kind of a little bit of gave a little little context behind that, right. So anybody that's new going into this in this industry, and this industry is rewarding, and it could tear you down at the same time. But if you're green, green, meaning new into the industry looking just to get your feet wet, or get your foot in the door, you have two options, right, you have the W-2 company route, like working for a Stryker or an Arthrex. Or you can go with an independent sales agent, right. So when local boots on the ground. Both have the pros and cons. But the really what it comes down to is going to be the first three years of you getting into this space. How much knowledge can you build and get to build your knowledge and be successful, right. And if you go to the bigger company, the most of the time they're going to invest in you, right. They're going to send you to training courses, you're gonna be flown all over the country, and you're gonna get exposed to a lot of different things. Whereas if you're a distributor, and you're working for that distributor model, you may not get all the coaching and mentorship that you need. Because it's a small business that at the end of the day, you have to remember that, right. So they may lean on companies like like me, at Novastep that who they partner with to help educate their sales force, or they may be just having you come in and covering small little cases that free up their day, or running trays to get sterilized the day before a case so that they can free up their day and make sales calls and build their their revenue and their book of business. Not to say that can't happen in a corporate world. I ride with reps all the time. And they got notes, I mean, typical rep car is there's fast food all over the floor books and notes, and then they're pulling out Excel spreadsheets on their phone of where they gotta go. But you really the best way to be successful is being effective, right? And you can't be effective. If you're not organized. Someone will say, Well, my mess is my organization. But that's I don't know how to do it. But that said, I actually stumbled on to Map My Customers. For me, it was nice, because I did not know my way around Arizona at all. So I took every surgeon that we had or every ortho and podiatrist that was in Arizona and I put everything into the map. And my day was literally filled with how to create a route. And I go one by one by one. Until I got home, I was able to just plug in my map who was close by who haven't I seen in in a couple of weeks, and I would pop in, and then I would make it back in time for the case. Now, luckily, for me, I took over a territory that did not do well. I turned it into 1.4 or 5 million in the year that I had it and I won President's Club and number two growth rep in right medical in 2017. And I attributed that a lot of that to the Map My Customers because it really did help me get an organized with my day and develop a call pattern and also be able to see who haven't I seen in a while, you know, I was able to edit fields and put in all right, what type of surgeon are they who are their competitors, I had all my notes. So if ever whenever I went in somewhere, I knew by a quick look, right what I was walking into. And as soon as I left, I tagged it, so that I knew what was going on. So I think that's a huge help.


JT Rimbey  23:36

I love success stories like that. I do still stand dumbfounded when I come across companies that invest so much in onboarding, product training, industry knowledge, Persona based value props, how to get by a gatekeeper. And then they hand outside sales reps, list of 300 accounts, pat them on the back and say, okay, they'll get them. And there's no ability to strategically efficiently and effectively attack the territory. So I'm grateful you shared the story. And congrats, that's a good good thing. You took an underperforming territory and took it to 1.4 plus, that's that's good stuff, man.


Brian Schauer  24:15

You have to develop them, you have to give them real coaching moments, ride along with them. See what they're doing is talk to him a couple times a week, that will go a long way if as long as you're focused on their development, because by developing them, obviously it's going to hit help you hit your number, as well as hit the company's number, their potential. And there's a reason why sales reps. You know, I think the average sales rep goes from company to company every three to four years. I think that's a true statistic. I hope I'm not pulling out of thin air.


JT Rimbey  24:45

I think it's actually less than three years. I think it's in the two range.


Brian Schauer  24:48

Yeah, I think the reason why that happens is right. A good sales rep who had like for me I want President's Club right? And I get all these people on LinkedIn reached out to me hey, you know, this compensation, this, this, this, and I just didn't bite. But, you know, it's easy to fall into that and say, Alright, I'm gonna go to this company. And you know, they'll give me a good guarantee for the first year, right. But then I got a non compete all this other stuff that goes along with it. That said, you really have to look into the company's resources. And the best resource can be your manager, sometimes, if they're very attuned of what's going on in the field, and what your day to day is, or have lived your day to day, right, and they can show you how to get around some of these issues that you're seeing or help you the closer, then that's the best resource you can possibly have. Those are the guys you want to work for. And those are the those the regional managers and the managers that are effectively every year hitting a podium or being recognized for for doing well in their industry, because they're in tune with what's actually going on in the field.


JT Rimbey  25:52

Awesome. Brian, thank you for joining us today for the insights grateful for the stories. I'm wishing you all the best and continued success and awesome foundation of a career that you've already built. So thank you very much for joining us.


Brian Schauer  26:05

And JT, thanks for having me. Like I said I was I know our schedule wasn't working out too well. But we finally made it work. You know, I really did enjoy this just kind of passing along knowledge to anybody that's willing to listen. Hopefully the audience finds this helpful, and I look forward to doing this again sometime soon.


JT Rimbey  26:20

Sounds great. Thanks, Brian.


Brian Schauer  26:22

You got it. Thank you.


JT Rimbey  26:26

Thank you again, for listening today. Thank you to our sponsor, Map My Customers. Remember traditional CRMs were never designed with outside sales reps in mind, whether that's SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, HubSpot, even Pega systems, the list goes on. Those CRMs are too cumbersome, they're too complex, and far too time consuming for outside sales reps. Keep in mind for Map My Customers, half of our customers use us as the CRM of record. The other half use Map My Customers as the tip of the spear for their existing CRM. Designed specifically for outside sales reps, mobile first platform, helping you strategically segment accounts along with routing and mapping, activity logging, and much more. Keep in mind that ease of use drives user adoption, adoption delivers data and data delivers insights. Visit MapMyCustomers.me for more info. Be sure to subscribe to the Field Sales Leadership Guide podcast if you haven't already. Share with your friends, colleagues and your family members. If you do have additional questions or comments for Brian or myself, please send us a message. We'd love to hear from you and answer any questions you may have. Tune in next time for another great episode. Thanks again for listening.


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