Finding Strength and Growth in Life’s Toughest Moments
Todd Crowder, one of the most respected leaders in medical sales, joins Samuel Adeyinka to break down the mindset and daily habits that separate long-term top performers from everyone else. Together, they reveal why the toughest challenges in your career aren’t obstacles to avoid — they’re opportunities to train, grow, and dominate your market.
We explore why comfort kills sales careers and how the best reps deliberately seek discomfort every single day. Todd shares his “ABC” strategy for managing priorities, staying ahead of competition, and building a pipeline that never runs dry — whether you’re in your first year or your 25th.
You’ll learn how to reframe “hard times” as training grounds, develop the resilience to perform under pressure, and prepare for the higher stakes that come with success. From handling setbacks without emotion to finding 1% improvement every day, Todd delivers a masterclass in staying relevant and unstoppable in medical sales.
If you want to compete with — and outlast — the best in this industry, this episode will give you the mindset, process, and tools to make it happen.
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Episode Transcript:
00:05 – Samuel Adeyinka (Host)
Hello and welcome to the Medical Sales Podcast. I’m your host, samuel, founder of a revolutionary medical sales training and mentorship program called the Medical Sales Career Builder, and I’m also host of the Medical Sales Podcast. In this podcast, I interview top medical sales reps and leading medical sales executives across the entire world. It doesn’t matter what medical sales industry from medical device to pharmaceutical, to genetic testing and diagnostic lab you name it you will learn how to either break into the industry, be a top 10% performer within your role or climb the corporate ladder. Welcome to the Medical Sales Podcast and remember, I am a medical sales expert, sharing my own opinion about this amazing industry and how it can change your life.
00:51
I think there’s this idea that when you go through a hard time whether you’re trying to get sales in your territory or you’re trying to run your business or even a personal matter, and it’s a hard time, and you’re like, hey, when is this going to end? And let’s pretend you go through this, just hard time, and you get to the other side and you won, you were successful. There’s this idea that like, okay, it’s done, it’s done and it’s good and we did it and I hope that never happens again and I’m actually, you know, I think it’s, I think that’s just the wrong message. I think those hard times we go through, whether in business or personal, it’s literally to train us to literally go through it again, but this time do it better, and and when you.
01:39 – Todd Crowder (Guest)
Every day you wake up should be a hard time. Right, right, right Every moment put in front of everybody right now that are looking every moment you wake up and you’re in sales. You should have the plan. You should anticipate it being tough.
01:55 – Samuel Adeyinka (Host)
If this was an easy job, then everybody would be flooded and your goal should be, instead of getting through a hard time and saying, oh my God, I hope that never happens again, you should look for the hard time and go through it over and over and over again until you can just manage it and you no longer put in the context of a hard time. You put in the context of just what happens and, because you’ve experienced it so many times, you know what to do when this happens and you’ll do it effectively. And watch. Whatever you’re working on will just start to magically not magically but whatever you’re working on will just start to come to fruition because you’re refining being able to execute in this circumstance and regardless how difficult or deep or big the circumstance is, it’s the same kind of circumstance. You’ve gotten so good at it that you can just deal with it at any time, anywhere and make the good things happen so you know, I I do not speak any foreign language, I’m sure but they say you’ve mastered a language, you dream in that language.
02:58 – Todd Crowder (Guest)
So, within dream, if your goal is to speak spanish and you’re dreaming in spanish, you’re waking up, then it has become inundated with you. Same thing applies to sales. Look, you should look for opportunities to say I’m going to put myself in a difficult position.
03:13
What happens with sales reps these days is we get comfortable. We like the marketing. We blame it on marketing. We say we need more marketing. We like the marketing, we blame it on marketing. We say we need more marketing, we need better marketing. We need devices to be able to do this. Oh, we need to be able to sing. We can pull information from here.
03:32
In the information age, where we have so much stuff at our fingertips, we still become some of the dumbest people in society because it goes back to good, old-fashioned, what Communication, talking and being with the customer.
03:44
You can have all the data points you want, but if you can’t make yourself reach out, get uncomfortable and be comfortable with being uncomfortable, going out there and saying I know there is a potential to have a great year by doing this, because a lot of companies right now are in the start of their years, I notice it will be a great year. And here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to make my pyramid base, I’m going to make it bigger and I’m going to make the next part of that pillar. I’m going to make it bigger than that and I’m going to keep on building this thing because I’m going to stretch myself. I don’t care if you’ve been in the rep for one month or 25 years. If you don’t wake up every morning looking to be uncomfortable, then all you’re doing is collecting a paycheck, robbing the company and not increasing your value.
04:37 – Samuel Adeyinka (Host)
I love that. I love that, if you don’t wake up every morning looking for ways to be uncomfortable, I like that. That’s’s true, that’s that’s stretch goals right there.
04:46 – Todd Crowder (Guest)
that’s good, that’s good that’s what I’m saying when I teach. Well, I want to look at teaching somebody’s mindset. I want to change and stretch them for what they’ve ever thought before. I don’t care how long you’ve been in the fields, right, if you can’t make yourself uncomfortable during a daily basis, then what are you doing?
05:04
right you’re not growing. And if you’re not growing, you’re getting past. It’s not that you’re shrinking. You’re getting past because you know what at almost 52 years old, there’s a 32 year old right now trying to figure out how they can take my place right, right, right and there’s another individual behind them, that’s 22, that’s trying to figure out how they can take that person’s place right in your competition.
05:24
I promise you, if you’re the lead one, your competition is trying to figure out how to get uncomfortable, to make sure that they can take your place so it never stops. Ladies and gentlemen, when you listen to this, your ability to get uncomfortable should never stop. You should wake up and say how can I stretch myself more today than I did yesterday? How can I improve myself just 1% more?
05:46 – Samuel Adeyinka (Host)
I hope you’re enjoying today’s episode and I want to let you know our programs cover the entire career of a medical sales professional, From getting into the medical sales industry to training on how to be a top performer in the medical sales industry to masterfully navigating your career to executive level leadership. These programs are personalized and customized for your specific career and background and trained by over 50 experts, including surgeons. Our results speak for ourselves and we’re landing positions for our candidates in less than 120 days in top medical technology companies like Stryker, Medtronic, Merck, Abbott you name it. Would you run an Ironman race without training and a strategy? You wouldn’t, so why are you trying to do the same with the medical sales position? You need training, you need a strategy and you need to visit evolveyoursuccesscom.
06:35
Fill out the application schedule some time with one of our account executives and let’s get you into the position that you’ve always dreamed of. And let’s get you into the position that you’ve always dreamed of when that becomes your daily habit, you get out of the emotion of it all, so that if a big issue comes around or some big problem happens or one of your biggest customers just drops out of the running for whatever reason and now you got to find all these other customers to make up for it. You’re not in the emotion of it and you don’t feel the panic. You just feel like this is another day, this is another uncomfortable situation that I’ve been here. I’ve been here many times before and I know what to do to work with it, work through it and figure it out, and I think when people really practice that it just makes everything that much easier.
07:20 – Todd Crowder (Guest)
It makes your experience as a sales rep, as a professional, easier, fun and engaging, regardless what’s actually going on so I and I taught when I was teaching the interview process, also a, b’s and c’s, and it’s not always be closing, even though that’s what they tell us right and a is a is a 30 30 day deal.
07:41
What are you going to actually accomplish in 30 days for your company, for your role, for the role you want to go after? Give me those should be about two or three. That’s your pinpoint. That’s you zeroed in your sniper rifle, you’ve adjusted for Kentucky wind, you’ve sat there and you’ve got your marks and you’re able to shoot a tight circle. Your Bs are going to be a little bit bigger. Your Bs are your 31 days to about 90 days and then your Cs are 90 days and beyond. If you learn how to do this in your mind, write it down for a while until it becomes ingrained. When I came into the industry, there was no computers of being able to do these things and so you had to either write it down or memorize.
08:19 – Samuel Adeyinka (Host)
Sure.
08:20 – Todd Crowder (Guest)
So maybe that’s my period. But if you do that, if by chance you have something go awry and that a has to drop to a c, you know you have a b to drop. Push up to that a, sure. So your funnel, which is what you should do, whether it’s a job, whether it’s trying to get a career, trying to move into a new position you should have and develop and learn to develop the abcs, so that you can begin to process all this into your head. It changes the way you view crisis, changes the way you view family, it changes the way you view just life in general, because there’s nothing. Okay, that happened. Customer deciding to sign a contract with the competitor. We’re out for at least a year, two years, three years. Okay, great.
09:07
Customer A moves down to customer C. What do I have in B? Do I got to move two up to me to replace that A? That’s fine, I move those two up and then the C I’m looking for C is going to be longer. I’m going to move that C to a, b and it continuously, and you’ll never run out of ability to solve a problem.
09:30
Grow a funnel, grow your business, grow as a person, because you can stretch. You may have to take a look at that C. That might be a really big account that you were too afraid to go into. Well, guess what, maybe that C needs to be pushed to an A. But practice it over and over and over and make it so. That is an ingrained part, because then, stretching yourself outside of it every day, getting 1% better than you were the day before, because your real competition should not be if you’re a rethracon Medtronic, you’re a real competition If you want to be a seasoned sales rep, if you want to survive this stuff for 20 plus years and make a career in life, your competition thing, your competition should be the person. Look at you in the mirror each day saying I’m 1% better than I was yesterday and am I willing to stretch myself 1% more than I did the day before?
10:18 – Samuel Adeyinka (Host)
And it needs to be a necessary conquest, because another thing that I’ll say that I’ve seen in light of what you’re saying is, once you do this ABC process and you get good at solving the problems that are right in front of you, when you get successful you’re going to be given even higher stakes and that will continue to happen over and over. The stakes will just continue to increase. There’s no such thing as becoming successful and then sitting back on your hands and just be like we made it. There’s no making it, because once you say you made it, you’re right, it’s retirement. You don’t keep going, you’re going to start going backwards.
10:55
So if you continue in your role and you want to continue to just be there and do your thing and work with that company, once you’re successful they’re going to want more of you and the stakes are going to get higher. And if you’re not refining this process that you’ve defined as the ABCs, then you will not be able to manage when those stakes get higher. So it’s absolutely necessary that you’re always looking for the tough stuff and you’re continuing to refine the process of getting through it and be happy to do it. Don’t run from it, don’t hide from it, don’t look at it like thank God, that’s over. Look at it like so glad we came out on the other side of the right way, Can’t wait to do it again. And now I’m even more empowered to do it better the next time.
11:32 – Todd Crowder (Guest)
What did you learn from your hard time, what can you do better and what is the next challenge?
11:39 – Samuel Adeyinka (Host)
I hope you enjoyed today’s episode and remember I have a customized and personalized program that gets you into the medical technology industry as a sales professional or any type of role for that matter. Become a top performer in your position and masterfully navigate your career to executive level leadership. Check out these programs and learn more at EvolvesAssesscom by visiting our site, filling out an application schedule, some time with one of our account executives and allowing us to get you where you need to be. Stay tuned for more awesome content with amazing interviews on the Medical Sales Podcast.