POSTED ON November 4, 2026

Brutally Honest Medical Sales Advice

In this solo episode of the Medical Sales Podcast, Samuel Adeyinka breaks down the 10 biggest mistakes people make when trying to break into medical sales and shares how to avoid wasting months or even years pursuing the wrong strategy. Drawing from more than 20 years of industry experience and helping professionals from nursing, physical therapy, education, business, and other backgrounds land roles at leading medical technology companies, Samuel explains why applying online alone rarely works, how to build a network of advocates, and how to position your resume to stand out. He also explores how to choose the right medical sales specialty, translate your background into relevant sales skills, understand the earning potential of the industry, and prepare for interviews with confidence. From creating a compelling career portfolio to asking insightful questions and following up strategically, Samuel shares practical steps to make yourself a stronger candidate and stand out to hiring managers. Whether you’re a clinician, recent graduate, career changer, or aspiring sales professional, this episode provides a practical roadmap to breaking into medical sales and avoiding the mistakes that keep talented candidates stuck.

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Transcription:

The cool thing about medical sales is the pay, the average median pay is $104,000 a year and that’s on the low end, right? Most positions in our program, most of our students graduate with about 110 OTE and a lot of positions will pay you around 100 base pay and then commission is $30,000, $40,000 and up. So you can be looking at a salary of $150,000. So if you’re throwing darts at a wall for two years, you’re literally bypassing the opportunity to be making $150,000 a year for two years.

That’s $300,000 that you’re throwing away. Why would you do that if you have an opportunity to not do that? 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 interviewed 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. I’ve been in medical sales for over 20 years and performed as a top medical sales professional.

And plus I’ve helped people like nurses, physical therapists, business admin, teachers, and people with no sales experience get into companies like Stryker, Boston Scientific, VD, Medtronic, and beyond. Professionals like Naz Sales for two years, sending applications, not having any luck joined our program. And with our help, she got into BD as a medical sales professional living her dream career.

Or Emily Platts, a nurse who sent applications over 150 applications for over two years, had no luck, could not get herself into a role, joined our program and was a medical sales professional within 90 days at her dream company. And this is not random, it’s a system. For over 20 years, myself and my team have seen pretty much every mistake someone can make when trying to break into medical sales.

So I finally decided to put it all in one video. If you’re trying to break into medical sales, this might be the most useful thing you can watch all year. So number one, applying online can keep you stuck for years.

So why do I say a plan on keeping stuck? See everyone, a lot of people when they’re looking into medical sales, and really a lot of jobs, they’ll just go online, find some roles and just start applying left and right. They’ll go to hospital boards, hospital job boards, LinkedIn, Indeed, whatever have you, and just find a role and apply and hope for the best. It’s not so much that this will never work.

Sometimes it works for people, but it does not work for most people for the mere fact that you’re going through a system, often you don’t even know what’s on your resume well enough to see what this role is requiring. You’re going through a system where no one else is vouching for you, and you’re literally relying on software to place you into a pool of people that might get looked at by a recruiter, then evaluated by a recruiter to get passed on to a hiring manager. It just leaves so much chance, so much is out of your hands.

You’re literally like throwing a dart at a wall and hoping that it sticks without even being able to see the wall and without even knowing what the wall is made of to even know if the dart can stick. It’s very random, it’s very arbitrary, and it rarely works. And then on top of that, a lot of people don’t even really understand what they’re looking at.

They just see medical sales or see something that looks somewhat interesting. So they don’t even understand the role they’re going after. They’re throwing darts at the wall, they’re hoping something sticks.

Nine times out of ten, nothing’s going to stick. And if you’re that one out of ten, you’re sticking to something you really don’t know anything about. This is the challenge and then what most people go through when they’re just applying online and doing nothing else.

Emily Platts, I mentioned earlier, 150 applications. She was standing for over two years, literally with this strategy of throwing darts at the wall. The cool thing about medical sales is the pay, the average median pay, is $104,000 a year.

And that’s on the low end, right? Most positions in our program, most of our students graduate with about $110,000 OTE, and a lot of positions will pay you around $100,000 base pay, and then commission is $30,000, $40,000 and up. So you could be looking at a salary of $150,000. So if you’re throwing darts at a wall for two years, you’re literally bypassing the opportunity to be making $150,000 a year for two years.

That’s $300,000 that you’re throwing away. Why would you do that if you have an opportunity to not do that? Again, the real thing to take away from just applying online and just looking for job boards is you’re literally throwing darts at the wall and you’re leaving everything, everything about your medical sales pursuit to chance. So what you can do instead is develop a team of advocates to support you in that effort and actually understand what you’re getting yourself into.

Now, one of our students was stuck in exactly this track. Two years on her own, 150 applications and crickets. Once she had the right system, she was hired in 90 days.

If you want a guaranteed path into medical sales, we work with you until you’re hired. That’s our promise. So again, developing a team of advocates is a critical step.

But even if you don’t have a team of advocates, what they pull up is also critically important. So it matters what’s on your resume. The resume is such a critical piece because often your resume can be costing you the callback.

And I talk about this a little bit later in this video, but it’s really about what’s translated. But let’s just speak specifically to the resume. Your resume needs to be easy to process in a matter of seconds.

Hiring managers spend no more than it used to be seven seconds. Now it’s five seconds on a resume to identify if they want to continue looking at it. And there are certain things that a resume needs to have that help stand out so that they take the time.

And it doesn’t matter what your background is. Of course, it’s easier if you’re a sales professional because you have numbers galore. But if you’re a nurse, it applies to.

If you’re a physical therapist, it applies to. So let’s give an example of what a resume that can actually cost them what they should look like. There are three big things every resume should have.

Number one, one line. Just one line for what you’re responsible for. That’s it.

You should never have more than one bullet point or all the things you were responsible for. One line. The rest of those bullet points under wherever job you had should be three to five results.

What actually changed because you were the one that was there and that’s where you use numbers. And then number three, you got to bold your key wins. So what does this actually sound like? And I’ll use someone challenging like a clinician, a nurse, for example, a nurse built trust with neurosurgeons by leading patient handoffs on daily rounds.

Second bullet point, trained 14 new nurses on your protocols, cutting onboarding by three weeks. See, even though it’s a nurse and there’s not obvious sales experience there, there are numbers there that will make someone stop and say, let me just see what they’re talking about. Another bullet point chosen as a super user for a new monitoring system rolled out across three units.

Again, numbers, and then ranked top 10% in patient satisfaction for two years ranked. So again, the big thing to remember with these resumes is one line describing what you do. Neuro ICU nurse caring for post-urgical and stroke patients in a 32 bed unit.

Boom. That’s it. Then the three bullet points, three to five bullet points, like the ones I just mentioned, bold them and include numbers.

So now you understand how a little bit more about how to write a resume. But like I said before, you need a team of advocates because even with the right resume, you still need a team of advocates that can make sure that resume gets in front of someone who can actually hire you. So this brings us to number three.

So many people believe that medical sales is a closed network, right? You have to know someone and it’s all about connections. I don’t know anyone. And there’s some truth to this.

It’s not a closed network, but it definitely is a network. But the value and the opportunity in medical sales is you can create the network. One of our graduates, Elizabeth Wilde, she was 23 years old, former server at a restaurant, zero connections, no connection to medical sales whatsoever.

And she’s now living her dream as a field clinical rep at Boston Scientific. How does she make that happen? Because within our program, she learned how to build the actual connections. So instead of just sitting there and saying, I don’t have a connection, what can I do? She was able to create the connections herself.

Now there’s a way to create these connections. The problem with the way things are today is people just think you can find a rep and just spam them with messages. But there’s actually an effective way to truly build relationships, to get that team of advocates to get your stuff in front of someone who can hire you.

And this is an important skill to have because in medical sales, it’s about building relationships. So if you can build those relationships and do it powerfully in a way that makes people want to work for you before even getting the job, imagine what the hiring manager is going to think when they’re sitting in front of you. Wow, you did all this just to get here.

Imagine what you’re going to do if I give you the role. So three things you can do today that are going to allow you to build better connections. Number one, be specific about the role you want and what you bring to it.

That needs to be included in any message you send to any rep or hiring manager anytime. Follow up with something useful. Bring value when you follow up with your messages or your conversations or interactions with people that you meet.

And then number three, build rapport with at least two to three reps before talking to any hiring manager in any specialty you are going for. So number four, choosing the right specialty. So you know what I hear a lot when it comes to medical sales.

People say, look man, I just got to get in. I just got to get my foot in the door. And I’m going to say this is a fallacy because yes, if you’ve never been in medical sales and you want to be in medical sales, you do need to get your foot in the door.

But you’re not doing yourself any favors if you don’t match your background to support the specialty you want to get into. Number one, because how are you going to make it make sense for the hiring manager that’s thinking about hiring you? And number two, because you want to make sure you’re getting something you actually enjoy. And this is a real cost.

What people don’t talk about enough that kills me is there are so many new medical sales professionals that enter into their first medical sales job, have no business being in that role because it doesn’t align with who they are in any way, shape or form. And they quit in three to six months or worse, they get fired in three to six months because they’re missing quotas are totally burnt out. They hate their lives.

And they’re thinking, what the heck did I get myself into? And this is because they didn’t spend any time understanding the specialty they should get into. So what I always say is you need to at least take stock in some of the bigger specialties. Understand that you want to make sure what you’re doing now is something you align with what you want to be doing and understand the role you actually want to be doing.

I like to break it up into about six general areas. Now there’s many more than this. There are 37 plus specialties in medical sales, but some of the top line areas are pharmaceutical, which is selling drugs, medical device, which is selling devices up often inside a procedure or selling devices to a clinic or hospital, biotech, which is a mixture of something like biologics, sometimes a device, what’s a drug or sometimes a drug and it’s signed to clinics, sometimes hospitals, supplies and diagnostics, which is selling testing and literal supplies, often hospital supplies, health, tech and SAS.

So the software that medicine uses, the EMR systems and the like, and then dental and ophthalmology and offshoots like that really specialized areas that there’s all types of products that are sold in that area. Like dental, you have typical dental products and you have big surgical dental products and the same thing, ophthalmology, typical eye products and big surgical eye products. These are the general areas of medical sales.

The best thing you can do for yourself is at least ask yourself three questions to help align with which medical studies you should be gunning for. Number one, what type of lifestyle do you actually want? Do you want to be waking up at 3am and be on call? Do you want to have nothing to do with that? Do you want to be inside a hospital, inside the OR working with a surgeon? Do you want to be just strictly seeing clinics and having nothing to do with the blood and the devices and having the hands on? Think about what kind of lifestyle you want. Number two, what type of selling do you want to be doing? Do you want to be seeing the same person over and over again and developing really deep relationships, knowing them for 10, maybe 20 years, or do you want to be in and out of there selling what you sell, getting out of there, going to the next one, so getting out of there and closing deals and signing sheets? And then number three, consider how deep you want to get into the technical and scientific aspects of what you’re selling.

Do you want to be deep in the weeds of the clinical data and the disease state in profound thorough ways where you can literally hang with the most educated profession in the world, which is being a doctor, or do you want to be more top line and be able to speak powerfully to the technical aspects of the usage, but not get that deep of the disease state? Ask yourself those three questions that can at least start to steer in the right direction of what specialty you might belong to when it comes to breaking into medical sales. Number five, medical sales is where the money is, and I know I can make big money as a medical sales rep. Now, do I agree with that? Absolutely.

In fact, my first medical sales job, my base pay was 40 grand and my commission was no more than 60. I couldn’t even make over a hundred grand my first year, but by the time I got into biotech sales, I quadrupled my OTE. Now, how does that happen? That happens because medical sales gives you that kind of opportunity, but I have to add a caveat to that.

You have to understand what you’re getting into and you have to do due diligence. I love medical sales because it truly can create a life that you dream of. I know reps that make a million dollars a year.

I know reps that make $300,000 a year, and I know reps that make no more than $100,000 a year. Depending on what you get into, what you’re allowed to do, and how well you perform in that role absolutely matters. I think the misnomer that people have about medical sales is that it’s automatic.

To be that top earner, to be that person that’s making a million dollars a year, or heck, even to be that person speaking $400,000 a year, you got to perform in this space. Medical sales is awesome because of the opportunity, but it is on you to actually deliver on that opportunity, meaning you got to be the best of the best. You got to understand how to sell powerfully in this space.

You got to understand how to read the room. You got to understand how to take whatever you’re being trained and put it into action. It’s real because there are too many people that enter medical sales.

They don’t put their best foot forward. They hover in the middle. They don’t go after training or go learn from the best or go try to make better themselves in their space.

And then they wonder why they’re not making big bucks. And this is the misnomer. Medical sales is a beautiful world where you can make a lot of money and truly live the life you dream of, take care of your family, take care of yourself, really live your dreams.

But you’ve got to be someone that’s willing to put in the work to make that happen. Go after the training, get the understanding, and then deliver every single time. The principle I’d like to just put on that is medical sales is what you make of it.

So when you are thinking about getting into this space and you’re thinking about the specialty you want, besides understanding what the opportunity is in that specialty, go into it knowing that you’re going to be someone that puts into work, puts in the work to be the best. Number six, how do I get into medical sales? I’m not a salesperson. I probably hear this one at least three or four times a week.

So here’s the reality. Do medical sales hiring managers want salespeople? Yes. But that is not what stops people that aren’t salespeople.

What stops people that aren’t salespeople, they can’t sell themselves or prove that they have the propensity to sell. The only reason why medical sales hiring managers favor salespeople is because salespeople demonstrate a few things. Number one, they demonstrate that they’re going up to strangers and asking for things.

Number two, they demonstrate that they can be told no, straight face, get the door slammed in their face, and come back the next day and do it all over again. And that’s what you need to show if you don’t have the sales experience. That’s why so many clinicians, that’s why the example I gave earlier with the bartender, servers, waitresses, teachers, Naz Momtaz, who was a teacher, Elizabeth, who was a bartender.

I have so many examples. You can go to varvassess.com and look at our success stories. So many examples of people that had no sales expense whatsoever.

In fact, most of our students have no sales expense whatsoever, but they’re getting medical sales jobs left and right. Why? Because they have things in their career that support that they can handle selling. And that’s the key.

It’s not so much you have to be a salesperson. It helps. I’m not going to lie to you and say it doesn’t help.

Of course, it helps. But if you can demonstrate that you can sell, if you’re a clinician, whether you’re a nurse, physical therapist, occupational therapist, pre-science pathologist, whatever it is that you do, and you want to get into medical sales, you got to demonstrate that you can sell. And the beauty of understanding that is so many of these different jobs that are not traditional sales rules have amazing ways to showcase that you actually do know how to sell.

And the cool thing about medical sales is they don’t want that wheeling, dealing salesperson. They don’t want that. They want someone who knows how to listen powerfully.

They want someone who knows how to understand what someone else’s problem is. Remember, these are physicians and physician staff. These are some of the most educated people in the world.

So you need to be able to listen powerfully, understand the issue, and then offer a solution that deals with their specific problem. If you don’t know how to listen and calm down and understand someone, you probably won’t be able to do anything in medical sales, and you definitely won’t be able to sell. So not being a salesperson is not a problem.

Not being able to communicate how you sell is the issue. And the beauty of that is there’s absolutely a way to make that happen. Number seven.

Another one I often hear is, my background is not good enough. And that’s just a complete misconception. It’s a common belief that’s a complete misconception.

I will sit here and say it often does not matter what your background is. It matters what you need to connect your background to. It matters the specialty you entertain because of your background.

And it matters how powerful you communicate what your background can deliver that this specific role requires. And this is critically important because too many people that would make amazing medical sales professionals cut themselves off at the knees because they just assume their background can’t hack it, or they don’t take the time to understand how to communicate why their background is a good fit for a specific role. So I’ll say it plainly, your background matters and can work for something in medical sales.

Your goal is to find out which specific specialty your background is the best fit for. Decide if you like it. If you like it, fantastic.

Now let’s learn how to translate your background into what the specialty needs. And if you don’t like it, find the specialty you do like and find out where the gap is between your background and that specialty. Okay, number eight, interview prep.

This is the one I hear for interview prep. I have an interview, I’m just going to be myself and I’m going to wing it. I hear that way too often when it comes to medical sales.

Now, I think the challenge because I think the belief is people are thinking they’re going to hire me and I’m just going to be myself because number one, they don’t want to consider all the pressure that they feel going into this interview. Let’s be honest, it’s nerve wracking. You really want this job.

If you’ve been thinking about medical sales, this is your dream, the money, the opportunity, the benefits, the opportunity to impact patients and do something meaningful and purposeful. There’s a lot behind that. And let’s be honest, that creates pressure and that creates, and pressure creates nerves and nerves make someone want to just not rebel, but almost abstain from that feeling and conclude on just saying, you know what? I’m not even going to trip off any of that stuff.

I’m just going to be myself. I think that’s what happens a lot when it comes to preparing for the interview, or there’s this feeling of, I don’t know if I’m going to get this job and I don’t want to put all this time and energy to prepare for this interview. And I’ve already been on one or two that I didn’t get.

So this third one, I’m just going to show up and I’m just going to be myself because I am not going to do, I did last time, which I tried to prepare and it did nothing for me. So I’m just going to do this and I’m going to wing it. Here’s the cost of winging it.

When you wing it, number one, you immediately communicate to the interviewers that you’re not prepared, right? Which is just a killer when it comes to interviews. That’s number one. Number two, you almost give yourself an excuse not to do the due diligence.

So one thing that people don’t talk about enough is the questions you ask in the interview, not just questions that you’re asked, but the questions that you ask in the interview. If you haven’t done the due diligence to understand the company well enough to be insightful with your questions, that’s reflected immediately. And then number three, how to close that interview, right? If you’re winging it, you might forget how powerful and necessary a close actually is.

So there are some things you can do. First of all, there’s a principle that I just want to put out there for anyone that has or wants an interview in medical sales. You’ve got to prepare, period.

Your goal is to find out how to prepare. That’s what you need to figure out. How do you powerfully prepare for a medical sales interview? And one actual thing I can give you right now is there are three things you should always consider going into an interview.

You need to be able to answer that question. Why do you want to be in medical sales? And it has to make sense. Remember all the things we’ve discussed from your background to your specialty, to understanding what’s in that specialty and what’s required, to talking to those reps, to develop those advocates.

All these things matter to be able to communicate why you want medical sales and why whatever you were doing makes sense to now get into this. So you’ve got to be able to, and you’ve got to be able to know that answer like your name. You notice when I say, what’s your name? You’re not saying, okay, so no, no.

I say, what’s your name, Matt? What’s your name, Jackie? What’s your name, Susan? That’s how you need to answer. Why do you want to be in medical sales? Boom, you just deliver it. Number two, you got to ask insightful questions, right? I think a killer that I’m just going to give you guys right here right now is asking what the day-to-day is.

Unless it’s a new role that was never invented before, and it’s brand new when you’re asking you to do it, that should never be a question because that should be something you know long before you get into the interview and understand it well and ask a true insightful question, right? And ask questions that are easy to answer. What happened to the last person that was doing this job? That’s not necessarily easy to answer because if they were fired, what hiring manager is going to be very comfortable just filling that out? Some will, but a lot won’t. But what if you say something like, what created this opportunity for this position? That can be served up very easily.

Anyone can answer that however they see fit and give you some clues into why the position’s open so you can take the interview wherever you want to take it. So asking insightful questions is critical when you’re in the interview, and then the last thing I’ll give you is you got to close it strong. Show that energy.

Close it powerfully. You do not end the interview with, thanks for having me, and okay, so am I going to hear from you guys? That is not how you close an interview. You want to show that passion.

I love being here today. This is fantastic. I was already sold on this company, but now it’s a completely different level, and I’m so grateful you gave me the opportunity to share what I can offer.

What else can I bring to the table that I haven’t mentioned that would allow you to advocate for me? Show that passion. Let it shine through when you close the interview. 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 Striker, Metronic, Merck, Abbott, you name it.

Would you run an Ironman race without training in 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 evolveyourassess.com, 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. These are things that are absolutely necessary when it comes to preparing for an interview.

Now, this is a real specific one I hear, and it’s our next one on the chart here, and it’s, I need a Bragg book. Now, some of you have heard of that, some of you have no idea what I’m talking about. A Bragg book is what we call a career portfolio, and you’re absolutely right.

You absolutely need one. And more than that, let me not even get stuck on the Bragg book slash group before, let me get into the bigger picture here. A resume is not enough in an interview.

You need to bring, for lack of a better word, backup, whatever you’re claiming you can do. And the more documented backup you can bring, the better you’re going to look. Sometimes that can be in the form of a really impressive document that’s showcased.

This is something we create for our students. It showcases just how amazing you are for that specific position based on what you bring from your background. That can really set the stage and create this, basically make you look like a complete standout compared to everyone else that’s going for the same position.

The cost of not considering including things like this in your interview process is, you’re not memorable enough. One of the things that this whole Bragg book conversation, or any tool that you bring besides your resume to the interview, it’s you want to be memorable. You want to stand out so much so that when they’re done interviewing all the people in the interview, they’re saying, wow, that’s Susan.

She was something. They just can’t get out of their mind because of all the things that you brought and the powerful way you were able to communicate in that interview. So the principle here is you want to be memorable, understand the things that get, that go into an interview that help make you that much more memorable.

And yes, a Bragg book, what we call a career portfolio is a fantastic way to do that. And number 10, interview follow-up. It’s still amazing to me that in this day and age, there are people that say, yeah, I interviewed, how’d it go? Oh man, it went, it went.

It was awesome. Well, that’s fantastic. What did you next? Nothing, nothing.

I think it went great. I can’t wait till they call me back. The reason why this is an issue is because remember what we’re doing here.

We’re talking medical sales. A big part of sales is following up. And the cool thing about medical sales and the interview process is you have this opportunity, whether you’re a sales professional or not, whether you’ve ever done sales or you haven’t, it doesn’t matter.

You have the opportunity that you have sales acumen by the way you address the interview process. So when you have an interview, one of the most critical things you need to do is follow up for a couple of reasons. Number one, you want to follow up because that’s what you do in sales in general, right? If you really want the business, AKA want the job, you got to follow up and follow up until you get it or until they tell you no thanks.

Just like in sales, if you want the business, you follow up until you get it or until they tell you no thanks. Number two, remember what we said earlier about being memorable. You got to be memorable.

So imagine if you interviewed against four other people and everybody was equally fantastic, but you were the one that wrote this memorable follow-up thank you email that just really resonated with everything happening in your interview and captured their hearts and made them say, wow, this person there’s something else. Oftentimes that’s the difference. So it matters the follow up.

So one thing you could act on when you, if any of you are listening to this and you have many of you coming up or you just had an interview, I highly urge you make sure you follow up.