POSTED ON November 12, 2025

How to Master Communication in Medical Sales

In this episode of the Medical Sales Podcast, Samuel sits down with Dan Docherty, partner at BrainTrust and co-author of NeuroSelling 2.0, to explore what it truly takes to become a world-class communicator in medical sales. Drawing from his decades of experience in pharma and neuroscience-based training, Dan reveals the five key skills every rep must master—developing a communication process, asking powerful questions, listening actively, storytelling with emotion, and building emotional intelligence. This episode is a masterclass in how top performers connect deeply, earn trust fast, and influence through empathy, strategy, and purpose.

Connect with Dan Docherty: LinkedIn

Connect with Me: LinkedIn

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How »

Watch the episode here:

Or Listen to it on your favorite platform:

Spotify Apple Podcasts

Episode Transcript:

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 percent 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.

Omar M. Khateeb (Guest):

What does it mean to be wealthy?

For some people, being wealthy means having a million dollars in the bank.

But to somebody like Bill Gates, he would probably feel completely different if he only had a million dollars in the bank.

So it’s all subjective.

Everything in life is a lot more subjective and perception-based than we realize.

When it comes to good content, you are kind of one of the judges of that.

And again, there’s a certain balance you need to have between what you think is really good content versus what people are actually interested in.

But it also depends on your goals.

There are certain people who have such mundane content, but if they just show up consistently over and over again, that level of consistency itself becomes interesting.

Samuel Adeyinka (Host):

That’s when you know what I’m making clearly.

That’s part of it.

Omar M. Khateeb (Guest):

Exactly.

There are solopreneur and creator brands that only have a few thousand followers, but they’re making six figures a year through that.

There are people I personally know who have a million followers and can’t monetize their audience.

So it really depends.

Social media is a vehicle.

I think you are a chump if you’re only using social media to get followers and likes.

You have to use social media to make money, drive a business, or make something happen.

A lot of this is also determined when you interact in the physical world.

Keep in mind, I’m saying physical world, not real world.

Social media is the real world.

The physical world is also a real world.

There are certain clients we’ve worked with where they get some engagement and everything.

We had a client that had no LinkedIn page.

We started their LinkedIn page a few weeks ago, and they have around 300 followers at this point.

But their CEO has already had two reporters reach out.

Samuel Adeyinka (Host):

So it’s producing for them.

Omar M. Khateeb (Guest):

Exactly.

It just depends.

I’ll give you another example.

I put a lot of work into my podcast. I put a lot of money into it.

There were a lot of moments where I thought, man, I’m on the right track.

One of those moments I’ll never forget was at LSI this past year.

Gary Guthart, then CEO of Intuitive Surgical, or Intuitive, since they dropped the “Surgical” many years ago, is now chairman.

This guy was the head of the most powerful company in our industry by market cap.

I went to shake his hand and said, “I’m Omar.”

And before I could finish, he said, “Oh no, I know who you are.”

I thought he was just being nice.

Then I talked to Scott Pantel, and Scott told me, “Yeah, I told Gary about you and asked, ‘Do you know Omar Khateeb?’”

And Gary’s response was, “How can you not know who Omar is?”

I was like, all right, I’m doing something right.

To me, it’s important that someone like him, or some of these old-school, extremely tenured med tech leaders, respect a lot of my work.

And not to compare, but there are plenty of people in our industry who are getting a lot of engagement from our peers, a lot of likes and everything.

But behind closed doors, the most powerful people in our industry will complain to me about them and say, “This person doesn’t know what they’re talking about. This person puts these posts out, and it’s really dumb. There’s no depth. There’s nothing of value there.”

And again, you have to pick and choose.

I’ve put out things that those same people would criticize.

I’ll never forget one of the guys in our industry sent me a message about a post I made, and he wasn’t crazy about it.

But I said, “Hey man, that’s part of the game. That post was not meant for people like you. So you may not like it, but the people I wanted it for loved it.”

Samuel Adeyinka (Host):

So it sounds like for people listening right now who are thinking about how they’re going to promote themselves and their businesses on LinkedIn, you have to be crystal clear on what your end goal is.

Is your end goal to bring in a customer?

Is your end goal to get in front of certain people within your space?

Is your end goal to just be known by certain companies?

You have to be crystal clear about the end goal, and that pretty much determines what’s going on with your content.

It sounds like that’s what you’re saying.

Omar M. Khateeb (Guest):

Not necessarily.

When you have an end goal, I always feel like goals are directionally good, but they’re not what you want to work on.

Systems are better.

For example, if your goal is to bring in a certain amount of revenue, you need to elevate above that and say, “Okay, what are the things I have to do to get there? Who do I have to become?”

If you focus more on those things and the systems to get you there, you will either hit that goal or exceed it.

The other side of it is that if you focus on social media having one very specific thing, like generating revenue, then we get into the whole topic of content management, paid ad strategy, and so on.

But the main goal of social media is getting attention and engaging with people.

So it’s like, what kind of content can I put out that people who follow me would enjoy?

What kind of things can I do to engage other people?

What kind of comments can I leave?

And how do I use this to make me better?

I’ll give a shout-out to one of our customers.

Robert Hamilton, CEO and founder of NeuralSignal, started putting out content.

We ghostwrite for him, but a lot of it is actually him putting out content that hasn’t really been seen before.

He talked about their accounts receivable as a startup.

They’re not a public company. They don’t have to talk about that.

But he put out a chart of their accounts receivable and said, “I really want to be more transparent about what it takes to run a med tech company.”

That’s going to get attention.

It generates a lot of value.

The other thing is that sometimes you want to consistently put out who you are and what your values are on social media, because then when people meet you, they feel like they know you already.

If we go way back, one of the reasons I started really using LinkedIn around 2013 or 2014 was because I had this unwavering conviction and belief about my capabilities as a marketing manager.

Back in the day, recruiters would just look at your resume and count how many years of experience you had.

For every one good recruiter, there are probably 99 that aren’t worth it.

They essentially do the kind of job a chimp could do, which is, “Let me get this resume and count up the number of years of experience this person has.”

For me, I was tired of playing a game I wasn’t going to win.

So I decided to go directly to the market.

I started writing very long, deep articles about marketing, psychology, and everything else.

I was going to demonstrate that I was the right guy.

Those articles, over a period of five or six months, paved the way for a company to literally create a job out of nothing for me and move me out to the Bay Area.

A lot of it is about putting yourself out there in a way that before somebody meets you, they already know about you.

What’s the purpose of marketing?

Marketing a product means that by the time somebody meets you or is about to buy the product, they feel like they already understand it.

Apple releases a new iPhone and starts marketing what’s different about it.

Why?

Because they don’t want you spending all your time on their website or in person trying to figure that out.

They want you to know ahead of time.

You shorten the decision cycle.

Samuel Adeyinka (Host):

So shorten the decision cycle.

You said earlier, going back to consistency, that there are certain players you see all the time.

You almost expect to see their content.

Talk to us about what it looks like to change people’s minds.

I think what’s really fascinating, especially this year, is I’ve seen people subscribe to a belief system.

Then, because of the consistency of a content creator, they literally start to change what they believe.

If that content creator gets more popular, they have a deeper subscription to this new idea that the content creator is proposing.

The person consuming the content is now singing a completely different song than what they were singing last year.

Talk to us about that dynamic.

Omar M. Khateeb (Guest):

You started by asking what it looks like to change somebody’s mind.

The mistake people make is wasting time trying to change someone’s mind.

You cannot change somebody’s mind.

Only a person can change their own mind.

If you go back to one of the most sophisticated marketing books ever written, Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz, one of the concepts he had is that when it comes to desire, you don’t create desire out of nothing.

You have to channel it.

If you put out ads and copy, that ad and copy has to unearth an already existing desire.

If you think about early adoption, early adoption is essentially finding somebody and saying, “Close your eyes and let me talk to you about the future.”

They can see that future with their eyes closed.

You don’t have to show them anything more.

But then there are later adopters who will change their mind because, in order for that person to change, they need to know there is tribal acceptance or mass social proof around a concept.

There are some concepts that a few years ago, politically, people were very much in support of.

But little by little, people have started singing a completely different song.

There are things people used to put up with in this country a few years ago that they are not putting up with anymore today.

That is more than just social proof.

There is authority bias.

There are all kinds of biases.

There is a formula that subconsciously exists in everybody’s head, yours and mine, about what it would take to change their mind.

I’m an Apple iPhone user.

I’m always going to use iPhone.

I love Apple products.

Even though I’m not crazy about Siri and some of those things, there are a certain number of things that would have to happen for me to depart from my iPhone.

And I’m making this up, by the way.

I genuinely like using the iPhone because I’m used to it, it’s convenient, and I’m kind of a mainstream late adopter.

But there is a stigma among entrepreneurs and CEOs around someone using an Android phone.

There’s immediately a hierarchy there.

I was talking to somebody the other day, and we brought this up.

He said, “Anytime I see someone bring a new friend, and I don’t know anything about that person, and they open their phone and it’s an Android, I just think, man, where did they find this guy?”

But that’s how people work.

Whether you’re a service group or you have a technology, going for a very small group of people who would be your tech enthusiasts or early adopters is smart because they can see the future with their eyes closed.

They don’t need all the other things that the rest of the market needs.

They don’t care about social proof or anything else.

And the other side is, if you can’t do a good job satisfying and meeting the expectations of a small group of people, what makes you think you can do it at scale?

It doesn’t get harder.

It just becomes more of the same, but at scale.

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 a medical sales position?

You need training. You need a strategy.

And you need to visit EvolveYourSuccess.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.

Samuel Adeyinka (Host):

I hear you.

So do you consider yourself a content creator, Omar?

Omar M. Khateeb (Guest):

Yeah, I make content.

So I consider myself a creator.

Every day, I wake up and think, “What can I create today that will get somebody’s attention, delight somebody, or educate somebody?”

So yeah, I consider myself a creator.

I think we’re all creators to a certain extent.

Some of us just do it a lot more than others.

Samuel Adeyinka (Host):

Would you say that in today’s day and age there are more content creators than ever?

Or maybe you don’t know.

From your perspective, what is the biggest challenge when it comes to content creation?

From what you’ve seen and experienced, what has been the consistent challenge?

Omar M. Khateeb (Guest):

Just getting started.

Let me go deep on this for a second.

I think you and I are about the same age, but I’m a millennial. I’m an older millennial.

When it comes to content creation, the millennial approach is, “I’m going to create an Instagram handle. I’m going to start putting out some content. I need to get a phone stand. I need to get some lighting. Let me make a content calendar.”

The Gen Z approach is, “I’m just going to pick up my phone and make a video every day. I’m going to explain this concept while putting makeup on.”

Gen Z is so good at just doing it.

I try to adopt that approach.

I have plenty of criticism of Gen Z, but there are a lot of things I learn from them.

They take action.

I think that’s the biggest barrier.

People get in their heads about content.

Using the analogy of working out, if your thing is, “I need to start getting in shape,” and you go to the gym and compare yourself to the guy or girl who is a bodybuilder, lifting a bunch of weight and completely jacked, you won’t want to go to the gym.

You would feel bad.

Don’t compare yourself to those people.

That’s a great life lesson.

Do not compare yourself to other people.

I do that to myself sometimes because we’re human.

But you should not waste time comparing yourself.

The only comparison should be, am I better or worse than I was yesterday, a week ago, a month ago, and so on?

That’s it.

People just get in their head about it.

As a business owner, you have to understand that these are table stakes now.

Content used to be this unique thing.

PayPal, which does billions in revenue, posted a job called Head of CEO Content.

It’s someone who will be the head of creating content for the CEO.

OpenAI posted a job with a $300,000 salary for a head of content or content strategist.

These are table stakes.

This is the entry point to the game.

If you’re going to be in business, you might as well be in business to be the best and make money.

Obviously, the bigger focus is delivering unwavering value and impact, and money is the byproduct of that.

But when I started a business, I didn’t do it to have a worse life.

I did it to be the best at it.

So this is just part of it.

As you grow as a business, it doesn’t get easier.

It becomes more.

But as it becomes more, you also have more budget to play with.

I’m not publishing my podcast anymore.

Samuel Adeyinka (Host):

You have more work to do with what you want to do.

Omar M. Khateeb (Guest):

Absolutely.

I have a production team now.

I don’t have to do that stuff myself anymore.

Samuel Adeyinka (Host):

Fascinating.

Omar, this has been fantastic.

For our audience listening, we have people trying to get into med sales, people in med sales, people leading med sales, and CEOs listening too.

What would you want to tell them, wrapping up this conversation about content creation?

Omar M. Khateeb (Guest):

Just get started with it.

Stop overcomplicating this stuff.

You can literally start by taking a picture of a book and posting some things you learned from it.

Part of content creation is getting back to keeping a journal, writing, and thinking.

That’s how I see this.

It’s not just social media for social media’s sake.

There is value in it.

If you want a great example of inspiration, go on X.

It’s hard to grow on X, but there are people who put out really in-depth essays and pieces of content on different topics, and it inspires me to be better and to go deeper on these topics.

I like it.

Samuel Adeyinka (Host):

Before we wrap it up, there’s one more thing I don’t think is talked about enough.

It’s what you said about inspiration.

I think it’s hard to be a content creator and only produce content.

At some point, there needs to be a balance.

What are you being inspired by?

What is feeding you so you can continue to feed others?

Talk to us about what you do to create that.

Omar M. Khateeb (Guest):

How I create inspiration?

That’s actually a great question.

As you can see, I’m a big reader, so I draw a lot of inspiration from books.

But I also try to draw inspiration from other people.

For example, Naval is a famous investor and brilliant guy.

His thinking is so simple and clear.

He cuts through the noise.

He’s a great follow on X.

When I see that, it inspires me to get better.

It inspires me to read more, think deeper on topics, and be very clear about things.

Part of inspiration is that you have to be motivated as a person to say, “I know there is a lot in me. I know I can be better. What do I have to do to work on myself and improve?”

How do I progress and grow?

You have an organization that develops and works with a lot of medical sales professionals.

I think some of the most frustrated people in the employment world are people who not only have no pathway to growth, but also don’t develop opportunities for themselves to grow.

Then it becomes the same old thing over and over again.

Those people get frustrated that they’re not progressing in life when they haven’t taken the steps themselves to ask, “How can I be better?”

It could be as simple as saying, “I have a certain reaction or habit that I developed through childhood. How would somebody I admire handle this situation?”

Sometimes mimicry is the best way to learn.

Think about, “If I were this person, how would I handle this?”

I’ll give you a radical example.

I’m not building humanoid robots or rocket ships.

I’m running a growth and marketing agency.

We’re doing some stuff with AI, but that’s it.

It’s nothing crazy.

But I’m inspired by Elon Musk’s ability to take radical, insane action and be unwilling to cave.

Can I take one second to share one of the stories I love about it?

Samuel Adeyinka (Host):

Yeah, share it.

Omar M. Khateeb (Guest):

There are two of them.

One you can look up is Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA, talking about building some kind of supercomputer.

But the other story is about Elon.

He got these supposed experts together, physicists and mathematicians, to figure something out.

They came back to him and said, “The math doesn’t work. It’s going to take maybe 10 years to do this.”

Elon’s response, and I’m watering this down, was essentially, “No. It’s not going to take 10 years. We’re going to do this in six months.”

He fired anybody who didn’t believe in that and brought in people who were motivated, worked hard toward the goal, and believed in it.

And they accomplished it in a very short amount of time.

There’s a post Elon put out that I really like.

It says, “Stop being patient and start asking yourself how can I accomplish my 10-year plan in six months? You will probably fail, but you will be far ahead of the person who simply accepted it would take 10 years.”

I think there are so many things that we just accept as conventional wisdom.

That’s probably one of the best pieces of advice I can give people.

Don’t take convention to heart.

Take extreme, unwavering action and develop deep conviction about something.

I draw inspiration from people like that.

Again, the guy is running five or six billion-dollar companies, doing all kinds of things, even trying to fix the government.

That’s what I do.

For people listening, look at your own interests and see what podcasts exist, what people exist, and follow those people.

Emulate them.

Samuel Adeyinka (Host):

I love it.

Omar, thank you for this time today.

It was awesome spending this time with you.

Good to see you again.

We have to do it again, and we can’t wait to see all the amazing things you and your company are about to do.

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 by visiting our site.

Fill out an application, schedule some time with one of our account executives, and allow us to get you where you need to be.

Stay tuned for more awesome content with amazing interviews on the Medical Sales Podcast.