Don't Take Me Alive

Finally, one of our bloggers has opined about a concern that many industry professionals in spine, let alone the orthopaedic market, have been concerned about for many years.   Why do sales reps dress in operating room scrubs when they go to work?   TSB must concur with this blogger.  Never in the history of my career have I left the house in scrubs, nor, have I made a sales call in scrubs.  I mean common, WTF?  That's why they put those clean scrubs in the doctor's dressing room, dude and dudettes.  Besides, the girls don't look sexy with their pumps in scrubs.  On numerous occasions TSB has written about the untimely death of the art of selling.  Much to the readers' dismay, we have been accused of being outdated, or out of touch.  What has happened to our sense of professionalism?  TSB's granddaddy always said; "people judge you as they see you."  Unfortunately, this isn't just an indictment of the sales rep, this is an outright indictment on the lax attitude that those that run these companies promulgate.  Laissez-faire equals lazy sales people.  Cover your case, and go home.  Money, Money, Money.  Then we wonder why companies are cutting back on commissions and investors have total disdain for salespeople, and would like to cut us completely out of the picture.  But who created this culture?  The Stryker's, the Danek's, the Synthe's, the DePuy's.  TSB sees many of these make belief/wannabe surgeons standing in line at Starbucks every morning or running around the hospital.  To top it off, some of these people  do not even change when they get to their next account.  How aspectic is that technique?  Do some of you know what that word even means in the English lexicon?

The reason selling has died is because with the advent of consulting fees and under-the-table deals we no longer sell product, we buy business.   Let the first company that doesn't do this throw the first stone.  But remember what Donald Fagen once sang:

Can you hear the evil crowd, the lies and the laughter, I hear my inside, the mechanized hum of another world, where no sun is shining,  no red lights flashing, here in this darkness, I know what I've done, I know at once who I am.....  I'm a bookkeeper's son, I don't what to shoot no one,  don't take me alive.