Being a medical sales recruiter sometimes requires the ability to sell the dream. if you stick around long enough you will get to see your candidate's dream come to fruition. Most of those dreams start at an entry-level position. Entry-level is exactly how it sounds, a foot in the door with the opportunity to see the whole building.
Entry-level medical sales opportunities are not equal nor are they frequent. Some will have a quick path to promotion, others you will have to remain patient. The problem with these opportunities is, it will often require a step back in compensation. Medical companies like outside sales experience and they're not looking for the average sales representative. With that, you will usually be looking at a pay cut between 10-30%. No one wants to go backward, but sometimes having some foresight pays off big time. For sales, you could be looking at max earnings of 90K and that will be your compensation for 2 to 3 years. However, once you're in the full-time sales role you will be looking at compensation plans of 250K and above.
Let's compare taking a step back (to be later promoted) to a reasonable step up in compensation.
Step Up Scenario: Making 150K for 6 years = 900K
Step Down Scenario: 90K for 3 years = 270K (Following Promotion) 250K for 3 years = 750K (Total = 1,020,000)
So if you choose the step-up position after 6 years you will have made a total of 900K. If you took the step back to move forward scenario, you would make just over 1 million dollars. So not only would you have made 120K more in this scenario, but now you are in a position to totally dominate in terms of earnings over the step-up scenario.
Of course, there are many other factors that should be taken into consideration such as family, culture, passions. If all of those line up for the step back scenario, I would most certainly advise choosing the step back over the move forward scenario.
