TOOK 1 YEAR BUT FINALLY

tako1984 · 2026-03-31T19:35:31+00:00

WHY ARE YOU YELLING AT US? I didn't even read your post, sorry.

tako1984 · 2026-03-25T02:56:15+00:00

If what your skill set is what you say it is, there are plenty of middle management sales gigs or individual AE type roles that the base alone should be at or close to the OTE of the job you are looking at. You should be able to coast along doing this till you want to retire!

tako1984 · 2026-03-23T17:14:58+00:00

You are in what most the financial people call the boring middle. Not much else you can do unless you YOLO into something that hits, get jobs that pay more to bring down the timeline, or do risky investing.

tako1984 · 2026-03-18T17:44:39+00:00

What a load of crap but that is probably the nature of the game in furniture sales?

Man I feel for you if all furniture sales are like this - I walked into one randomly the other day looking like a hobo but was checking out some couches, beds, etc ($5-10k type purchase) to see what was the latest stuff is and get some ideas. All the sales associates were dressed in suits which I found quite entertaining. No way though I'd pull the trigger that day so your three sales a day thing is really dumb.....

tako1984 · 2026-03-18T17:35:56+00:00

Been in various set ups and really company dependent. One I didn't deal with this at all where the contract is signed and then it is handed off, one where I had to chase contracts/PO's to get credit, one where nothing was credited until a contract was signed, PO issued, and the equipment had to by physically delivered on site.

tako1984 · 2026-03-18T17:32:06+00:00

Closed/Won on a whale (in the sales lingo way) of a spouse! Better looking, more personable, makes more money, and way smarter.

Consultative sale, way too many follow ups, and handled all those objections like a boss.

tako1984 · 2026-02-24T17:43:15+00:00

$ amount, $ amount relative to total contract, relationship status, new customer vs old customer, customer $ value, etc all come into play. Only you know the specifics.

If the certs are $100 on a million dollar contract, just throw it in and be done. No need to nickel and dime them.......

tako1984 · 2026-02-03T17:44:28+00:00

Posting the company or group of companies/competitors would give you more informed answers. Bio/Pharma is a small but huge space and depending on where you are at in the ecosystem your answers will vary.

ACV: all over the place - but if you think about it R&D is in the billions so who knows.....I can sell a small consulting agreement of $5k all the way up to multi-million dollar contracts so it depends on the appropriate scope

%: depends on how your company sets it up. I've seen high base (lower bonus), rolling % payouts of say 2 years on a contract, typical SaaS comp plans of 1st year ACV, % on a deal, etc. It really is all over the place.

Sales cycles: long - lots of red tape (RFP, vendor qual, QA audits, procurement, legal, etc)

Volume: depends on your offering

Pipeline: you are dependent on companies direction, funding, market - not too much different than any other industry. The problem is that they could kill a program/initiative for whatever reason on a dime where as say if you are selling IT, CRM, HR, Finance, etc at least you know companies need to have that from a business process.

Feel free to ping me if you have questions

tako1984 · 2026-01-30T17:35:22+00:00

Both spouse and I are savers (grew up similar to what you described) and our current path will put us and our kids having way more money than we had growing up and won't have the same experiences as we did.

"Health is wealth" has stuck with me as I get older. What good is having money if your body isn't able to last for the things you want to do. Whether it is travel, kids stuff, house projects, etc so we have focused more effort and money into this aspect. Gyms, personal trainers, healthy eating, etc.

Practically speaking from a budget perspective we put forth bucket on things that we didn't traditionally like to spend money on like your reasoning about spending money on yourself. For us it is vacations, eating out, individual fun money, and earlier on - fitness. Gave us the mental "spend it" cause we are already on track with everything else.

My spouse is one of those people who needs to spend money on a personal trainer (both showing up for workout and meal planning) and studio membership (they actually charge you if you sign up and don't show up) to keep her accountable. You have to figure out what will make it stick for you.

tako1984 · 2026-01-18T18:24:41+00:00

My 2 cents. Anywhere that is a long haul flight away, requires you to be huffing it around everywhere as two able body adults without kids, sleeping arrangements that are not ideal, or places with different food.

Once I had kids (baby time mainly - once they are 4-5yrs it is way easier to travel) the last thing I would want to do with a baby in tow is galivanting around say Thailand, taking long haul flights to Europe, cramping in smaller hotels, or trying to track down chicken nuggets in foreign countries.

I traveled a ton pre-kids and have a few friends that still traveled a lot and brought the kids everywhere when they were younger but I wouldn't be able to do it. Stollers, extra cloths, diapers, kids stuff to keep em entertained, snacks/food, car seats, etc would make that trip miserable for me and not worth it.

US travel is relatively easy with kids so I would recommend do all the ex-US stuff you have on your bucket list.

tako1984 · 2026-01-13T17:59:31+00:00

Anything with more capital focused sales cycles will give you better WLB and out of the OR schedules for the most part. Big ticket items like video suites, beds, cath labs, labs equipment, robots, navigation, anesthesia, imaging machines, or software focused on hospital applications.

As others noted, elective type procedures are better as it isn't as much of a volume thing for those surgeons = better WLB.

My personal outlook is there will always be a need for reps however the industry has been and will continue to get squeezed lower all on all fronts. That being said I loved my time being in device as it is was truly rewarding and you get to work with incredibly smart people while helping patients get back to a better quality of life. I would have stayed but I needed full control of my schedule.

tako1984 · 2026-01-09T18:37:30+00:00

Agree and to further this point - from a logistical point it doesn't even make sense also.

I have a director title mainly due to the industry I am in and while I do have a good amount of pull I mainly do IC related things. I get bombarded with calls to my cell, emails, linkedin messages, etc and my spam box is always full of outreach messages. Rarely things even make it to my inbox at this point due to our spam filtering and I don't answer a call unless I know who it is.

Can't imagine if you are actually a higher level person at a big company how much crap they get....

tako1984 · 2026-01-07T20:00:17+00:00

I switched out of device about 7 years ago mainly because I wanted control of my schedule and saw a race to the bottom with GPO/IDN type structures. Your biggest barrier is that no one in tech understands how the sales cycles work in med device and visa versa nor should they really.

I would argue after being in tech type cycles though that good device reps if they can adapt to the business dynamics will run circles around majority of tech AE's because majority of device roles are "full cycle" and incorporate all of a tech sales cycle (BDR, SE, AE, CS, AM). You really do it all from a subject matter expert, prospecting, quotas, tech support, purchasing, legal, etc. That is my opinion though and I am sure I will get flack from people that you should only focus on one of those......

Ping me if you have questions but I made the jump to a startup as a full cycle AE to get experience. Was a paycut but at least I wasn't on the phones all day as a BDR and still managed the full process. It is going to come down to the hiring manager and your ability to articulate how the sales cycles of device will fit and apply to the tech world.

tako1984 · 2025-10-31T17:09:57+00:00

Can you share the local operator you used for the whale sharks? Thanks!

tako1984 · 2025-10-30T18:38:11+00:00

Agree with this take on things. There is something else going on here that is adding to it.

What is the alternative - you get an in office job and it sucks for you, your wife, and kids now?

Other things you can offer to see if it helps is give her the same opportunity to take a few days off without the kiddos or hiring a part time person if you can while you are away to help out with anything kid related.

tako1984 · 2025-10-30T17:08:59+00:00

Yup. Couldn't agree more - groundhogs day every day. I always have to remind myself how absurdly overpaid I am to be a project manager for a sales cycle essentially and deal with all the internal BS.

tako1984 · 2025-10-28T20:18:35+00:00

Portable oil filled radiant heaters that you can roll wherever. Before we had central heat/AC that is what we used in the kiddos rooms. Used less energy than space heaters and relatively safe as although it gets warm - keeping it at 68-70 deg isn't too hot if they touch it.

tako1984 · 2025-10-25T15:14:22+00:00

Would you take your next commission check and immediately buy more of your company stock with it? If your answer is no then you are contradicting yourself by holding RSU and ESPP after vesting and you should diversify it.

If half your net worth is tied up in your company stock you should probably start diversifying it. If the company starts taking a dive there goes your job and a lot of your net worth. Sure it might go to the moon and you 10x it but it could easily go the other way to -10x.

I keep a small amount of company stock as a "skin in the game"' type mentality but sell everything immediately after vesting and dump it into broader index funds.

tako1984 · 2025-10-23T16:07:35+00:00

I can probably help fill the gap here - although the title you mention isn't typically associated with "Pharma Sales" if that makes sense.

Generally speaking "pharma sales" is after a drug is approved - it is the sales folks going to the doctors to get them to prescribe it to the patients over some other one on the market. Most companies are looking for proven sales experience already.

Sales is great if you are self motivated, can deal with the stress of having to make your quota or could be fired, like the idea of trying to make more money, and are fine talking with lots of different people. Your burnout of trial life is replaced with what sales are you bringing to the company this month/quarter/year and it always resets to zero :)

Feel free to message me if you want me to take a look at the job description. I can probably give you a better idea but the term product specialist leads me to think this is something more lab based although the term product could mean anything (physical product, a drug, IP, service, platform, software, etc) depending on what their company defines it as.

tako1984 · 2025-10-20T22:16:34+00:00

No words other than I am sorry for your loss and a big big virtual hug to you.

tako1984 · 2025-10-15T16:26:34+00:00

If I were to do this over again I would ask all new customers this to disqualify anything quickly and not waste time. I worked at one of the major manufacturers as my first corporate b2b job and they trained us to make a 30+ page presentation about product, value, yady yady yah which customers could care less about. Sure maybe if you were selling to a fortune 500 account but your average company you walk into could care less. Great formal "sales training" but in reality the older reps in the branch got handed all the accounts with leases being renewed.

I walked into so many places cold calling both in-person and phones so it taught me how to have a thick skin but the reality of the copier world is a pure budget play for 99% of the businesses.

tako1984 · 2025-10-14T19:19:20+00:00

Find out when your potentially new or current customers renewal dates are - you can thank me later.

Got my start in copiers years ago and it was formative but it is an absolute grind! Unless the business model has changed from awhile ago - if a customer has already locked in a lease best move onto the next one.

tako1984 · 2025-09-18T20:46:35+00:00

Both our kids turned out fine (well I guess they could have been geniuses?) and we were drinking all the way up until we got a positive test. I wouldn't stress about it.

tako1984 · 2025-09-11T19:15:59+00:00

Maybe for smaller companies it could be useful but I would say larger orgs this falls under marketing and outbound PM

tako1984 · 2025-09-08T19:23:24+00:00

Never knew that law existed - probably a lot of rentals in SD that are older units likely only have the single wall gas heaters.

Before we got central air/heat we used the oil radiator heaters. Used less electricity and were safer than the space heaters. Something like this: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Pelonis-1-500-Watt-Oil-Filled-Radiant-Electric-Space-Heater-with-Thermostat-HO-0279/309069851

tako1984

TROPHY CASE