Medical representative: job description

Excellent sales skills are a key requirement for medical representatives.

What does a medical sales representative do? Typical salaries | Typical employers | Qualifications and training | Key skills

A medical sales representative's job is to promote and sell their company's products, whether that's pharmaceutical drugs or medical equipment. Customers can include doctors, nurses and pharmacists. The medical representative will increase product awareness, answer queries, provide advice and introduce new products.

Key responsibilities include:

• organising appointments and meetings with community- and hospital-based healthcare staff
• identifying and establishing new business
• negotiating contracts
• demonstrating or presenting products to healthcare staff including doctors, nurses and pharmacists
• undertaking relevant research
• meeting both the business and scientific needs of healthcare professionals
• maintaining detailed records
• attending and organising trade exhibitions, conferences and meetings
• managing budgets
• reviewing sales performance
• writing reports and other documents.

Promotional prospects are excellent – progression can be into senior sales/managerial roles or into related employment areas such as marketing or purchasing.

Graduate medical representative salaries

According to the government’s national careers service website, entry-level jobs as a medical sales representative at the low end start with a salary of £21,000 per year and range up to £51,000 for more experienced positions.

Typical employers of medical representatives

Healthcare and pharmaceutical companies employ medical representatives. Jobs are advertised online, by careers services and in newspapers, trade magazines and publications, as well as their respective websites.

There are several specialist recruitment agencies and consultancies that also regularly advertise vacancies. Job shadowing, networking and speculative applications are advisable. Pre-entry sales or hospital/medical work experience is advantageous.

• Take a look at the vacancies posted by targetjobs

Qualifications and training required for medical representatives

Many employers prefer graduates with relevant qualifications in life sciences, pharmacy, medicine, nursing or dentistry, although some accept applications from candidates with any degree background. Some employers will require a 2.1. New recruits normally receive an initial period (up to six months) of intense training, after which they may shadow experienced sales staff before commencing work on their own.

Many new sales executives also take the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) examinations within the first few years of work. A full driving licence is also a common requirement.

Work experience in a sales environment – or any customer-facing role – is likely to be expected or extremely beneficial during the recruitment process. It might support your application to get experience shadowing a medical sales representative, too. For this, you could send a speculative work experience application to a healthcare or pharmaceutical company or reach out to a medical representative on LinkedIn .

Key skills for medical representatives

• Commercial awareness
• Presentation skills
• Research skills
• Resilience
• The ability to negotiate and collaborate
• Patience
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills
• Organisational skills.

Next: search graduate jobs and internships

• View our science and research graduate vacancies and internships