Secondary Care (hospital) sales roles are often seen as a career progression for representatives with a successful track record in a Primary Care role.

The hospital sales rep job has many similarities with its primary care counterpart, in that it involves calling on medical professionals, but there are also key differences. It is more likely that the customers you see in secondary care will be specialists in their field, so your level of therapy area, product and competitor knowledge will need to be extremely high. Discussions are more likely to be based on clinical trials than a sales aid, and you will need to be comfortable spending most of your time in a hospital environment.

As in primary care, access can be challenging and hospital sales representatives will need to build relationships with your customers and often with the medical secretaries who will keep diaries for Consultants. In addition to Consultants, you may be tasked with calling on Specialist Registrars, Junior Doctors and a range of nurses, including Nurse Specialists who are extremely influential and knowledgeable customers.

Territories in secondary care roles are usually larger than primary care territories, and can be very large if your product is for a therapy area not dealt with in every hospital.

Clients will usually require either existing hospital experience (which could have been gained either in a previous secondary care sales role, or as part of a primary/secondary care representative role) or a proven track record of success in a primary care role and thorough research into the secondary care position.

You will need to be able to understand, interpret and discuss clinical papers and be seen as an expert in your field. A thorough knowledge of the NHS, nationally and locally, and advanced selling and negotiation skills will also be required for any hospital sales representative job.

Through our partnerships with over 80 pharmaceutical companies, we are seeing an increase in the number of secondary care opportunities with Ashfield In2Focus. A secondary care role can lead to roles in key account management, NHS Liaison or management.

Many pharmaceutical companies are now looking to outsource their hospital sales rep roles to contract sales organisations and Ashfield In2Focus is the UK market leader in this field. Working for Ashfield In2Focus gives you a level of job security that other pharmaceutical sales jobs cannot offer. You will also be joining a multinational organisation with offices in the US, UK and Ireland. Our parent company United Drug is still investing in contract sales so the opportunities for people looking for medical sales jobs continue to grow.

Why not take a look at our current hospital sales representative and secondary care vacancies; we are confident that you will find something there for you. If not, please register to join our database to be notified of new positions on a weekly basis.