Speaker 1: Welcome to Season five of On the Job, a podcast
Speaker 1: about finding your life's work. On the job is brought
Speaker 1: to you by Express Employment Professionals, a leading staffing provider
Speaker 1: that employs nearly six hundred thousand people annually across more
Speaker 1: than eight hundred thirty franchise locations in the US, Canada,
Speaker 1: South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Our vision is to
Speaker 1: help as many people as possible find good jobs by
Speaker 1: helping as many clients as possible find good people. Whether
Speaker 1: you're looking for your first job or you're seeking a
Speaker 1: new challenge in your career, Express Employment Professionals will be
Speaker 1: with you every step of the way. We understand what
Speaker 1: it takes to land a new position at a top
Speaker 1: employer in today's job market. Plus, we never charge a
Speaker 1: fee to find you a job. And just like finding
Speaker 1: a job, finding the best people to fill open positions
Speaker 1: in your company requires more than sorting through applications. It
Speaker 1: takes real people, real interviews, discovering the skills you need.
Speaker 1: At Express, we find people for jobs and companies of
Speaker 1: all sizes and industries, from the production floor to the
Speaker 1: front office to the C suite. Express knows jobs get
Speaker 1: to know Express. This is on the Job, a podcast
Speaker 1: about finding your life's work. On the job, is brought
Speaker 1: to you by Express Employment Professionals. This season, we're bringing
Speaker 1: you stories of folks following their passion to carve their
Speaker 1: own career path. To start off this season, I wanted
Speaker 1: to focus on a kind of overlooked occupation, a job
Speaker 1: that if you're good at it, people might not know
Speaker 1: that you're doing it. All right, I'm according working in sales.
Speaker 1: So for this episode, I talked to a guy named
Speaker 1: Chris in Baltimore. Chris Lundy forty two years old. Wow.
Speaker 1: He is a clinical oncology specialist, which basically is a
Speaker 1: fancy term for I sell your drugs. Chris has worn
Speaker 1: a lot of hats besides being a pharmaceutical rep in
Speaker 1: his career, but he says that no matter what it was,
Speaker 1: he was born to sell, and so were you. We've
Speaker 1: all been We've all been selling. We just didn't know it.
Speaker 1: If you've ever dated, you've sold, you know, maybe not successfully,
Speaker 1: but actually maybe not successfully. But think about that, right,
Speaker 1: You gotta you gotta a lot of times you gotta
Speaker 1: go to someone who's a perfect stranger and you have
Speaker 1: to bring that person along a continuum that makes this
Speaker 1: perfect stranger. Kiss you. It's all about relationships. It's all
Speaker 1: about relationships, man, Thank you. That's the that's the point
Speaker 1: the dating game aside. He's right, we do all sell
Speaker 1: each other on ideas constantly. We convinced people to think
Speaker 1: about us differently by how we dress, by what our
Speaker 1: social media looks like. And Chris's approach to sales is
Speaker 1: that people really can tell when someone's not being real.
Speaker 1: I think that everybody has a like authenticity radar. I
Speaker 1: really do. And I think that if people sensed it, like,
Speaker 1: wait a second, this guy is not some some's fishy
Speaker 1: about them, I think they start to close up. You know.
Speaker 1: He says that's what sets him apart. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of salespeople who will treat their clients like a
Speaker 1: walking dollar sign and say anything to sell their product.
Speaker 1: At least I see me. I just I can't do
Speaker 1: any of that stuff. You gotta be authentic, because again,
Speaker 1: you're trying to convince someone to think differently. You're trying
Speaker 1: to convince someone to behave differently. It's not Hey, here's
Speaker 1: a pen that I want you to buy. Give me money.
Speaker 1: I'll give you this pen. I'm trying to change your behavior.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get it to the point where every
Speaker 1: time a patient comes in with disease X, you think
Speaker 1: about me and you think about my product. That's a behavior. Man.
Speaker 1: The Chris you're hearing now, that's the Chris whose job
Speaker 1: it is to be likable, to constantly be talking to people,
Speaker 1: and generally be pretty extroverted. But growing up just outside
Speaker 1: of DC as a kid, he was a lot different.
Speaker 1: So I kind of was like a little loner, geek
Speaker 1: kind of kid. I love comic books, you know. I
Speaker 1: remember my mother used to talk about that. How I
Speaker 1: could be in my room and if it weren't for
Speaker 1: having to eat food, I could be in my room
Speaker 1: for like eight nine hours. Just I didn't pay I
Speaker 1: didn't pay a lot of attention to the real world.
Speaker 1: My mind was always always daydreaming, always all the time.
Speaker 1: That was his life for a while, in his own world.
Speaker 1: His favorite comic book here was Adam Warlock. He kept
Speaker 1: to himself right up until about the tenth grade. I
Speaker 1: remember writing an essay. I don't even remember what it
Speaker 1: was about. The teacher was mister Howard. It looked like
Speaker 1: he wasn't even sure that I actually wrote it, Like
Speaker 1: he may have suspected plagiarism or something like that, and
Speaker 1: so and like he took you like he made you
Speaker 1: stay after class. Yes, yeah, because he thought you didn't
Speaker 1: write it. Well, it's not that he was being accusatory.
Speaker 1: It was more like disbelief, you know, like where I'm from, man,
Speaker 1: Like I'm kind of from like the hood man, you know,
Speaker 1: so you don't get a whole bunch of like writing talent.
Speaker 1: So I think that it just really stood out for him.
Speaker 1: And he pauses and looks at me. He goes, you're
Speaker 1: a really good writer. Do you know that? The proof
Speaker 1: was there? He had won essay and speech contest before,
Speaker 1: but he didn't figure it was because he was good.
Speaker 1: I thought other people sucked, you know. So it took
Speaker 1: a while to realize, like, wait a second, Wait a second,
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe it's not that everybody else runs slow. Maybe
Speaker 1: I am actually fast. I don't know, just kind of
Speaker 1: took off. I just started talking more, sharing the thoughts
Speaker 1: I had instead of suppressing them, and people, people you know,
Speaker 1: liked it. It worked. This late blooming moment really set
Speaker 1: him on the trajectory to where he is now. I
Speaker 1: don't know. It just changed overnight, it seemed, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, I was like mister social extrovert, you know,
Speaker 1: a type personality, Homecoming King, captain of the football team.
Speaker 1: It was, yeah, it was. It was not gradual. After
Speaker 1: high school, he went up to college and got an
Speaker 1: English degree, where he was also acting in plays and
Speaker 1: had his own radio show on campus. I started to
Speaker 1: really hone my skills in terms of communicating and sharing ideas.
Speaker 1: The first big job he got out of school before Pharma,
Speaker 1: was working with the Philadelphia Eagles in the PR department
Speaker 1: media relations. So everything from setting up interviews. Let's say
Speaker 1: ESPN wanted to talk to our quarterback or something, you know,
Speaker 1: I would facilitate that. He was basically the liaison between
Speaker 1: players and the public. So his skill set would kick
Speaker 1: in during moments where say he and some players might
Speaker 1: stop at a Wendy's while on the road and inevitably
Speaker 1: get crowded by fans asking for autographs. My job. One
Speaker 1: of the things I had to do. I had to
Speaker 1: be the no guy, because you can't have a superstar player,
Speaker 1: you know, shutting people down, telling them no, they look bad.
Speaker 1: So I had to be the bad guy. Having lived
Speaker 1: in Philly myself for a couple of years, I can
Speaker 1: say that they're not fans that like being told no exactly,
Speaker 1: And I guess, like, what is the biggest thing you
Speaker 1: learned from that job? When like nobody wants to hear this,
Speaker 1: that or that, Like you gotta win at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, what's your record. I've got an NFC
Speaker 1: Championship ring. When I pull it out, people think it's
Speaker 1: a super Bowl ring because it's big and it's full
Speaker 1: of diamonds and stuff. It's not a super Bowl ring,
Speaker 1: like we weren't that proud of that ring. It's an
Speaker 1: NFC Championship ring, which means there was a ring that
Speaker 1: was bigger than that, and that's the ring we want it.
Speaker 1: We'll get back to the story in a second. First,
Speaker 1: a word from Express Employment Professionals. A strong work ethic
Speaker 1: takes prime and a job well done. This is you.
Speaker 1: But to get an honest day's work, you need a callback.
Speaker 1: You need a job. Express Employment Professionals can help. We'll
Speaker 1: connect you to the right company. We're committed to your
Speaker 1: success and never charge a fee to find you a job.
Speaker 1: Express Nose Jobs, get to no Express find your location
Speaker 1: at expresspros dot com or on the Express Job's app.
Speaker 1: Now back to on the job. After the NFL, he
Speaker 1: wanted to make the leap to pharmaceutical sales. So we
Speaker 1: went for a job at MERK, a huge company, and
Speaker 1: they basically said, you were in media relations. You don't
Speaker 1: have any experience in sales. And I tried. I had
Speaker 1: to explain to them, listen, every day I have to
Speaker 1: convince young millionaires, egotistical millionaires, to do things that they
Speaker 1: don't want to do, you know. And if you don't
Speaker 1: think that sales, then and I don't know what to
Speaker 1: tell you, you know. And so that that line actually
Speaker 1: got me in the door. So he could obviously talk
Speaker 1: to talk. But the job isn't selling a product to
Speaker 1: the general public. It's selling life saving drugs to medical professionals.
Speaker 1: And they don't know you, so the trust isn't there.
Speaker 1: You know, you're trying to convince a doctor to practice
Speaker 1: a certain way, and this guy knows that he's got
Speaker 1: more education than you, he's got more expertise than you,
Speaker 1: but he's supposed to listen to what you're telling him
Speaker 1: to do. Like that's insane. The marketing department would train
Speaker 1: reps to go in with fancy graphs and selling points.
Speaker 1: But Chris did the exact opposite, meeting with doctors for
Speaker 1: multiple appointments without mentioning his product at all. And so
Speaker 1: I started by asking questions like, what's important to you?
Speaker 1: What do you not care about? Tell me about your patients,
Speaker 1: what are your needs? What keeps you up in night?
Speaker 1: Those kinds of things I'm saying, tell me about you.
Speaker 1: And then once the relationship be set, and once that
Speaker 1: rapport is there, now we can talk about what I
Speaker 1: have to offer and what I can do and you know,
Speaker 1: provide for you and your patients. In an old fashioned
Speaker 1: industry full of reps just trying to sell, sell, sell,
Speaker 1: Chris's authenticity started to really shine through. Yeah. Once I
Speaker 1: saw like my numbers start to reflect what I was
Speaker 1: actually doing, I was like, how about that? I wanted
Speaker 1: to get mister Howard on the line and tell him. Look, man,
Speaker 1: he cut to see selling around New York City, where
Speaker 1: the competition was fierce, and there was one experience early
Speaker 1: on in his career that really stuck with him. So
Speaker 1: there was this doctor, he was huge, He had an
Speaker 1: office in like a nice area in New York. I
Speaker 1: don't remember where this was, but it was nice, fancy, nice,
Speaker 1: pretty office. You couldn't see this doc. You go in,
Speaker 1: there's there's other reps from other companies all over the place.
Speaker 1: You'd wait for two hours and still barely even get,
Speaker 1: you know, ten seconds with this guy. Chris and other
Speaker 1: reps noticed that this doctor was never there on Tuesdays.
Speaker 1: They all assumed it was his day all but after
Speaker 1: some digging, Chris found out those weren't his off days.
Speaker 1: Tuesdays were his Picking Avenue days. Picking Avenue is the
Speaker 1: avenue in Brooklyn that you do not want to go to,
Speaker 1: right like, you gotta have Picking Avenue. You're getting robbed,
Speaker 1: you getting mugs, something's going wrong. It's a dangerous part
Speaker 1: of town. It turns out that doctor was from a
Speaker 1: pretty rough neighborhood and those were his days to give
Speaker 1: back to the community at a small clinic. So Chris
Speaker 1: decided that's where he'd go. I understand that I'll probably
Speaker 1: get my wheels and rims stolen from my car, but
Speaker 1: I'm going to Picking Avenue. And I went in and
Speaker 1: I told the receptionist that, you know, I was a
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical rep. And she looked at me like I was
Speaker 1: an alien, Like what, like, we're actually getting a pharmaceutical
Speaker 1: rep here? Like are you sure you want to be here?
Speaker 1: After about an hour, he got to see the doctor.
Speaker 1: He was so happy. First first he was shocked because
Speaker 1: no one went there, and he was happy that he
Speaker 1: was actually getting attention at this location at Picking Avenue
Speaker 1: for his patients on Picking freaking Avenue. And then the
Speaker 1: doctor started to criticize farmer reps he'd interacted with, because
Speaker 1: they'll always go to the fancy office but never there
Speaker 1: because he's not a lot of money in it. Right,
Speaker 1: he got a lot of patients on like state care
Speaker 1: or governmental care. It's not a nice, fun, easy place
Speaker 1: to go. And that's how Chris started building a relationship
Speaker 1: with this doctor to the point where at the plush
Speaker 1: office I was able to walk in and reps are
Speaker 1: like mad, like what are you doing going back? How's
Speaker 1: he getting back there? But that's what he was. I
Speaker 1: went to Picking Avenue. I served him where he needed
Speaker 1: to be served. I carry that everywhere I go. What
Speaker 1: do you need? I mean, think about it? Right in
Speaker 1: sales you got to use car lot. That car salesman
Speaker 1: isn't thinking about what you need he's thinking about how
Speaker 1: can I get what I want out of you? Right?
Speaker 1: And so if you're a salesperson, but your lead foot
Speaker 1: is what do you need? Man, you just differentiated yourself
Speaker 1: right there, right off the break. You're not like the others.
Speaker 1: So that really gets on the point of like, when
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people think of sales as
Speaker 1: a occupation, they probably think of like they used car guy.
Speaker 1: But to go back to your comic book days, do
Speaker 1: think you use your powers for good? I do? I do,
Speaker 1: I see and also work with people who don't. And
Speaker 1: when we're talking about the pharmaceutical industry, we're talking about
Speaker 1: a lot of money. So yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: negative stigma you know that comes with it, and it's
Speaker 1: unfortunate because the people who do do it the right way.
Speaker 1: They really are like changing people's lives. Chris started off
Speaker 1: in primary care generic drugs, and that he works with
Speaker 1: cancer drugs. It's different. He'll go into an appointment talking
Speaker 1: about a drug that could help a particular patient, and
Speaker 1: the next appointment, that patient's no longer with us, you know,
Speaker 1: like we can't even pick up on the conversation because
Speaker 1: the patient is gone. It's a much more urgent world
Speaker 1: over here. There are real stakes involved. This isn't just
Speaker 1: paul an allergy meds. Yeah, yeah, this is this is
Speaker 1: life for death over here. Was ever a moment in
Speaker 1: your career where you thought, this is why I do
Speaker 1: what I do. A couple of years back, we were
Speaker 1: at a sales conference and they brought in an elderly
Speaker 1: woman who had stage four lung cancer. That's usually you know,
Speaker 1: like all right, see you later, get your affairs in
Speaker 1: order kind of thing. The woman told a story about
Speaker 1: how her grandson was trying to lift her spirits and
Speaker 1: made her promise to go skydiving with him later that year.
Speaker 1: And now her she was convinced that she wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: gonna be around long. So sure, Scott, I haven't no problem.
Speaker 1: And it didn't matter what he said. He could say
Speaker 1: we're gonna go to Mars, she'd be like, yep. And
Speaker 1: she was telling us this story, and then behind her
Speaker 1: they pull up the picture of her jumping out of
Speaker 1: the plane. She lived because of our drug and she
Speaker 1: kept her promise that she never thought she would have
Speaker 1: to with her grandson. They both jumped out of a
Speaker 1: plane together to hear that story, and to see that image,
Speaker 1: it's like damn, like, yo, we really are helping save
Speaker 1: people's actual lives. Just throwing a scenario your way. You
Speaker 1: sold the drug to her doctor that saved her life
Speaker 1: and allowed her to have this moment, and she never
Speaker 1: knows your name. How do you feel about that? That's
Speaker 1: all right, that's all right. Yeah, that's okay, because um
Speaker 1: we won, we went to the playoffs. We got the
Speaker 1: big ring, you know, So, yeah, hasn't it hasn't. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. The job got done. For On the Job,
Speaker 1: I'm Otus Gray. Thanks for listening to On the Job,
Speaker 1: brought to you by Express Employment Professionals. The season of
Speaker 1: On the Job is produced by Audiation. The episodes were
Speaker 1: written and produced by me Otus Gray. Our executive producer
Speaker 1: is Sandy Smallens. The show was mixed by Matt Noble
Speaker 1: for Audiations Studios at the Loft in Bronxville, New York.
Speaker 1: Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Find us on iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts. If you liked what you heard, please consider
Speaker 1: rating and reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen. We'll see you next time. For more inspiring
Speaker 1: stories about discovering your life's work, Audiation,