How Do You Design a Device to Sell With Fewer Reps?

Design it so it works when your rep isn't in the room, because most of the time they won't be. With a small team you might be at one case in three, four or five. The product has to open and work out of the box, like a consumer device. Fewer pieces, fewer clicks, and a rep who manages the account after the first few cases.

Why plan for fewer reps at all?

Look at the signals hospitals are sending. They make you park a mile away. They make you buy scrubs from a vending machine. They require a certification and a badge. Then they put a colored hat on you so you stand out. Do you really think they want you there?

It wasn't always like this. When I carried a bag, you walked in, did your case, went down to procurement with the paperwork signed, and called the next day for a PO number. Today every one of those steps has friction built around the rep. Hospitals are telling you something. Design for it.

A startup also can't win a headcount war. You can't put 300 people in the field against several big companies with 300 each. So you have to be the option that is intuitively easy to use, the one clinicians pick because it's the simple one. Nobody wants to use the complicated one.

What does rep-light design look like?

Rep-light, not rep-replace. You still need reps, but for different work. After two or three cases, a rep shouldn't need to be there except to manage the account and make sure the team is having a good experience. Doctors don't want reps sitting around the room every day anyway.

I believe the future is a rep-light model. It is not going to be three or four hundred people in the field, because even the big companies can't sustain that. Getting more clinically and technically efficient in the room starts with how you box your materials.

To get there, the product has to carry itself:

• Cut the pieces. A device startup I spoke with had 11 pieces coming out of the box. Nobody doing one case a week is going to snap 11 pieces together like the back of their hand after three cases. The goal was to turn those 11 into three.
• Count the clicks. How many steps does it take to get it right? Every step you remove is one less thing a rep has to teach and one less thing to go wrong.
• Fix the box. That can mean changing how you sterilize and how you package. I exaggerate on purpose: when the box opens, it should practically walk over to the table and do the job.

Is it worth delaying launch to get this right?

I coach founders to spend an extra 60 to 90 days on it. That time pays back in every case you're not in the room for. If you have eight reps, how is your product going to represent itself in all the cases nobody from your team attends?

It matters to the hospital too. Someone on the value analysis committee is thinking about how to train thousands of nurses on a new product. The investment only pays off when most of the eligible cases actually use it. A product that practically sets itself up makes that rollout believable, and that helps you get approved in the first place.

Where to start

Open your own box with someone who has never seen the product. Count the pieces, the steps and the clicks, and time it. Then ask what a clinician would need to do the procedure alone after the second case. Make that list your design brief for the next 60 to 90 days, and check packaging and sterilization changes against it before you lock them.