RepTrax Certification SCAM?
In a recent conversation with a sales manager at a large company, I listened to his venting about the Mob Style “roll over” he and his team had just undergone. He explained that he and his team’s “certifications” were expired and he was in need of re-upping his certification, which amounts to nothing more than paying his annual fee. In order be able to comply with the onerous rules dictated by hospital purchasing departments, reps must go through an Authorized process by which they supply information to the organization called RepTrax. This for profit company then supposedly verifies the information to ensure the rep has had all their shots and is not a known fellon. All this for what? For RepTrax to make money and extract part of the revenue pie that prior to RepTrax didn’t exist. So to run up the cost, what does the hospital get in return? They get to punish and bully sales reps who, lets be honest, they often have disdain for. I’m not exactly sure why except that I have observed certain people in OR’s and Purchasing department that seemed to resent the reps who walk in wearing their suit and tie with their tassles on their loafers, while the hospital employees wear, scrubs or whatever was clean in their closet this morning.
Let’s face it, the reps are partly responsble for the reputatations they received while they pull up to the red-zone in their foreign sedan or park in the doctor parking provided by the hospital. Meanwhile, they stroll in with their Rolex into the doctor’s lounge as they show up to make sure their products are properly used in the procedure. These reps who perceive themselves to be peers with the doctors, while the lowly hospital staff are treated like servants to the high and mighty doctors…
I think you get the idea.
All too often, the hospital employees resent these reps coming and going as they please only to drop off an invoice and demanding a Purchase Order # so that they can collect their enormous commissions checks.
Finally, there is a way for these lowly people to exact some pain in the daily routines of these reps who are there to make the lives of the OR staff easier and less stressful. And how are they repaid? Having to be “certified” by one of these scams like RepTrax. Whatever value proposition they portend to offer, the single greatest driver is to restrict the activities of these rogue reps. The problem is that it makes all suffer for what the few do to offend. In the end, it merely makes doing business less enjoyable to the reps and increases the ultimate cost of the implants. Anything that adds cost to the sale of a product, ultimately gets put back into the cost of the goods. So, how do you like them apples? For most reps, Reptrax is nothing more than a nuisance and an insult to their intelligence.
