The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Heart of the Deal: The Insider’s Guide to Medical Device Sales Success by Dr. Joseph DeAngelis, Kevin Matthews

Episode Date: May 30, 2026

Heart of the Deal: The Insider’s Guide to Medical Device Sales Success by Dr. Joseph DeAngelis, Kevin Matthews https://www.amazon.com/-/he/Heart-Deal-Insiders-Medical-Success/dp/B0FJB2R9KM Getheartofthedeal.com What if we told you there’s a sales career where rookies routinely earn more than seasoned lawyers and top performers make more than most doctors? You’d probably think we were selling you a get-rich-quick scheme. But we’re not. We’re talking about medical device sales. Global business consultant Dr. Joseph DeAngelis and medical device marketer Kevin Matthews have teamed up to introduce you to a high-stakes, high-reward world where mastering “Clinical Currency”–the unique blend of medical knowledge, sales savvy, and relationship capital that top performers leverage–will lead to unparalleled success. CV5Heart of the Deal offers the first-of-its-kind playbook for dominating the medical device sales landscape–whether you’re a newcomer looking to break in or a veteran aiming to join the seven-figure earners club.

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Because you're about to go on a monster education role. rollercoaster with your brain. Now here's your host, Chris Voss. This Voss here from the Chris Foss Show.com. The latest young on there, the latest things that makes official welcome to the show. For over 16 years and nearly 3,000 episodes, we were bringing in the Chris Voss show because we just want to share the world with rising your levels of blindness, your mindfulness and knowledge and everything else so you can make the world a better place. Go to Goodrease.com, Forrestes-Cris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Voss.1,

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The Insider's Guide to Medical Device Sales Success by Dr. Joseph, DeAngelis, and Kevin Matthews. We have Joseph on the show with us today. We'll be talking to him about his insights. and what we can learn and glean from that and everything else as well. Dr. Joseph A. D. Angeles is a business psychologist, executive advisor, author, and co-founder of Heart of the Deal, the MedReady Certification Program, an integrated platform designed to prepare the next generation of medical device sales professionals. He earned his degree, BS, medical education, and PhD in psychology, and has spent more than

than two decades, applying behavioral science to the real world challenges of leadership, commercial performance, talent development, and organizational transformation. As the founding partner of South Shore behavioral partners, he's advised senior executives, leadership teams, commercial organizations, and high potential talent across some of the most respected medical device and healthcare companies in the world. Welcome to the show, Dr. Joseph. How are you, sir? That intro, that makes me sound pretty old, having done all that in all of what you just described to me, Chris.

That's only 20 years. You're probably going to live to 100, so that's a fifth of the time. So thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you for coming. We really appreciate you. Do I mean I refer to you as doctor on the show or Joe? How about Joe? How about Joe? All right, we'll do Joe. So, Joe, give us your dot coms where can people find out more about you on the interwebs. So I think the best place to find me is www. www.githeart of the deal.com. Get the book. So give us a 30,000 over you. What's inside your book, sir? So let me just give you a little history here, Chris. As you said, as you mentioned in that

wonderful introduction there, I've spent a couple of decades working inside alongside medical device companies doing assessment, coaching, development, working with sales leaders, commercial teams, and a lot of work with high potential talent. But over the years, I keep seeing the same darn thing. incredibly talented people wanting to break into medical device sales, but they really didn't understand the business they were trying to get into. Medical device sales is a very sexy place to be. These folks, new sales, they were very ambitious.

Some of them had pharma experience, a lot of them, B2B experience, some even with clinical experience, or even some exposure to health care. But they often lacked what we call in the book clinical currency. which is really about credibility. And you go into a hospital or into a healthcare setting and you start talking to physicians about procedures or medical devices that you're going to put in somebody's body. Yeah.

That's the reality of medical technology, which is very, very different than selling someone a copier or a service to a business owner. When you start dealing with physicians, it's really a different story, particularly around the regulatory side of it, with the FDA. So that's a long introduction to why we did the heart of the deal in this MedReady certification platform that you mentioned. I imagine it's big business selling medical

equipment because usually it's pretty expensive. You have to follow the laws like HIPAA and different regulations in the medical field. What are some of the things you've seen people fail at when they try and get into the things and the advice you give in your book? That's a great question. I think that they think they, since they're good at sales, how they can sell devices, or since they've worked in pharmaceutical sales, I can understand med tech, or I have a clinical background, so that's good enough. It's not good enough. Or what I hear a lot is it's all about my resume. Resumies don't do much for you these days particularly. What they need to understand is how health care in the United States works. You know, what goes on in a hospital?

How do physicians think about the world, right? How procedures flow, how medical device companies actually make money, how to earn trust in these clinical environments because it's really difficult to translate that prior experience into device relevance, I guess I would say. Very difficult. And I imagine doctors are really busy, and there's probably a lot of people trying to pitch them

all sorts of different gadgets and things. Yeah, it really is. And that's kind of a great question because you've got pharmaceutical folks who say, I'm used to talking to doctors. What they're really used to is sitting in doctors' offices waiting with a dozen donuts for their staff. Oh, wow. They really have to understand.

They have to gain the relationship, I guess is what I would say. They have to prove themselves credible of being there. And there's so many stories I could tell you about really good device reps being involved in procedures and really helping the doctors in procedures. But they have to understand how that all works. And you can't come from selling uniforms or selling cars or it's just a different world. And I'm not romanticizing it. It's just different. Yeah.

Working with doctors in a hospital or an office-based lab is a very different, different experience than sitting down with a business owner and talking about their technology. It's just different. Yeah, you've got hippilaws and all the different regulations and stuff. And then I imagine a lot of decision-making to make a purchase has to be maybe board-driven or committee-driven of some type. Imagine hospitals just don't buy anything, right? just off the fly, like, oh, yeah, sure, we'll buy that.

And it's gotten even more sensitive. You're right, just thought on about nothing gets, gets through in a hospital as it goes through supply chain pricing or some level of committee. The difficulty that reps have is, and this is where the relationship comes in, the difficulty that reps have is the technologies are pretty close, right? So I'll give you an example, the Phillips Ivis catheter, which is a catheter that goes, may go into your heart with a stent to blow up a blockage or go into your leg to do the same thing with a diabetic patient might be close to the same

as someone at Medtronic or Boston Scientific. What where the differentiation is, and this is what I tell folks all the time when I'm working with them or coaching them, the true differentiator in any business, but particularly in this business is talent. Because you may have the best IV catheter on the planet in March. And in June, someone else is going to have a better one.

Because the technology is moving so quickly that the differentiator is talent and talent leads to robust relationships. Docs make a lot of decisions based on the relationship that they have with their rep. Oh.

And it's very difficult for a doc to move off a product if they really like the rep. Oh, yeah, the relationship, the basis, and then the comfort with the product and stuff. And then, of course, legal liabilities. You're putting stuff in people's bodies around people's bodies. There's lots of litigation in, what do they call that when you screw up health care, miss, miss. Malpractice.

Malpractice. That's the word I'm looking for. People are wary of that and fearful of that. You bring some new device that shows up and they're like, I don't know, that sounds like lawyers love that. You just know, you never know, especially if they're part. product fails. There's something faulty about it. But yeah, this is, how big is the business of medical sales? A lot of people trying to flood into this market of, I would say 90% of people that

are selling B2B products eventually want to be in medical device sales. Yeah. It's probably big business. Probably stuff sells for expensive and it's kind of like real estate these days. You just get one sale, you're pretty much made enough money for the year. These guys, these guys, these guys in two or three years are making more than partners in law firms. I think we've had some people on that got into sales and started their own businesses and stuff. I think we've interviewed some people. So how does your med-ready certification program work that you have on your website, and how does it certify them and give them the credibility they need?

So the med-ready platform is really designed to help candidates become industry-ready before they even get to the interview process or certainly into the field. It gives them this structured learning around health care, hospitals, medical device companies, all the clinical environments, what they should expect and how positions in their career. See, there's such a barrier. When you're a, I keep going back to these B2B reps who are very, very talented people, when they go to talk to a med device recruiter, they're going to ask them,

and med device recruiter is going to say, what do you know about health care? Or what do you know about the regulatory aspects of health care? Or how do you handle a physician? They're not going to know that. They're going to wing it. They're going to say, I'm a really good sales guy. I can sell the refrigerator as Eskimos.

Yeah, but that doesn't work here. So, now, just to be clear, this med-ready platform is not, selling skills. We're not teaching people selling skills. We're teaching them readiness. Yeah. Which is very, very different. There are five modules. They start at describing what, how is the U.S. healthcare industry structured? It has structure? No, I'm just doing.

Regulation, hospitals, all of that environment. How does it put, how does it all work? Reimbursement, very big word here. Oh, really? Reimbursement. Yeah, these things have to get approved by the FDA before they're reimbursable. Yeah. So you can imagine being a working for Canon copy or pick one and going to say, Hey, I just made my quota the last 10 years in a row.

I want to go sell devices. It's really sexy. I want to work with physicians. And they say, what do you know about this, this, this and this? They say nothing. What the recruiter will say, go, go find a job in medical supplies and come back and see me in three years. Oh, wow.

We believe that we can speed this up immensely just by informing them of what it's like to be in this sector. Yeah. And I've seen so many people get turned away that were really good sales folks, but just didn't have the industry knowledge. Yeah. Yeah, you've got to be able to talk some industry knowledge, I think, on this, especially when you're dealing with complexity and amount of money.

I imagine a lot of these devices are always expensive, right? there's a lot of money involved, and so that makes the decision making even more where people are going to analyze what this product does, whether they really need it, and probably knowing, if you come to me and sell me Girl Scout cookies, I'm just going to throw my cash out there, but if you're trying to sell me, I don't know, a million dollar, $100,000, $200,000 device for medical that could get me sued if it's, if it, if it doesn't function properly and damn it and hurt somebody. Yeah, we're going to think about it a little bit. These guys, these device guys who are selling class, the higher level class devices,

the ones that are going into your body, their quotas are seven-figure quotas. Really? They're carrying big quotas. Wow. Oh, sure. Because the devices are not cheap. So they really have to have that clinical currency to be able to talk to physicians about how this thing works.

and what the efficacy is and how I'm going to help you more than someone else might. Oh. So it's really knowing the space and being able to have the right conversation. It's almost like a, Chris, it's almost like a different language. Hmm. And medical field has got to be its own language, all the different jargons and stuff. I just got two hernia surgeries last year and I was trying to read through all my paperwork. and all the stuff they did to me.

And I was just like, wow, I guess that's what all that money went to is all that complex language. It's being able to have the right conversation. So people who are on the other side, the physician, the supply chain leader,

that value committee that you were mentioning earlier, say to you, you deserve to be in the room with us. Yeah. Because you get it. Yeah. You get it. So Donuts isn't going to cut it,

huh? I got to know the medical. field terminology and stuff like that. Most companies are quite good, like medical device companies are quite good at once you're in, they will train you very well on the clinical aspects of the devices. But to get through there,

they're expecting you to know the health care system, expecting you know the FDA regulations, expecting you to have the right DNA. And we could talk a lot about what the right DNA is, but the barrier is having the readiness to make the jump in. And we just think we have an accelerator for that. We have an accelerator to do that. The book, by the way, is what we did is we took the, Kevin and I took the modules, the five modules, and we said, let's do this a little bit differently. Let's go out to some of our best clients, the guys that have

one very big in this business for a lot of years. Now, some of these are reps. Some of these people I'm talking about are mid-level managers, and some of these folks are actually running large businesses. And we interviewed 12 of them. And each one of them was, the book is set up, I think, in 12 chapters, and each one of them gets a chapter.

So they're telling their story based on their success factors. So it's really compelling, and it's tied right to the certification program. And it has five modules. How long does it take to complete, or is it one of those things where you can complete it at your own pace? Or how does that work? You can complete it at your own pace, but it's not one of those things you can blow through because there are exams.

Yeah. So we have testing. We have testing. Ah. This is not a pay the money and you get your certificate type thing. You've got to be credible, and you've got to do. work. So I would say that if you had a week that you weren't doing a lot, and not a lot of people have a week where they're not doing a lot, but if you were, let's just say that you were on vacation

for a week. You could probably do it in a week if you were thoughtful about it. And then you would have, we would grant you a certificate. It's gaining a lot of power, by the way. We're talking to recruiters who really liked the idea. Yeah. They're going to listen a little bit more when they see that this has been, you've been certified versus even if you don't have a little experience, you're certified. They can present you because you'll have the right conversations. Yeah.

So we're really excited about that. We're getting more and more recruiters joining us as partners for referrals. Ah. And we're getting a lot of those are the people that touch the most reps every day are recruiters. But we're also getting a lot of our clients who are regional salesmen. managers like first line supervisors saying, I just talked to someone today, Joe, that really need you. I'm referring him to you. That's happening a lot. So what you have is when you get to our site, you can, several things you can do. You can buy the book, which I hope you do. But I don't think the book is the

appetizer, if you will, right? So the certification takes you through the whole gamut of readiness. and what we also offer are we have a bullpen of regional sales manager coaches who are really what I would call pinnacle club or presidents club winners who are excited about coaching you along the way if you'd so desire or we also can help you build your resume based on the modules so you have a kind of a menu of what you choose to do. Hmm. That's really great. I love how you're getting with recruiters, so it can be easier to refer on board people and people that are going to recognize your certification and go, okay, this is this is someone who's gotten up to par. It's true. A lot of salespeople do operate for that mentality of a lot of good ones. I can sell ice to an Eskimo. And they, and a lot of them do transcend and sales different things. But like I say, you, you Usually you're dealing with a husband or wife, a buyer. You're dealing with a guy who comes in to buy a car or a guy who buys a mortgage or whatever.

Certainly dealing with committees and boards. I remember when I was, I did a short spin in industrial sales reps where you have to travel to all these locations and places and take and tell them products for their job. Even then, you would have to go through sometimes committees or boards or buyer approval groups. And so you'd have to wait. You'd have to, he'd have to set up. Once you convince the guy that he needed it, he'd have to convince the board or you'd have to go cut the board or the buyer's agents. That it was a good deal. And sometimes it would take a long time.

There'd be sometimes send us an invoice and then we'll sit that and we'll pay it 90 days. I remember there was sometimes where I couldn't sell to certain clients. clients because they're behind on their payments or bankruptcy. And so I always have to go collect the money for the monthly payment to the oldest and then and then try and sell them some new shit. So here's the other thing that's happening. I mentioned before. I was at a client in San Diego last two weeks ago.

And the head of sales training, sales enablement there, I had given him a copy of the book. he's a very bright young, young man. And he said, you know, I want to talk to you about these first three modules and use them in the onboarding of our salespeople. Because we think using these modules will ramp up the time to productivity. Because some of these folks that we're bringing in have only modest knowledge of what you're doing. What's in those modules. And that we had talked about a corporate view of this stuff, but we thought the real helpful part where we're at the retail rep level, if you will.

Yeah. But I wasn't planning on going there, but I'm being almost being forced to go there with a couple of these clients because they see this as an onboarding tool as well. Yeah. Good client, get their new salespeople to speed. And then just across the T's, not the eyes and stuff. It would probably make a great corporate program where you guys go in there and teach. Now, is this coursework? Is it all on computers?

Is it interacting with you on a 101 sort of coaching consulting thing? Or do they just have materials they need to go through? It is an interactive voiceover module, each voiceover module. Okay. All right. And then they go through that. They take the test, make sure they know what they're retaining. what they're consuming and all that good stuff.

And I don't know, I've often wondered about getting in the medical field. We had a doctor on yesterday. And I was talking about how I wasn't, I'm not a blood, I'm not into blood and guts. I can't, even in movies when I know it's fake. I'll, my head will start spinning. I have to leave the thing. I've gotten better. I've started doing my own testosterone shots.

And so I'm kneeling myself more than I ever have been needleed in my life. And frankly, I wasn't excited. do it and really hated it, but after two or three years now, I've testosterone treatment and being poked in the bum and with needles, I don't, I've kind of come around to it, but I still don't want to do surgeries or something. And I was talking to the doctor, and he's like, he's, yeah, you can do stuff where you don't work with in medical field where you don't work with blood. And I'm like, that might be something that sounds cool because I know we're running into a shortage here in the future of doctors and medical people that are entering the field.

There's a lot of people leaving the field because it's become nightmarish with insurance and everything else. I don't know. This might be a great way to get into the field of medicine and medical sales because some of the scientific things we probably have coming down the pike are probably pretty interesting. You know what the one, and every time I go to one of these clients, give me an example, one of my clients in San Diego, I have two in San Diego. one of them deals with the unblocking of arteries. Oh, yeah? Now, both in the cardiac care area and in what you would call peripheral vascular area,

which really means your legs, right? So when you hear about those stories and you listen to some of their patients, that the transformation that these procedures have made, I love being affiliated with those companies. Oh. It's such a buzz for me to say, you know what, I'm working with the salespeople and the commercial teams that save people's lives.

They have products that save people's lives. There's not a lot of places you can say that. Yeah. So what I would do with that information, I would show up at the doctor's office and be like, hey, are you done killing people? We have a product that will save more people. Yeah, the other would be.

The other one is a smaller business, pain management business, which is the last resort for lower back pain. And they have an implant that they put in your back, Bluetooth. Bluetooth even. It takes away the pain. Oh, wow. Electronically. Very cool stuff. My sister has a, she has MS and she's been in care centers for about 15 years.

And they put her on one of those fentanyl pumps. Oh, yeah. It's like a nightmare to deal with. And then doctors don't want to prescribe fentanyl. And you're just like, what the hell? Is that device you're talking about? Maybe selling a remedy for not having a fentanyl pump, maybe taking the pain away? Yeah, this is a non-opioid device that's electronic.

Oh, really? It's not, it's not, there's no medicine. Oh, really? It's all electronic, yeah. Really? Wow. I mean, she could use that. She's got the pump inside her, and boy, that thing is just a mess to deal with.

refill refill or whatever the hell it does and then and then trying to get the dosage right and then sometimes the care center doesn't do it right so yeah it's it's pretty wild they need more of stuff like that what else have we talked about in what you do in your business and in the book that maybe we should tease out to people let them know how to learn more excuse me in just a second christ no problem i have the i have that fun too with the coughing and colds and stuff you might want to see a doctor about that. You might have a flu. No, I think if you really want to get into this space, this is your access point.

And learning the business, knowing what, you know, you got to be able to talk to lingo, man. You can't just show up at a place. And a lot of, a lot of salespeople, like I say, I've had some great salespeople that work for me and has worked for me this day. And yeah, a lot of you can sell anything to just about anyone in the consumer side. But when it comes to B2B, it's much more complex. And you've got to know the lingo. You got to know the talk.

You got to know the rules and regulations. And there's so many. The HIPAA laws are freaking crazy sometimes. And I'm sure there's a lot of other different laws and regulations. HIPAA laws on the consumer side, but on the FDA side, very strict regulations. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I'm not too familiar.

It takes years to get these devices approved. Oh, yeah. It's probably sometimes decades or maybe more. I don't know. So this is really great. There's a way to get more people into the field and help the business and stuff. Can you give me a five, if I want to become a doctor overnight, can I get a five package training program for that or do I got a doctor overnight?

Yeah. I think we're really good at that, but we're not, we're good, but we're not good at that. Yeah. I was good at playing doctor when I was a kid. in the neighborhood, but that was the 70s. So anyway, and so people can go to your website. They can find out more. They can read about the certification.

They can sign up for it. There's a buy now sequence there where people can get to know it better and everything else. Can people reach out to you if they have questions about the program? I would love that. And the best way that you can get me through the website or you can get me at the behavior partners, my private practice, at joe. de angeles at behavior partners.com.

So any, and then I think you said you had a future book you're maybe working on. Do you want to tease that? Oh, yes, thank you. For years, I've had a few publications, a lot of articles, but this was the fourth book here. And I've always had this fascination with interpersonal conflict, particularly at work. So I started about, this goes, it's like a passion project of mine. About four years, four years ago, I started just putting some notes together. on, you know, why do people keep bumping into each other, right, at work or at home?

Why do they keep bumping into each other? And it starts to sound like more like they're colliding. They're banging into each other. Yeah. So the book is called collisions, and it's all about interpersonal conflict at work and at home. And that's available for pre-order on Amazon, but not available yet. But I think that's going to be a June availability. on Amazon. Looking forward to that.

Yeah. Not so much about anything specific in healthcare, but it's about how to get along at work. And how to get along with your partner, your spouse, your kids, because they're all, in my mind, they're all kind of related. Yeah. Yeah.

Definitely. And that's called collisions. Collisions. We were joking before the show about how that could be like Thunderdome. I love that. Two employees enter one employee leave. Hire Chain to Turner to come over to your house or your office and and orchestrate all this. One thing I would say, too, if I have some books hanging around here on the part of the deal,

if someone wanted a free book, they could email me and I would be happy to send them a free book for the first five people. Oh, so feel free to email them folks for a free book and all that. Did they get that signed? They would absolutely get it signed. All right. Sounds good then. Fun is fun, and it's been wonderful to have you on. Thank you very much for coming on, Joe.

Thanks, Chris. Great to see you. Thank you. And I'll order up his book wherever fine books are sold. It's called Heart of the Deal, The Insider's Guide to Medical Device Sales Success by Dr. Joseph DeAngelis and Kevin Matthews out now. Of course, if you want to get into the business,

you can look him up and check out his certification course and the medical field needs more help and people because a lot of people are leaving it. Thanks for us for us for us at least, Chris Christchristch, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortresschus Christch, Chris Foss 1 on the TikTokity and all those crazy places in it. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. You've been listening to the most amazing, intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Warning. Consuming too much of the Chris Walsh Show podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated

amounts. Consult a doctor for any resulting brain bleed. All right, the doc, you've got in the...