NuVasive, Inc. has made “significant” leadership changes to its sales management team with a new leader for U.S. sales and a new vice president of strategic sales and operations.
Sales Leadership Changes at NuVasive
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These personnel changes come after the company was surprised with less than expected sales results for the third quarter. Chairman and CEO, Alex Lukianov then took over all U.S. sales responsibilities and Russell Powers was promoted to executive vice president of international sales.
Link and Durall
Lukianov is now turning over U.S. sales responsibilities to Matt Link, a new executive vice president. In addition Scott Durall assumes the position of executive vice president of strategic sales and operations.
Link joined NuVasive in 2006 after his tenure with DePuy Orthopedics and then DePuy Spine in a regional sales leadership role. The company announcement stated that Link has quickly elevated through the NuVasive sales organization as a result of his proven leadership ability and exceptional performance as sales director, area vice president and a senior vice president. “His leadership, cultural focus, dynamic energy and steadfast commitment to drive top-line growth will continue to be instrumental in expanding sales revenue.”
Durall’s role, according to the company, will include working with both Link and Powers with the shared objective of growing revenue through improved operational efficiencies to directly influence NuVasive sales representatives and expand the company’s presence in national account networks.
Durall joined NuVasive in 2008 in a regional sales leadership role as an area sales vice president and as senior vice president of sales operations. He came to NuVasive following his time at U.S. Surgical Corp. as sales director and after 10 years with Boston Scientific Corporation.
Lukianov said the ability to promote internally for these roles is, “culturally invaluable and I have tremendous confidence in the team we have organized to help us achieve our vision to further change spine surgery now and as a $1 billion start-up.”
U.S. Sales Force Rises to 329
NuVasive also announced that as of December 7, the U.S. sales force has grown rapidly from 312 at the end of the third quarter to its present size of 329.
“I am very pleased to be directly engaged with our sales executives to actively address recent competitive challenges in the field and re-build sales momentum. I believe we are making progress on multiple initiatives to ensure the sales force penetrates deeper into accounts and goes wider with new accounts that have already shown significant progress ahead of plan. Moreover, these ongoing efforts are not expected to hinder the company’s outlook on profitability.
“We have industry leading products, outstanding support services and top executives to very effectively drive sales. Establishing the sales leadership team to execute our growth goals is mission-critical. I am very pleased with our team and our progress in this quarter has already been excellent. I look forward to working even more closely with this group of leaders to execute our market share taking strategy both domestically and internationally, ” added Lukianov.
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This is a fascinating development. In my practice we've seen similar outcomes with the revised protocol. The key differentiator seems to be patient selection criteria. Has anyone else noticed the correlation with BMI thresholds?
Great point. I'd push back slightly on the conclusion, the sample size in the cited study is too small to draw population-level inferences. That said, the directional signal is compelling and worth a larger RCT.
We implemented a similar approach last year. Early results are promising but we're still gathering 12-month follow-up data. Happy to share our protocol if anyone is interested.
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