Hand in hand – the career of Paul Babinski

A sales career and higher education have always been linked for Patterson territory manager, Paul Babinski.

While you can’t judge a book by its cover, you may have a good sense of what drives Paul J. Babinski by looking at his business card. The first item to note is his title – territory manager, Patterson, a job he said he takes great joy in calling on veterinary practices and helping them solve the challenges of an ever-changing marketplace.

The second item is that Babinski has a Ph.D. to his name, a Doctor of Philosophy, Business Administration and Management, obtained from Northcentral University.

Indeed, obtaining his Ph.D. “was an amazing journey,” he said. Even more so when you factor in the sales career and family life that Babinski balanced while working toward the degree.

Learning and exploring

Babinski graduated from Marshall University in 1985 with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry. By the late 1990s, he was working as a regional sales manager responsible for more than $9 million in sales annually for Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals. Many of his activities included, but were not limited to, developing strategic plans for individuals; negotiating larger contracts with competitive accounts; managing hiring, dismissal, and reporting responsibilities; “and most importantly leading a team to successful attainment of the organization’s objects.”

Through his career, Babinski held positions with several noteworthy companies such as BD, Carefusion and Novartis Oncology, before taking a position with Patterson in 2019 as a territory manager in the Knoxville, Tennessee, area.

Running parallel to his sales career arc was also one in higher education. Babinski earned a master’s in Health Services Administration, MHSA, and a master’s in Business Administration, MBA, in 2008. Once he acquired those degrees, he took a year off from school, “but I missed the activity of learning and exploring new paradigms,” he said.

Babinski met with his director of sales at the company he was working for and asked if she would support his desire to gain a terminal degree. The director of sales agreed to cover the cost of the doctoral degree. “I enrolled in the program and the journey began.” The completion of the degree took approximately four-plus years while Babinski took one class a semester.

Balancing the coursework with career and family took a tremendous amount of focus and dedication. Every day started early in the morning for Babinski due to his job requirements. Once work was completed, he had dinner with his family, then Babinski went to his office to study, read research articles, and write papers for class. Due to the expectations of professors, this was a daily occurrence. “On Saturday, I would go for an early morning run, and then off to the public library, third-floor periodicals for the rest of the day,” he said. “On Sunday, church in the morning, and studying the rest of the day. A paper was due each week by Sunday before 11:59 p.m. I performed these aforementioned activities for four-plus years.”

A terminal degree in Business Administration involved limited classwork, which was a precursor for the dissertation work, Babinski said. The classwork for a terminal degree is similar to undergraduate and master level work except for the volume. “For example, in undergraduate level work, you may have one 20-page paper a semester. In master level work, you may have several 10-page and a 20-page paper per semester, but in a terminal degree a 20-page paper was a weekly occurrence,” he said.

However, classwork papers do not prepare you for the dissertation process, Babinski said. “The dissertation process encompassed a significant amount of work from a research and a writing perspective. The title of my dissertation was, ‘The Perceived Importance of Role Specific Competencies for Health Care Leaders.’”

While it’s hard to judge whether completion of his terminal degree helped his sales career, Babinski said his view of business and leadership has changed considerably. “My acuity on business acumen has increased ten-fold,” he said. “Additionally, since my dissertation was related to leadership competencies, I am aware of specific competencies that manifest during day-to-day experiences. I can say that obtaining a terminal degree has allowed for additional pathways to open in the arena of education where I truly enjoy the pedagogy of teaching.”

Calling on customers

Without a doubt, the area that Babinski enjoys most in the veterinary world is the people. “I love calling on my customers and developing relationships of trust,” he said. “Through these relationships, I hope to help them improve their business activities to increase revenue and customer retention.”

To succeed as a territory manager in today’s market takes consistency, Babinski said, something he has managed to develop over the course of his career and academic work. “Veterinarians and staff rely on their distributor representatives to address a plethora of needs. Being present and willing to assist our customers from parasiticides to surgical instruments is what makes a successful territory manager.”

Compare and contrast

With experience in the human medical field and now in veterinary medicine as a territory manager for Patterson, Babinski said the single greatest similarity veterinary clinics have to the human medicine side is the passion staff possesses for their patients. “Both human and veterinary medicine platforms create a sense of welcoming for their customers,” he said. “The attentiveness shown to owners and their pets is heart-warming. I watch pets enter scared and timid and leave with their tail wagging.”

Human medicine has two significant differences that Babinski does not routinely come across in the veterinary world – insurance and contracts. “Insurance, reimbursement, is the key driver on the human side of the business for both patients and providers,” he said. “From a vendor perspective, suppliers, organizations drive business via contracts. From the veterinary perspective, I do not see insurance coverage as a driver yet, and contracts have not taken a significant foothold into the veterinary market.”

Photo cutline: istockphoto.com/Irina Griskova