Winning President's Club with Zero Sales Experience | Leslie Loveless (2/4)
October 1, 2026
Leslie Loveless leaves the classroom for pharmaceutical sales in 1999, a coveted industry at the time. She describes the culture shock of moving from a school building into a territory-based role, where her days meant driving between providers, managing her own schedule, and learning to sell one to one.
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“No one looks at a teacher's resume and thinks they can go sell.”
Leslie Loveless leaves the classroom for pharmaceutical sales in 1999, a coveted industry at the time. She describes the culture shock of moving from a school building into a territory-based role, where her days meant driving between providers, managing her own schedule, and learning to sell one-to-one.
The transition wasn't easy on paper. Recruiters and hiring managers saw that Leslie lacked sales experience, but they missed the skills she had built teaching: public speaking, preparation, performance, and the ability to hold an audience's attention. At Takeda, those skills helped her win President's Club in both of her first two years.
Leslie then explains how a call from Adam Slone led her to Quest Diagnostics, where she moved quickly from individual sales into national sales training. The selling motion was completely different: hospital and laboratory deals required service, economic value, and buy-in from medical, operational, procurement, and financial stakeholders.
Key Topics Covered:
- Translating classroom teaching skills into pharmaceutical sales
- Pharmaceutical sales training and role-playing
- Takeda and the importance of partner reps
- Winning President's Club without prior sales experience
- Why scientific founders need commercial awareness
- Working backward from market adoption and investor sentiment
- Moving from provider sales to hospital and health system sales
- Enterprise sales in laboratory medicine
- Stakeholder alignment across procurement, finance, lab services, and clinical leadership
- Service quality, turnaround time, and specimen reliability
- Economic value propositions in healthcare sales
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Find our guest, Leslie Loveless, at these links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslieloveless1
Slone Partners: https://slonepartners.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/
Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin
OkKyojin: https://flow.page/kyojin
OkKyojin: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:
Takeda: https://www.takeda.com/
Quest Diagnostics: https://www.questdiagnostics.com/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:
Takeda: https://www.takeda.com/
Quest Diagnostics: https://www.questdiagnostics.com/
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:37 Choosing Pharmaceutical Sales
02:38 The Teacher Resume Problem
02:54 Two Weeks Of Training In Chicago
04:04 Learning The Territory
04:27 Freedom Outside The Classroom
05:07 Public Speaking As A Sales Skill
05:53 Selling One To One
08:47 Two Presidents Club Wins
08:54 The Value Of Orthogonal Experience
10:16 Connecting Science To The Market
13:12 Adam Slone's First Call
14:50 Joining Quest Diagnostics
15:25 An Unexpected Training Role
18:05 Selling Into Health Systems
20:39 Service And Economics Win Enterprise Deals
26:22 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.