My conversation with Omar Khateeb focused on understanding how his experience in medical device sales helped shape a broader career across marketing, business strategy, and entrepreneurship.

Omar entered the industry 15 years ago after leaving medical school. He started in sales at Mazor, a surgical robotics company he described as the first robotic spine company, before moving internally into the role of U.S. Marketing Manager. That transition exposed him to another side of the medical device industry and eventually helped shape the direction of his career. 

Medical Device Sales Was His Starting Point

Omar began his MedTech career carrying the bag in medical device sales.

Working directly in the field gave him experience inside hospitals and around the environments where medical technology was actually being used. For Omar, that kind of exposure matters because understanding what customers experience can help you think more deeply about the products and businesses serving them.

He also viewed medical sales as more than a position he had to stay in forever. It could become a starting point for learning how an entire business works.

That is one of the biggest lessons I took from our conversation: medical device sales can open doors to many different career paths if you intentionally build the skills to pursue them.

Start Thinking Like a Leader Before You Become One

Omar believes sales reps should not wait until they become a director or VP before learning about management principles.

There may eventually be a moment when you find yourself speaking with a CEO, VP, or another senior leader. The quality of the questions you ask can reveal the level at which you have learned to think.

Omar said that was part of how he began elevating himself in his own career.

The title can come later. You can start developing the thinking, knowledge, and responsibility required for the next level before you are officially there.

Moving From Medical Sales Into Marketing

After a couple of years in sales, Omar moved internally at Mazor and became the U.S. Marketing Manager.

That role exposed him to multiple parts of the organization, including regulatory, quality, finance, sales, and logistics.

Omar talked about managing a multimillion-dollar budget and even creating his own profit-and-loss framework to understand his budget, control costs, and track how his decisions affected the business.

Some of that work was not glamorous. He dealt with campaigns, logistics, shipping robots for labs, and finding ways to reduce costs.

But those responsibilities gave him a much deeper understanding of how a business operates.

Learning Beyond the Medical Device Industry

Around 2014 and 2015, Omar began studying growth marketing more seriously.

After Mazor was acquired, he moved to Silicon Valley to learn how AI, B2B SaaS, and technology companies approached growth.

From roughly 2015 to 2021, he focused on concepts including growth, content, thought leadership, and category design. His goal was to understand those ideas and bring them into MedTech.

That willingness to learn outside the medical device industry is something I think more reps should pay attention to.

Your development does not have to be limited to what your current company teaches you.

Building Market Craft

In 2022, Omar started his own business.

He initially worked as a solopreneur and sold digital products, including an online course for founders and medical salespeople. Over time, he realized that he either needed to increase volume or solve more expensive problems.

That eventually led him toward building an agency.

Around 2025, he decided to turn the business into a full agency under the name Market Craft.

Today, Market Craft focuses on what Omar describes as market engineering. The company works with early-stage businesses with disruptive products to develop or redesign categories and build markets around those products, with goals that can include raising capital, attracting strategic acquirers, and driving early clinical adoption.

Take Responsibility for Your Own Career Development

Another major theme from Omar was personal responsibility.

He does not believe career development should be entirely the responsibility of your company or manager.

That means investing in yourself, studying beyond your current responsibilities, learning from conferences and industry events, building new skills, and taking on responsibility before someone tells you to.

Omar repeatedly came back to the importance of studying, thinking deeply, and then taking action.

Information alone is not enough. The value comes from applying what you learn.

Build Relationships by Thinking About What You Can Give

Relationships have also played an important role in Omar’s MedTech career.

His approach starts with a simple question:

What can I give this person?

For Omar, relationships require maintenance. He stays connected with people, remembers details about their lives and careers, attends in-person events, sends messages when something reminds him of someone, and even writes handwritten notes.

He also emphasized building relationships with people at different stages of their careers—not only those who may immediately be able to help you.

Over time, those genuine connections can become a meaningful part of your professional network.

Understand Where You Perform Best

Omar also pointed out that the startup environment and a large medical device company are very different.

Large organizations may offer more structure, hierarchy, and established processes. Startups can involve greater intensity and less structure.

Neither environment is automatically better.

The important question is understanding where you fit best.

Omar believes gaining exposure to different environments can help you understand yourself and what kind of career you actually want.

Final Thoughts

What I took away from my conversation with Omar Khateeb is that a career in medical device sales does not have to stop at being a sales rep. Omar used his time in the field as a starting point to learn marketing, understand business at a deeper level, build relationships across MedTech, and eventually become an entrepreneur. His journey reinforces the importance of taking responsibility for your own development before the next opportunity arrives. Study beyond your current job, take on responsibility, ask better questions, invest in relationships, and most importantly, put what you learn into action. You do not have to know exactly where your medical sales career will lead, but you can start building the skills that give you more options when those opportunities appear.

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All the best,

Jacob McLaughlin

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