Big Pharma - searching for their "sweet spot"

Poor Big Pharma salesforces. Senior management has finally got beyond "thinking the unthinkable" and has started cutting sales jobs.

Wyeth is in the process of cutting their 2,500-strong salesforce by 15 per cent ( that's 375 jobs for the numerically challenged out there). Actually, it has cut 750 of its full-time sales reps, replacing them with 375 part-time employees.

Insider hears that both Merck and Pfizer, after their recent poor Wall Street performances, are now about to look at similar strategies. This will copy AZs' recent austere approach, which delivered good numbers for their CEO in waiting David Brennan.

After years of building up their salesforces in an "arms race", Big Pharma has realised that they are well beyond the point of diminishing returns, a point Insider has made in previous posts.

An extra rep is not going to generate enough incremental revenue to justify the expense and so with all the other pressures, something has to give. The salesforce is an area where Big Pharma is looking to make cuts, which in the great scheme of things, would not have such a big impact on their top line.

“Everyone will be slowly edging back a little bit at a time to find the cost-benefit sweet spot,” a "decruitment" consultant told Insider recently.