It's hard out there for drug sales reps--particularly if they work in places where gaining access to doctors is becoming increasingly difficult.
Take Boston. Glenn Abrahamsen, senior director of global analytics for drug company Schering-Plough, says the city is full of medical groups with formal policies restricting the access that company reps have to individual doctors.
"We weren't allowed to leave samples: not tissue boxes or anything," said Abrahamsen, speaking at iiBig conference in Atlantic City, N.J. late last month "We weren't allowed past the receptionist."
Such "closed door" policies are now common around the country, especially in Washington, Minnesota and Wisconsin, according to anecdotal evidence from drug sales reps and medical groups.
The backlash--fueled in part by double-digit increases in advertising spending by Big Pharma--is turning the industry on its head. Sales reps are facing massive layoffs and falling incomes as commissions drop. Drug companies, meanwhile, are scrambling to come up with new ways to get their medications in front of the doctors who would prescribe them.
In one sign of the dislocation, Pfizer is in the process of laying off 2,200 sales reps, or about one-fifth of its U.S. sales force.
Industry watchers expect rival companies will soon follow with cutbacks of their own.
When Pfizer announced in November plans to lay off a chunk of its sales force, chief executive Jeffrey Kindler said it was more effective for a sales rep to spend 30 minutes meeting with a doctor every couple weeks than to make more frequent, but brief, visits to the office to drop off samples.
Kindler, however, did not explain how the rep would win this coveted half-hour with the doctor.
Perhaps some of his colleagues would care to comment - or perhaps offer Jeff some advice!
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1 comment:
Is this Jeff guy out of his mind? Deos he really think and believe that any doc would spend 30' with rep every two weeks. Maybe if she looks like Jasica Simpson and would not talk about drugs but give him a blue pill to take before the meeting. Imagine if this were possible, hundreds of reps spending 30' every two weeks with a doctor. If he said 30' once or twice per year.OK that could work.
This is what the big pharma's business model that called for multiple forces of mass promotion lead to, the self destruction of their promotional model. Pfizer is cutting now on sales reps. but they will still have 6-8 GP reps in every territory in USA or Canada.
Can anyone in their right mind blame the doctors to finally draw the line and say enough is enough, and such "brainy" #@*$# like Jeff can only continue to dream and plan. All his reps have to do is read the Hard Sell, X pfizer rep, book and learn how to give him what he is asking them to do. You want 30' every two weeks, you got it, in the computer that is.
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