Who Is Selling Afrezza?

What diabetes sales forces are selling Afrezza? What are the others selling? I think our area is doing something different that is actually working. Several in my training class I keep in touch with are telling me they are either L/T or A which makes no sense.

 

if you were actually employed by the company, you would know the answer to this .

 

We are what our ABL calls a "hybrid", but she does not want us broadcasting it, so I will because she never gave us a good reason. I dont like the games management plays here. We have everything. Lantus/Toujeo, Apidra & Afrezza. IC includes all. Makes sense and I can answer all of my customers questions without having to call in another rep. Have only heard of one other area doing this & that ABL is very good friends with ours.

 

24 weeks on the market and only 364 NRx this week .. holy smokes .. when does the new diabetes unit shoot this drug? Anyone even seen any print/internet ads yet?

 

Its summer-time, and lots of docs and patients are on vacation. Just wait until DTC kicks in, and everyone comes back from vacation. I promise that you'll see a quadrupling of NRx by mid September.

 

Hahahaha .. some print ads are going to save this? No shot. Rx running at 50% of Exubera after 6 months .. Pfizer was saying wait for DTC back then too .. and we all remember how that worked out. Keep drinking the Kool Aid.

 

And Toujeo is already doing 6,400 Rx a week after only half the time on the market and increased by 400 Rx this past week. I guess those docs and patients aren't on vacation? Doing more than 10x better than Afrezza and that launch is actually pretty mediocre .. Time for some major changes at Sanofi .. I just wonder which people and products will get shot.

 

Here is the question: Will we hold on to the current sales and marketing leads ad infinitum, or will we go back to the drawing board and either import or hire some fresh talent?

 

Let's just get it done and sell. We can do this. Think of all of the years of experience our collective diab. unit has. We can do this.

 

No problem, no sale. Pharma has done such a grand job of making injections painless and easy to administer that our customers see no advantage to the questionable safety of delivering insulin through the lung.

 

Both Toujeo and Afrezza are absolute failures so far. We should be embarrassed with 6400 TRx and 350 TRx, being it should be 64,000 and 35,000 based on the money and effort we've put behind these drugs. The issue here is the drug themselves, not our marketing plan or sales effort or anything like that. Toujeo is re-packaged Lantus and Afrezza is re-packaged human insulin. Why would we ever expect with of these products to fly off the shelf. No matter how you package it, docs know what these drugs really are, no matter how we try to spin it.

 

Indeed. How pathetic to have to try to sell a product that no one wants just so you can make money for your self and a company and shareholders. Its like getting dumped and being a pest instead of letting them move on. Pull it off the market & get over it. Pfizer had the guts to do it.

 

Ah, the typical pharma attitude of "we did it before 15 years ago, we can do it again".

Not one of our customers cares a whit about our "collective years of experience". If that were the case, Lilly would be DIABETES KING, followed by GSK, and then maybe Novo and Takeda.

You know who we sound like when we blather about how we ruled the world with Lantus during President G Dubya's 2nd term? We sound like the CEO of Chrysler in 1988 (after sales of those boxy cars were dropping like a stone, and he kept cranking them out, year after year, until he got fired just a few years after he was the single most admired CEO on the planet.)

We've never before faced this type of pressure from customers (MOSTLY Medicare, PBMs and health plans) to deliver value over existing therapies. Never.

We've never had to fight so many generic options, never had the damned ACA pushing our customers (hospital systems and health plans) to keep their profits down, we've never had so many big time competitors that had fantastic products out before our version.

I know how so many of my colleagues over-exaggerate their calls and influence on Rx, but in my 15 years, we've never had less access to customers (ESPECIALLY big hospital systems and group offices). Never.

So now here we are again, another p*ss-poor Sanofi launch, and the mantra from the home office is the same as it was 10 years ago: squeeze in 2 more "sales calls" a day, try to close harder for the next 10 patients, and lets wait until we see the effects of our awesome DTC ad.

You can't make this stuff up. Simply put, since 2009 we've become a business case in ineptitude, with a revolving door of CEOs, Presidents, whatever!!!

 

Judging from the latest NRx data, it looks like there are 5 or 6 people "selling" the lions share of Afrezza.

 

Your grasp of history at Chrysler is incorrect. Lido was never bounced. 18th most admired man in America.

 

My brother's family and I were in Applebee's celebrating my 6 year old niece's birthday. And Afrezza ad came on…I swear, at least a third of the joint pulled out their iPhones at the end of the commercial. I really expect that we're going to see a HUGE increase in NRx, thanks to that awesome ad.

 

That's the funniest thing I think I've ever read on this site!

 

I heard the add and did the same thing. Went and talked to my doctor and she told me no way she would "allow her patients to inhale a hormone". Once we talked about it, I decided it was not a good choice for me.

 

So have you guys finally given up on this thing .. Rx were down again this week (NRx of only 319 eesh) .. and the product not even mentioned on yesterday's earnings call or in the 43 slide deck? Sure seems like you are preparing to give it back to Big Al and friends?

 

And how are things over at Novo these days, troll?