Supposedly, a report is due at the end of this next week detailing just how much business is generated from e-detailing and telesampling. We already know that there is a bunker somewhere where hundreds of people are sitting at computers e-detailing our docs. I've heard the efficiency numbers put at 97% efficiency (because so many of these docs are "no see" the calculated profit average is almost the same as the docs reps go and visit- yikes!) I really wish that PFE leadership would just come clean and tell us that the future of this industry is mailing samples out after doctors talk to someone behind a webcam who looks up answers for them after an e-detail. It makes total sense. With the economy changing so rapidly and energy costs going up so much, only an idiot would look you in the eye and tell you otherwise. You still need a skeleton crew of highly qualified people to work major institutions and put together large scale projects but that would look nothing like the system still in place- 4 person LATS, people tripping over each other and bickering, the 8 calls per day standard that's been dusted off from 1998 and thrown out there to see if it sticks to the wall with all of the other crap.
I understand through a contact on the inside that this is exactly right. Fulltime Pfizer reps are a thing of the past and the future is with contract reps. Please remember that upper management view the sales force as a liability. Contract reps avoid the liability and provide the ability to shift blame.
I've done an analysis of the Northeast and the percentage of offices which are accessible on a daily basis is less than 10%. This leads us to believe that the vast majority of calls are fake or "signature / leave literature" calls. The later can be handled much more efficiently via telephone calls. A telemarketer can determine if samples are necessary better than an in person rep because they can call 10 offices an hour vs. the average reps calling on 8 offices per day. Plus they are invisible to the patients, reps in waiting rooms is a true intrusion. Details regarding prescription drugs are now available vs. smart phones. This gig is now the equivalent of being a "milkman" in 1965. Supermarket were growing and supplied everything necessary including milk..........the clock was ticking on these guys, time to find a new career field. Sometimes the most dangerous place to stay is in place.
They are an equal liability regarding civil and criminal violations under the agency principle. Since they in theory have less to lose, salry and benefits, and less loyalty than in house Pfizer reps, I'd say that contract reps are a much more risky move and thus a higher liability to Pfizer. Nobody ever said Pfizer has sufficient foresight to realize this, but it is the truth.
I love the fantasy land that stupid people live in where Pfizer hiring contract reps means they are no longer liable for anything. That's simply not true...maybe Pfizer goes to contract and maybe they don't, but the reason will not be because they no longer have to worry about off-label promotion or things like that. How stupid are some of you people?
Like doctors have the time to get e detailed. Send me that samples and maybe I will use the product. At least with the reps delivering them their guilt might make them throw you a bone every once in a while. The doctor can't practice medicine anymore it is managed care and insurance that makes the decision for them most of the time. Path of least resistance. The system is broken and until new drugs get approved look for more heads to roll. Contract might be the future but it is like we paid you 30 an hour for your job before and now if you want to work for us we will pay you 10. Unless your in upper management then you take buy out and take the money and run.
Think of the help desk associate trying to e detail a doctor. Now thats funny. Wasn't it a few years ago we gave doctors computers to try to get them to participate in e detailing? Didn't work then and won't work now.
You're a bullshit artist. Sounds like you own or work for a company trying to sell e-detail. What are you trying to land some contracts? So you posted this to get someone to think about calling you back? Buzz off, no one is buying here.
Oh, so you've done the analysis have you? Bullshit. You're the person who started this thread.... with a plan to sell som edetail to...someone. You're full of crap.
Contract reps ARE the future for many reasons: #1. LESS expensive. There are many former drugs reps that will work for $45-$55K a year. Nothing like a recession to re-set lower wages. #2. Less Liability. It will be the contract compnay that is repsonsible if their reps talk off label. Pfizer will tell the contract company to use only the approve pieces. #3. Less management, as even the contract company will have district mangers making 50% LESS than Pfizer DMs. #4. No company cars, just offer the contract reps $400 per month for gas. No $$ for increased retirements as all the Pfizer reps will eventually be gone. Less expansive $ for healthcare as the contract compnay will use a less gold plated healthcare plan. Loyalty is cheap today and can easily be bought. Today is all about lowering operating costs and labor is Pfizer's #1 cost, than can easily be reduced with a contract sales force. As a previous poster stated, "....tick tick tock...." the pharmaceutical rep job is about to done away with the internet.
I hate to say it, but ZS had reports showing how effective this is all the way back in 2001, when high speed internet wasn't that common and you needed a T1 line to have an e-detail. The ELT saw this coming a long time ago and made the last decade nothing but a personal enrichment scheme. Buying other companies, sending out an army of reps, choking off access, it was all a master plan. Everybody from the VP level on up got incentives for launching more and more drugs while there was profit to be made by the action-selling, 11 cluster robot army. Think about it- Celebrex could have had an acute pain indication from the start if it would have been launched 6 months later. Bextra would still be on the market as a blockbuster along with its IV form if it would have had 1 safety study done to completely clear up the SJS issue. Even Exubera would have had complete pulmonary safety data (no need for spirometry) and a much smaller inhaler id they just would have waited 1 more year to launch it. McKinnell promised 4 new drugs per year after we bought Pharmacia, the first public revelation of this strategy. The door has been slowly closing for more than a decade. Insurance companies and managed care and the government will soon demand these changes. Greed, bad luck and misinformation have hastened the overall decline. The people lying to us today will have their millions no matter what
All your garbldy gook does not make sense. There would be no way of knowing if any additional studies done on any of the drugs you mentioned would have been clinically successful.
makes sense...no need to pay huge salaries to managers who are not managing as they too are just going through the motions.
Honestly, you don't even need the skeleton crew. Major institutions shut there doors to reps years ago. If you think access is bad now wait till Obama care kicks in....
