Sure.....that's why nearly every other big pharma company that took the challenger bait in 2014-2015 has either totally given up on it or may occasionally pay it lip service. Maybe taken one or two good ideas from it but moved on. Nobody has integrated it like we have. Only EISAI took this "full r*****".
Remember that our chief commercial clown came from the launch powerhouse of Sanofi. All about reach and frequency and challenger model. Wouldn't know anything else until it was ten years old.
Sanofi was one of the many big pharma who jumped on the challenger bandwagon a couple years back. Friends of mine who work there say they haven't heard anything about it in months.
If you want to make money sell products TO Eisai not FOR Eisai. They are the most naive customer...they buy everything the vendors sell them. Why? Because they don't have faith in their own people. They value people on the outside much more than people on the inside. That's why they have a layoff and a mass hiring pretty much at the same time. They will continue to fail.
challenger is a decent tool but it’s just one tool. A good sales rep might use Challenger, or aspects of it, for certain customers. But always using it in all calls is like a carpenter having only one tool....say a screwdriver. He needs a variety of tools for the appropriate situation. Using only one tool would be stupid. Eisai is especially bad with that type of corporate group think that afflicts most of pharma.
Challenger cost Eisai millions of dollars. Those are just the direct costs. If you counted the huge distraction it was it would be much more $$.
Challenger has some good qualities such as training to be more assertive. But it is not meant to be executed in a juvenile, literal step by step script. Especially not in oncology and not a business to business setting. You can’t demand the “sale” of your drug on the spot to an unknown cancer patient. Makes you the used car salesman of oncology.. and MC already holds that title.
