What should be done...

How can one be so confident “we know what we’re doing” when in the middle of a opioid crisis, the market share for Vivitrol is still single digits? Time to be open minded and look for better ways and not be so quick to think you “know what you’re doing”. Why not look at different models of success. I thought being open minded was what makes our company great! To embrace change.

 

This is easy. EK be gone.

 

Throw water on the witch.

 

Get a sales op dept and don’t depend on a primary care data capture for a specialty pharmacy drug.
If you can’t track you can’t pay, promote, or hold properly accountable.
The sales force is asked for no excuses...the same should hold true in Waltham.

 

1.Get rid of all the newly hired FRM's, Hospital Reps and KAM's. They do nothing/very little to increase sales. Great people but not needed. In fact, they take away from sales by muddying the waters and message. Let's face it, the Astellas experiment died long before J Robinson abruptly left. BTW, I think he left because he realized he mortgaged the future of this company on building out and adding those worthless positions and it became clear they were not needed and may have hurt more than help.

2. Take the $ saved on getting rid of the new FRM, KAM & Hospital teams and hire more Vivitrol TBM's where it makes sense. Give em less dirt and let them go deeper. Great sales team that can get the job done.

3. Relaunch Aristada. This would include getting rid of JB and most of his team and come out with a more simplified clinical and dosing message and go after AM. Aristada was the worst conceived launch I have ever been a part of in my 18 years in the pharma industry and continues to be. I won't go into more detail as I don't want to share vulnerabilities. Let's just say we all know we launched like we were the market leader trying to grow the pie instead of take share from competitors. Marketing 101 principles were ignored during launch and continue to be. Good drug horrible launch and direction from the product team. If they aren't shown the door then nothing will change with Aristada. 5 years of the same results is enough. Time for a major change.

4. Buy good data so we can set goals better and give sales credit appropriately. Its' costly but imperative.

Remember, focus groups, paid for physician verbatim data from 3rd parties and anecdotal information still comes from physicians or their office staff and even if they are paid handsomely for their time to answer the questions their fall back position is its' not available on managed care plans. Just like the we hear when in their offices. What that really means is either 1. I'm not sold on your product clinically, 2. I don't have the time to understand all your dosing options your message is very confusing (simplify the message!!!) or 3. I don't like you/I like the other rep better. Simplify the clinical message JB!! When you have great access everywhere except for maybe a couple small geographic areas and you keep getting its' not on managed care plans it has nothing to do with managed care. At my prior company we didn't even contract with hardly any MC plans and were disadvantaged to other products and if the doc was sold clinically they would do what was needed to get it. It schizophrenia, HELLO!?!? Here we are on all the major plans and it is not being used. That's not being sold clinically!!! All other company's know this, why don't we. Adjust our clinical message and simplify!

Feel free to disregard the above as you always do. I'm only in offices every day. What do I know.

 

1.Get rid of all the newly hired FRM's, Hospital Reps and KAM's. They do nothing/very little to increase sales. Great people but not needed. In fact, they take away from sales by muddying the waters and message. Let's face it, the Astellas experiment died long before J Robinson abruptly left. BTW, I think he left because he realized he mortgaged the future of this company on building out and adding those worthless positions and it became clear they were not needed and may have hurt more than help.

2. Take the $ saved on getting rid of the new FRM, KAM & Hospital teams and hire more Vivitrol TBM's where it makes sense. Give em less dirt and let them go deeper. Great sales team that can get the job done.

3. Relaunch Aristada. This would include getting rid of JB and most of his team and come out with a more simplified clinical and dosing message and go after AM. Aristada was the worst conceived launch I have ever been a part of in my 18 years in the pharma industry and continues to be. I won't go into more detail as I don't want to share vulnerabilities. Let's just say we all know we launched like we were the market leader trying to grow the pie instead of take share from competitors. Marketing 101 principles were ignored during launch and continue to be. Good drug horrible launch and direction from the product team. If they aren't shown the door then nothing will change with Aristada. 5 years of the same results is enough. Time for a major change.

4. Buy good data so we can set goals better and give sales credit appropriately. Its' costly but imperative.

Remember, focus groups, paid for physician verbatim data from 3rd parties and anecdotal information still comes from physicians or their office staff and even if they are paid handsomely for their time to answer the questions their fall back position is its' not available on managed care plans. Just like the we hear when in their offices. What that really means is either 1. I'm not sold on your product clinically, 2. I don't have the time to understand all your dosing options your message is very confusing (simplify the message!!!) or 3. I don't like you/I like the other rep better. Simplify the clinical message JB!! When you have great access everywhere except for maybe a couple small geographic areas and you keep getting its' not on managed care plans it has nothing to do with managed care. At my prior company we didn't even contract with hardly any MC plans and were disadvantaged to other products and if the doc was sold clinically they would do what was needed to get it. It schizophrenia, HELLO!?!? Here we are on all the major plans and it is not being used. That's not being sold clinically!!! All other company's know this, why don't we. Adjust our clinical message and simplify!

Feel free to disregard the above as you always do. I'm only in offices every day. What do I know.

 

Absolutely agree with the two prior posts! On point about the demise and situation we are faced with. Ugh...

 

So your novel idea is to fire everyone and use the money to hire more Vivitrol TBMS??????????? Ha ha ha!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You have 2.5% share in the middle of an opioid crisis with crazy good product access and tons of state and federal dollars available. Get your head out of your ass and get with the times. You are what’s wrong at Alkermes and that will be proven.

 

Said the soon to be downsized KAM. Sorry to see you go. Unfortunately, you wont be missed because none of you guys ever did anything other than produce spreadsheets and reports on all you were doing to get things done which was usually taking credit for police's and managed care teams work. As a TBM, none of us to this day even know what you do.

 

WOW. Spot on post. The person who wrote it should be the one to replace Carlos. Heck. Maybe to replace Popps!

 

Today was just the beginning. More to follow. So much slicing and dicing to do. Where do we go next? Managed Markets? Policy? Hospital? So so many choices. Sharpening my axe as I type.

 

Please make it super sharp. Most agree there are a lot of places that need trimming. But lets not be foolish about where to start. Does anyone think we actually need a hospital team? NO! Do KAM's do a single thing to increase sales? No. FRM's? Seriously! FRM's!!!! If we actually need any it sure isn't as many as we have. How about getting rid of Hospital team and having DBL's take that over like they do at most companies? KAM's should go back to size prior to the expansion. That would allow us to remove the ding dongs managing them. Maybe keep two or three more than we had prior to expansion and have them call on the major hospitals, too. Reduce the FRM team by at least half. Wouldn't even see a blip on the sales trend line if we cut them all. Adding the KAM's and FRM's has actually made us less efficient. Nothing but senseless meetings and CC's about NOTHING! That's a good start.

 

1.Get rid of all the newly hired FRM's, Hospital Reps and KAM's. They do nothing/very little to increase sales. Great people but not needed. In fact, they take away from sales by muddying the waters and message. Let's face it, the Astellas experiment died long before J Robinson abruptly left. BTW, I think he left because he realized he mortgaged the future of this company on building out and adding those worthless positions and it became clear they were not needed and may have hurt more than help.

2. Take the $ saved on getting rid of the new FRM, KAM & Hospital teams and hire more Vivitrol TBM's where it makes sense. Give em less dirt and let them go deeper. Great sales team that can get the job done.

3. Relaunch Aristada. This would include getting rid of JB and most of his team and come out with a more simplified clinical and dosing message and go after AM. Aristada was the worst conceived launch I have ever been a part of in my 18 years in the pharma industry and continues to be. I won't go into more detail as I don't want to share vulnerabilities. Let's just say we all know we launched like we were the market leader trying to grow the pie instead of take share from competitors. Marketing 101 principles were ignored during launch and continue to be. Good drug horrible launch and direction from the product team. If they aren't shown the door then nothing will change with Aristada. 5 years of the same results is enough. Time for a major change.

4. Buy good data so we can set goals better and give sales credit appropriately. Its' costly but imperative.

Remember, focus groups, paid for physician verbatim data from 3rd parties and anecdotal information still comes from physicians or their office staff and even if they are paid handsomely for their time to answer the questions their fall back position is its' not available on managed care plans. Just like the we hear when in their offices. What that really means is either 1. I'm not sold on your product clinically, 2. I don't have the time to understand all your dosing options your message is very confusing (simplify the message!!!) or 3. I don't like you/I like the other rep better. Simplify the clinical message JB!! When you have great access everywhere except for maybe a couple small geographic areas and you keep getting its' not on managed care plans it has nothing to do with managed care. At my prior company we didn't even contract with hardly any MC plans and were disadvantaged to other products and if the doc was sold clinically they would do what was needed to get it. It schizophrenia, HELLO!?!? Here we are on all the major plans and it is not being used. That's not being sold clinically!!! All other company's know this, why don't we. Adjust our clinical message and simplify!

Feel free to disregard the above as you always do. I'm only in offices every day. What do I know.

 

Uh. Um. Err. Humph. Aaah. Hmmm. Eh. Um. Uh.

 

?

 

Absolutely correct!! Trim the fat and eliminate the useless KAM positions. What exactly do they do???? I keep hearing criminal justice but I’ve only seen them ride the TBMs initial leads and NEVER generate any new business on their own. They bring NOTHING to the table!!!

 

Absolutely correct!!! Trim the fat and eliminate the unneeded KAM positions. What exactly do they do??? I keep hearing criminal justice but I’ve never seen or heard of them generating any business on their own. They strictly like to take credit for everything the TBMs have already started way before a KAM became involved. Please show me how they contribute anything??????

 

1.Get rid of all the newly hired FRM's, Hospital Reps and KAM's. They do nothing/very little to increase sales. Great people but not needed. In fact, they take away from sales by muddying the waters and message. Let's face it, the Astellas experiment died long before J Robinson abruptly left. BTW, I think he left because he realized he mortgaged the future of this company on building out and adding those worthless positions and it became clear they were not needed and may have hurt more than help.

2. Take the $ saved on getting rid of the new FRM, KAM & Hospital teams and hire more Vivitrol TBM's where it makes sense. Give em less dirt and let them go deeper. Great sales team that can get the job done.

3. Relaunch Aristada. This would include getting rid of JB and most of his team and come out with a more simplified clinical and dosing message and go after AM. Aristada was the worst conceived launch I have ever been a part of in my 18 years in the pharma industry and continues to be. I won't go into more detail as I don't want to share vulnerabilities. Let's just say we all know we launched like we were the market leader trying to grow the pie instead of take share from competitors. Marketing 101 principles were ignored during launch and continue to be. Good drug horrible launch and direction from the product team. If they aren't shown the door then nothing will change with Aristada. 5 years of the same results is enough. Time for a major change.

4. Buy good data so we can set goals better and give sales credit appropriately. Its' costly but imperative.

Remember, focus groups, paid for physician verbatim data from 3rd parties and anecdotal information still comes from physicians or their office staff and even if they are paid handsomely for their time to answer the questions their fall back position is its' not available on managed care plans. Just like the we hear when in their offices. What that really means is either 1. I'm not sold on your product clinically, 2. I don't have the time to understand all your dosing options your message is very confusing (simplify the message!!!) or 3. I don't like you/I like the other rep better. Simplify the clinical message JB!! When you have great access everywhere except for maybe a couple small geographic areas and you keep getting its' not on managed care plans it has nothing to do with managed care. At my prior company we didn't even contract with hardly any MC plans and were disadvantaged to other products and if the doc was sold clinically they would do what was needed to get it. It schizophrenia, HELLO!?!? Here we are on all the major plans and it is not being used. That's not being sold clinically!!! All other company's know this, why don't we. Adjust our clinical message and simplify!

Feel free to disregard the above as you always do. I'm only in offices every day. What do I know.

 

We will and glad you aren’t running the company