Please Get Rid Of All Those That Are Left Over From The Failed Astellas Experiment

The short JR experiment was a failure. 2018 was a transformational year but not the one Mr. Pops was hoping for. He hired JR to transform the company and he did just that. Only problem is he transformed us into a bloated, inefficient, redundant big pharma crap box. Took us in the wrong direction along with our stock price. Analysts and the rest of the industry see's this and we are paying for it now. My question is, when will we realize it and abruptly change course. We can start by getting rid of all the Astellas cronies that he brought over here who are clueless about our business and still implementing JR's wrong direction policies. Wake up Mr. Pops before it is too late.

We who have been here a while and built this with you can see it. Why can't you? Please do something to get us back on track before it is too late. There are many that have been here for a while that want to help you and regain the splendor that this company once was. We are dedicated. We are vested in ALKS. We see what the Astellas crew did and are continuing to do that is tearing down what we all built. Please DO SOMETHING about it.

 

Back on track?That is too funny. We haven’t ever been a sales powerhouse. It is bad now but not any worse than before....just start over from scratch and we will be better off

 

At least MS would have known how stupid it is to have Vivitrol being promoted by Aristada. He would have known we don't have any products that need a full hospital rep division. Oh ya, FRM's. Really. FRMS!!! Just saying it out loud makes me laugh... Until I cry. So sad what JR did to this company. Even more regretful that most who have been here a while never challenged him or counseled him on what a mistake this large increase in headcount would be and how it would do little to impact sales. Just think of the additional Vivitrol reps we could have hired if we didn't hire FRM's.

 

Mark knew or cared about 2 things. His golf handicap and making sure you believed he was the smartest person in the room on any topic being discussed

 

MS was the one behind hospital sales force. Dumb fucking idea. Beyond that JR came in and dropped a major shit bomb and left. The bigger question is who the hell is guiding the ship? An engaged Execurtive senior leadership team would have never allowed this to happen. And there is plenty of blame to go around. It’s just not sales that screwed up but R&D, Medical, etc. Had someone listened to the FDA we might of had a chance with our new(now dead in the water) MDD drug. But of course we ignored the advice of FDA and just tried to slam an approval only to be bitch slapped by the FDA. It’s a real mess here and something has to be done

 

ummm, we should start thinking about cleaning house of all of the lifer idiots that have been working here for 15 plus years and still add nothing to the company. All they do is hold back progress. Every department has them.

 

How would we ever compete for hospital starts without a hospital sales force? Janssen and Otsuka have dedicated teams there while we were stretched thin just trying to cover CMHCs. Initio + 2 mos makes great sense for hospital discharges but these things don't sell themselves.

 

We don't need anywhere the amount of hospital reps we have. Even worse are the many hospital reps we promoted from TBM's. They are clueless how to work a hospital. Major screw up and it is sooooooo obvious. FRM's are a waste of money. I agree with the many posters who have pointed out that they bring no value because we are not oncology based. All they do is take away from time Vivitrol reps get with offices. We should have hired more Vivitrol reps and never brought in FRM's. Watch what happens to our profit line when we add all these expenses that do little to increase sales.

Last thing I want to comment on is the 5461 failure. It was pathetic. I have never seen an advisory panel rip into any company that badly. We looked like we were one of two things. Ignorant or arrogant. Both are bad. From screw ups in simple data analysis to not taking the advice of the FDA in the numerous meetings we had with them during the process. I guess we finally learned what every other company already knew. You can't try and school the FDA on data analysis techniques that are nothing more than shiny objects and smoke and mirrors.

Wake up people. The emperor has new clothes and someone has to tell him the truth about them before any rel changes will be made. I agree that it is time to get rid of the rest of JR's Astellas gang he brought in. No doubt about it. Unfortunately, we'll probably need another 2 or 3 quarters of horrible earnings reports before teh onion will be peeled back to see the charade the Astellas crew are pushing and selling. Our stock will probably been in the mid to low teens by then and it may be too late. I hope I'm wrong.

 

Pretty easy. Existing reps call on hospitals. Not that hard. Eliminates silos and all the accompanying bullshit. Not every hospital has inpatient psych units so you don’t really need a separate force. And how much impact have they had? It’s bloated wasteful kingdom building.

 

SO TRUE!! That's exactly what our hospital team has become. A bloated wasteful kingdom building division. A big show of activity nothingness.

 

True!

 

The hospital rep position is a position that can at least be justified. They have a purpose to some degree. The FRM position is a waste of company funding. Have you spent any time with the people they hired as FRMs? They are NOT very bright. What a sad representation of our company. That division needs to be scrapped. The TBMs have handled that role and done a better job. Can anyone please tell me a situation where the FRM actually helped with anything????????

 

Agreed!!

 

Amazing. This post showed the future to us back when it was made. All s/he wrote has come true. Spot on balls to the wall great analysis of our future back when it was made.

 

Reset and pivot, all FRMs and fold them into TBMs positions and restructure territories , will accelerate breadth and depth of reach to prescribers, eliminate silos and internal banter.

 

A couple of problems with your suggestion. One, FRM's are associate director level and have insanely high base salaries. I agree they'd be more effective as TBM's but will we pay $179K base salaries to a TBM? No. First thing we need to do is at least stop the FRM's from having 5 people on conference calls to chase down a few Rx's. Waste of time, money and takes our eyes off of SELLING in the field. Two, figure out how to downsize them to about half the number we have or maybe even a quarter.

I still don't know what my KAM does and the hospital team? Ha, ha, ha... They can keep calling me to come in on appointments with me or ask if they can give some of their budget money to my dinner programs so it looks like they are actually doing something. They will be found out soon enough if they haven't already been exposed. We don't have products that need a hospital team!!! Few companies do. We went way overboard with adding so many needless NAY WORTHLESS "sales" teams. I'm not sure if we can recover if we don't get rid of them soon.

Add some TBM's where appropriate. Maybe add a handful of managed markets peeps to the territories that are too big. The managed markets guy is really helpful and has always been. Actually educated me on SP's and gives me actual help and direction. All the others are just sucking money from the company and taking up my time for things that do NOTHING for sales. Why can't anyone see this?