Forecasts/Goals

Discussion in 'Cephalon' started by Anonymous, Jan 31, 2011 at 9:09 PM.

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  1. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    Okay...someone please explain to me how they come up with the forecasts around here.
    If I am a weatherman, can I just forecast sun because that is what I would like to see? I don't think so, however that must be what is going on around here because the forecasts seem to be pulled out of thin air with no consideration for what can actually be accomplished.
    To me, an honest and accurate forecast should wind up with the average rep hitting the goal at 100% with half the people above goal and half the people below goal. This is based upon years of experience in pharma. It didn't used to be an EXCEPTIONAL accomplishment just to hit 100% of target. It is now.
    According to the HQ folks at the Dallas meeting, the required growth for a rep to make goal in Q1 is approximately 1 Rx/week improvement. Sounds easy right...isn't that the message they were trying to get across? Looking a little deeper, it isn't so easy. By this formula, over the course of one quarter (twelve weeks), each rep must grow by approximately 78 Rx. That number is gathered by totaling the 1 Rx cumulative improvement per week. 1+2+3+4....+12 gives you a total of 78. Therefore to actually make this number you would need to improve by 6.5 Rx (78/12) each week beginning with week 1 or you are screwed and will actually have to make up more each week. My RD was all about this "easy to achieve" message and nobody could believe what he was saying!
    If you are a rep with 20 Rx per week in Q4 and for January you are averaging 22 Rx per week for 4 weeks, you are already in the hole by 18 Rx which must be made up in the next 8 weeks so your required average improvement per week actually goes up by 2.25 more Rx per week so now you have to get up to 28-29 Rx per week without any letdowns for the remainder of the quarter to hit goal.
    I can't speak for everyone, but I can say that there are going to be a heck of a lot of people not hitting goal once again! it isn't that we aren't growing the product...we just can't keep up with the people that are making these insane forecasts and that is the reason we are falling short!!! At what point do we start looking bad because we fall short of our forecasts over and over? You would think people would just start laughing at our forecasts after we continue to not make them for Nuvigil.
    Is this right or am I off base?
     

  2. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    I agree 100%. The spin doctors at the meeting always make it seem like everything is so simple. They don't account for the weeks (which we all have) where we lose scripts. It may be doable if you never take a step backward. I realize they need to put everything in a positive light but the goals are not easy. It is pretty de motivating when you bust your tail in the field, fall short of quota, and the best you can hope for is a quota adjustment.
     
  3. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    It is very simple to explain. The goals are set so high that most of the sales force will not make it thereby keeping the force motivated and under paid, ie lower bonuses! I'm very convinced even when goals are not met there are closed door meetings with leadership where they are pleased with the actual sales results, not the overeaching goals!! If your in leadership and need to reach 200 million in sales, ask the sales force for 400 million, watch them come in at 65% of goal, tell them they underachieved and laugh all the way to your review with the board of directors!!
     
  4. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    Spot on.
    We depend on those HQ folks to make honest and realistic forecasts so we can go out and deliver and hit our goals I think they are letting us down (either intentionally or unintentionally). The longer it continues, the more I think it is intentional.
    I sincerely like the idea of aggressive goal-setting like starting the year with a goal of making P-Club or being the #1 rep or manager in the company or whatever, but a forecast needs to be different than goal-setting. A forecast is a fact-based assessment of what will happen, not what you would like to have happen.
    I also understand that bonus money is just that...but we do depend on that money as a vital part of our income. As a sales rep, I despise the idea of a comp model that puts more money into my base. I want to be able to go out there and grow the business and be rewarded accordingly. On the flipside, if my performance stinks then I get nothing and am fine with it.
    In a scenario where half the reps make goal and half the reps don't make goal it is easy to blame myself and I do! However, when virtually nobody is making it I look to the company to find out the root of the problem and make it right.
    If any exec happens to read this, I urge you to take an long look at our results and have a brutally honest conversation with yourself about whether you think this is the right approach to dealing with a sales force. When motivated properly, we can move mountains. When motivation is lacking, we don't care if the mountain moves or not.
     
  5. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    I'll try to spell it out very clearly:

    1. They do sit in rooms and calculate carefully about exactly the formulas they come up with and they know on a projected basis how many people should make bonus etc (like an insurance actuary).
    2. Cephalon used to offer very lucrative bonuses but looking at a graph you can see a trajectory and trend going down,this is not by accident it is they way that management has chosen to structure it.
    3. The most important fact, there are 20,000 pharma reps who are unemployed, and Cephalon management feels that if employees are unhappy here, the door is there and dont let it hit you on the way out....anyone who is semi-presentable and intelligent can spit out CIA approved verbatims about Nuvigil and click a few buttons on a UPS-like handheld.

    SO--the writing is on the wall, it is not going to get any better at least until April of 2012, and then it remains to be seen if we will still even be here.
     
  6. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    The flaw in the logic in point #3 is that reps will be unhappy but they will stay on and just be unproductive. Yes, they can retain us because there are 20000 unemployed reps out there that would take our place. However, you would think it would make sense to have a comp plan that might pay us an extra 10-15k in bonus because I promise you that we are already seeing the manifestation of the reps disgust if you look at the Rx trends. They are not good and that will hit senior management where it counts!
     
  7. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    It might be worse than you think. The numbers I was looking at show that most reps need to increase between $90k to $100k to make their sales quota. If I am doing the math right at around 270 bucks per Rx, that would be around 111 Rxs per month they would have to increase to generate $30,000 growth in each month or 333 Rx over the course of the quarter. I don't know about your January numbers but I can already tell that I won't be hitting goal this year.
    Good times!!!
     
  8. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    Refer back to post # 5, it is industry-wide.
    I feel the pain too, but, the only thing that I think will change managements mind will be a mass exodus of people...the onezees twozees do not make a difference right now. It did in years past when Cephalon had integrity, but not anymore.
     
  9. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    PCS has lost over 1/3rd of their reps and managers over the past few months and the only response that got was "see you later." I think this management team was brought in to destroy enough of Cephalon's value that another company could easily take us over.
     
  10. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    I have heard about the mass exodus from PCS. Apparently several people that were lined up to win President's Club left the company. CNS has lost a lot of reps too.
    I would say that the "mass exodus" in CNS will begin soon. I know there is a general malaise amongst the reps. Most are very unhappy and have reached the point that they are opening themselves up to other opportunities. We want to be loyal to this company and were hoping to hear some news that would be a light at the end of the tunnel. However, if we don't get closer to a new product to sell or some sort of long-term prospect for success with this company we are screwed very soon.
    Not sure what the hell is going on here anymore. Things have certainly changed for the worse.
    The ONLY way I see this getting better is to have the RDs stage some sort of coup against the current leadership strategy and demand a change. I do know that this isn't going to happen so I can promise you that I have commenced the job search so I am not left being the one that shuts the lights out here.
     
  11. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    Just have a-ndrea b-raun lead the charge! She will smile,then backstab,then smile,then backstab,then bitch em to death!
     
  12. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    Pretty much BS to throw out something like that and not back it up with actual evidence. i don't know much about AB but she seems like a decent/sincere person to me.
    Anyways...back to the subject at hand. This is going to be someone of a devil's advocate postion, so bear with it.
    I don't think it is really the comp plan that is a problem. As much as I would like to say f&ck this place, it really isn't too bad. It has seemed to get progressively worse lately because we are now in the phase of not getting the big bonuses like we used to and all of that business. We all know that is an industry trend and i don't see it changing anytime soon.
    The MUCH larger issue for most of us has to be the uncertainty of the long term viability of this company. I don't think that most of us that have been in pharma for awhile could really make that much more money by switching employers unless you happen to hit the right product at the right time that is launching and has huge bonus potential and those opportunities are few and far between. So the only way that I can see finding a new job in pharma would help someone is if they think that this company is going to lay everyone off when Provigil goes generic. However, we can't possibly know that yet. I do believe that we are sincerely looking for a new product and that there is no D-Day in sight.
    If Provigil happens to go generic before we buy something and the company is close to finding something there is the chance that we go out and sell Nuvigil against generic Provigil for awhile. So what? Life could be worse and I don't think that is as hard of a sell as people are making it out to be. Provigil will NOT be a $4/month generic. It isn't a drug with a patient base the size of something like Lipitor and if there are multiple generic companies out there making it there aren't really that many patients to go around so they will have to charge a higher cost just to make it worth their while.
    What I don't think the company will do if they are serious about acquisitions is let everyone go and then find a product to buy 5-6 months later and face the hassle and expense of re-hiring, re-equipping, and re-training an entire sales force.
    We are also in the fortunate position that we don't need to find a drug that is going to be a billion dollar drug right away. We can find a niche drug that will sell 200-400 million and be profitable with that due to our size. Those are drugs that wouldn't hold as much interest for big pharma companies. We also have enough cash on hand to maintain our operations and hold out for the right product because our overhead is fairly low.
    While it might seem like a wise idea to bail and get into something with more security, is there really such a place these days? It is always a crapshoot, right?
    No company is doling out the bonuses like they used to so I guess we are just falling in line and while it does hurt to make less money, that is certainly not unique to us.
     
  13. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    Thanks JR, I feel so much better now.
     
  14. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    That is laughable. The RDs at this company are not going to lead anything. The new CNS RD in the North Central couldn't be a rep at this company and he is a JR "special".

    Mullholland still paying dividends at this place.......