Restasis Contract Sales Force

What does everyone thing about the new contract sales force selling Restasis? I thought they were supposed to be calling on lower volume OD's that were writing Xiidra and instead they have complete overlap with the red and blue reps. Why in the world would Allergan do this? The drug has been out 18 years and now we are all going to be running into each other. Offices barely want to see reps and now with a third Restasis rep they are seriously going to be like wtf. This is one of the worst decisions Allergan has made. Not to mention Restasis could go generic at anytime and we are still in a pandemic. It's not the time to hire a new sales force and more managers.

 

it you work for allergan you're a loser baby. so glad i left this dumpster fire years ago. i remember when they laid off reps b/c a generic was on the rise. so you are telling me they hired another sales force to promote restasis only?? brilliant!!!! docs are going to hate seeing a third rep in their office to talk about an old drug. RUN for the hills where the grass is greener and the wine is sweeter. who is driving that crazy train??? call me crazy but wouldn't it be a heck of a lot cheaper to just position Restasis better on all managed care plans than to hire a contract sales force?

 

Both of the above statements are spot on. The time wasn’t taken to dig for sales reps as a 3 person team. Not requiring the same caliber of talent or experience for contract and then boom! Just kidding about the lower targets and growing the volume. We want to add another rep to the already challenged Covid environment and have them see doctors without full disease state training. Zero to low volume would have been ideal and now we are back into a messy sales environment where we are managed to productivity and run like primary care. Not sure who’s manning the ship or asleep at the wheel with targeting and running the behind the scenes business. Why the sense of urgency without full transparency, Allergan?

 

Totally agree with what is said above with the exception that Restasis could lose exclusively at any time. That is not a threat now.

 

Why is that not a threat now?

 

AbbVie takes that risk off the table. I feel much better with our position now than before.

 

What?? How is it not a threat when the contract sales force has 1 product?? You are so uneducated.

 

no they will legally represent the product much better than we could alone. We should get 2-3 years longer out of it.

 

I didn’t realize AbbVie CEO posted on here.

 

Even if Restasis doesn't go generic we really do not need another rep. It's just too much and I feel like even the green reps realize it. I'm beginning to wonder if offices will even let them in or say, "uh, we already have 2 Restasis reps"

 

Disorganization at its finest.

 

Wow. Stop complaining about extra share of voice. Without the new rep you would complain about something else. We need help.

 

We don’t need help promoting an old drug that doctors know everything about. Two people with only 2 products in their bag is more than enough. Just wait till your offices start complaining about 3 reps and not letting you in.
Share of voice my ass.

 

I've worked for Allergan for a long time and generally think the company does things very well. This is not a good decision and even management knows it. I would even go as far as to say this is the worst decision in 10+ yeas.
3 reps with 2 old products (Alphy doesn't count) is complete overkill in a territory. We don't need anymore share of voice for a product that has lost it's patent. You've got to me in marketing or upper management. This is exactly why we start getting shut out of offices. Doctors don't want to be detailed on old ass products weekly or especially multiple times a week. It's just stupid and wastes everyone's time- especially the doctors.

 

The extra share of voice was supposed to go to little to no volume offices! Wasn’t the whole purpose to expand our reach? It wasn’t to send a Restasis rep to call on top volume Glaucoma docs! Post Covid and with current access situations was absolutely the wrong time to add another rep. If you actually kept them where they were intended to call on low volume docs, there wouldn’t be a huge concern for the decision to expand. Watch it blow up. It was never about expanding the reach as we were initially told. Now it’s just a mess and the doctors can see right through it. Watch for the employee exodus. Watch for the apathy and the lockdown from the offices. And yet there’s no word on revisiting the Q1 lack of quota attainment? Seriously over the abuse and lack of transparency.

 

I agree 100%!!

 

I legitimately don't know what the company is doing at this point. I've always thought Allergan did a pretty good job most of the time- not perfect, of course, but overall solid. This is not the fault of the contract reps, but the call panels make no sense. We were lied to, the new contract reps were lied to, I believe even the DMs were lied to. Why are the contract reps calling on glaucoma specialists instead of mostly lower volume/lower ranked OD's?? You know, the doctors we were all told they would be calling on? The ones the Xiidra reps capitalized on when they couldn't get anyone else to write? The ones we don't have time to get to because the volume is low and many don't treat any glaucoma?? Sorry, that must make too much sense. We're supposed to believe that the targets and call panel weren't vetted out before they solidified this contract sales force? Even the contract reps thought that's what they were being hired for. Come on, Allergan, get it together.

 

You are exactly right. We were told the reason the call panels changed is because those low volume OD's don't treat medically. This reasoning makes no sense because 1) you didn't know this before you hired an entire sales force to call on them? and 2) if they are Rxing Xiidra then they are treating medically. So where are all these OD's Xiidra was focusing on and the ones who would use Presby?
When I asked about us getting shut out of offices I was told "we just need to be careful how much Restasis we leave." Doctors don't care about Restasis samples- they want glaucoma samples.
I feel badly for the green reps. They know they are stepping all over us and doctors don't want to see them (especially the glaucoma specialists). And the worst part is that we can't even direct them to the doctors that would actually benefit from them because they are only getting paid on their target list.
Allergan better fix these call panels before we get shut out even more than we are already.

 

Didn't Dawn say there were no going to be more than 2 people going into an office??

 

Great point about Xiidra. Those clinics would be the perfect ones to actually include in the call panel. Green reps aren’t even comp’d on Glaucoma. They should not be covering dry eye with Glaucoma MDs, the other teams can handle it. This was a perfect opportunity to target appropriately for a directive approach while hiring and entire sales force! What the hell is the rush with everything in that regard? At least give the managers or existing sales reps input into the call panel. This was beyond messy. Combine that with no one getting paid bonuses well. But marketing can spend a fortune on superfluous materials but yet we don’t have enough Lumigan samples for our Glaucoma doctors and it’s a comp’d product. And everyone is quiet! Managers aren’t getting the actual field input or thoughts and VPs are probably coming on Cafepharma to hear it appropriately. We need some succinct and truthful feedback from top down. Everyone is scrambling and the sales and productivity will certainly suffer.