RIP Novo

Biopharm laid off all of their PE's last year. It's only a matter of time before our DE's are cut.

 

nope... guess again

 

If you can read, Dave Moore’s email said “you are not expected to be in the field but you need to be available by a phone”. It did not say “stay at home”. Some managers made people stay home. Others didn’t. The only people that need to stay home are the managers on Wed.

 

If the DEs do not show ROI, why are they hiring 35 Obesity Educators before laying off 185 people? If Diabetes Educators are still in the game come Thursday, could you all please put the DE bashing to rest? No, we don’t think we are better than anyone else. We are clinicians that chose our profession because we just want to make a difference and improve the health of people. That’s all. We are sales but we are not. We don’t care about numbers, points, or who gets credit for what. Most of us aren’t even competitive. Bottom line, Novo is a business and they won’t make decision if the ROI is not there. So DEs, if we are still here Thursday, stop trying to prove your worth to everyone. Be you. Be passionate. If we are out, good luck to everyone. I have no doubt that no matter where you go, you will still make a significant difference. Thank you for all you do.

 

OMG!! Stop blaming everyone for what’s happening. None of you make sense... you don’t want Doug and Dave because they are “old Pharma” and doing things from back in the day. You blame Andy and his tribe for being innovative and trying new things by following the needs of the market, with DCA’s, H structure, AE expansion, etc. I was in-house before going into the field. Believe me, Denmark kept throwing more money at us to expand. All they wanted was more reps on the streets. Needed more “soldiers in our army” than competitors. The teams in-house had to fight back and come up with ways to at least try to get “ROI” on what Denmark wanted. If things were done the Denmark way, each of those experiments would have been another layer and you would have 18 pod partners. Stop speculating and finger pointing. Good luck to all of us!

 

A great post. As a long-time industry vet, I'd like to add a few thoughts. Bottom line is that what we are doing now reminds me AP Bio class I took eons ago. Logistical growth, I think it wad called. Years of slow growth changed to a short period of exponential growth... which gives way to a flattening or decrease in growth.

1) More 33% of us owe our livelihood and lifestyles to our industry's adoption of Merck & Pfizer Reach & Frequency tactics launched during the great COX 2, hypertensive wars. After those two did it, BMS, Novartis, AZ, Sanofi-synthelabo+ Aventis followed suit. Shoot, they even wrote articles about how they needed bigger staff to "had to keep up with the big boys", etc, etc. Marketing and dinner program budgets exploded these days as well.

2) As we can now see, partly because of excesses of point #1, access dropped like a rock (who the f%*& wants to see 6 Vasotec or Norvasc or Diovan reps in the course of a month?) , and the medical industry came down on PhRMA hard in various books, articles, and lectures. WE started adding a lot of head count at the same time the "Big Boys" started thinning their herds. Hence, College Ave picked up a lot of ex-pats from people that were used to GREAT perks, pods of 3-5, huge marketing + program budgets, etc.

3) Rise in power of ESI and CVS Caremark coincided with us + Lilly+ +Ssnofi getting "outed" for so-called price collusion. End result is that we can no longer rely on an easy increase in revenue without lifting a finger. End result of THAT is…well…compare our holiday gifts last year to the glory days of 2011-2103. Are cars have decreased in value by a bunch. Bonuses aint what they once were. And head count…well, I strongly suspect that what we're doing now is going to pale to what will happen next summer.

 

THANK YOU for posting the truth. Bottom line is that Denmark drank the Big Pharma kool-aid. We hired people canned fro JnJ BMS and others to lead this company. They used Big Pharma 2003-2006 "Throw Mo' Money" strategy, right up until 2015 or so.

Paula Deen gets $6 mill. SURE! GREAT INVESTMENT!
AEs and others get Audis, rest of industry driving low level Ford and Chevys. NO PROBLEM! We attract other companies' talent with these perks!
Expand Es, DEs, AEs Hs, and DCS with DCA team. GREAT IDEA! The more, the merrier. Ou competition will NEVER figure out how to we're kicking their ass!!!

As someone that did a 8 month marketing stint at a NJ-based Big Pharma, the #2 objective was to, and I quote "spend your budget."

We fare now going through what Big Pharma started in 2011. By 2013, many Big Pharma co's had lost almost 50% of field fro their peak in 2004. I strongly suspect that in end of 2018, we will be at least 40% smaller than we were in 2013.

 

Am former DCA, can confirm I like myself. Quite fond, actually. Some people like me, not you, but some... I think? Prob not, you're right.

 

Honey, Novo has been dead for years.