What was the turning point (why did it all fall apart)?

Oh, a lifer. . . I never would've guessed. LOL - Buddy, you are more than clueless as to the climate today. Why? Because you ARE a lifer and a total kiss ass. So, you probably wouldn't get "it" if it bit you in the nose. I have run campaigns, businesses, territories that produced over 3 million all alone. I know all about the glad handing B.S. that all the DMs want to see just so a rep can (as you put it) move ahead. You are right; I could never bring myself to be such a "yes" man/woman. Then again, I never wanted to move anywhere because I truly enjoyed being just a salesperson.

 

Proof is in the pudding old man. All of these companies are just a breath away from going under because of all those "pretty damn sharp people" who so obviously knew what works really didn't. The industry is in shambles and failing as we banter. You are one of the enablers to this epic failure. The kind of executive that fostered this type of ridiculous climate where customers come last just behind product innovation. Sales people are treated like garbage with impossible metrics and shit for products. Don't kid yourself or pat yourself too hard on the back since pharma is dying on the vine. The only solution you tools could come up with is more acquisitions of small biotech that have actually done real research and development instead of a bunch of me too drugs. But there are too few biotech products to support the glut of the big pharma assclown structure. When comparative effectiveness is a requirement, pharma will be totally dead. Had any of you idiots ever really listened to your field sales people and the customer, changed your sales structure and partnered for more development, this industry might have survived and even flourished. The writing is on the wall and the death of pharma is upon us. So, sit back and armchair quarterback on CP all you want.

 

"The reach and frequency model is adopted under the belief that the more doctors hear a message, the more they will write that product. Pfizer actually proved that this did indeed work."

I'm not sure this model ever worked. Remember when this model was adopted there were far less managed care hurdles. Blockbuster prodcut after blockbuster product that MDs actaully wanted being launched, Boner drugs, Statins, SSRI's, etc. Non stop payoffs to MDs, faney dinners, shows, games, bogus clinical studies, preceptorships. I mean with all of this going on doctors had a reason to see 8 pfizer reps a day. Money and free shit. Once all that stuff dried up and all that was left was reach & frequencey we have what we have today. Doctors with no interest in hearing a canned sales messeage and looking at a visual aid. Hence the layoffs and the situation we are left with today. A bunch of no-talent marketers still trying to run this scam.

 

LOL!!!! Are you serious!!!! Guy I'm a DM and the only reason I've been promoted is becasue I've kissed the right ass, have been a yes man and never spoke up even about the most abusrd ideas from marketing or senior managment. I was literally hired by the right person at my company who can pull strings for the people they've hired into the company. I've been at two companies prior where that was not the case and I saw plenty of idiots advance over me becasue they basically played the game better than me. Now I'm one of the idoits.

What I've learned is most DMs are severly insecure becasue this business is more luck than anything and unlike other jobs the harder you work does not necessarly equate to success in pharma. So most DMs are typically scared and lash out at others, like you're currently doing, for telling the truth. You know most of the field is just as qualified or more so than you to do your job and the only reason you have it is becasue of good old fashion apple polishing. Nothing wrong with it just accept the facts and stop acting like your some titan of industry becasue you're a pharma DM. Please tell me what you do in Pharma to "move a business" approve expense reports? . .. . forward BS success stories? . . . .. make shit up for your monthly report to your RD? . . . . "piggy back" on some comment made by a fellow DM at a managers meeting, just to hear yourself talk? . . .. count each of your reps signatures? . . . develop 5 types of trackers that track the same thing? . . .. please tell me as a DM how are you moving business? The basic job description for a DM in Pharma is to basically babysit adults. The job has no direct sales respobsibility. Hell the VPs do even less, they just choose what vendors they're going to use for advertising, sales models, and comepensation plans. Then roll it out to the team. It's a big pyramid scam.

The majority of promotions in pharma are not deserved becasue they don't want people that are independent thinkers that are confident in what they're doing. They want people that are easily intimidated and get stressed out easily so they can be controlled. Trust me I was told this by a retired friend of mine who has spent time at a director level and VP for many years in the industry. Thats why these manager meetings I go to are such a trip. I hear the BS some of these managers make their team do and I can't help but laugh. It's mostly done out of insecurity and spite. Some guy at the last meeting was bragging about doing 3 day field rides from 8 -6 each day. I told him he's wasting his time and thats why he can't get anything done in time to the RD. He was shocked when I told him I leave my reps by 3 during field rides. He asked if I was worried they were just going home after that. I said well if I stayed with them till 6 for 3 straight days I know they won't be working for a few days after so I'd rather sacrafice a few hours than a couple days. He was stunned, I think I made him even more paranoid.

 

One of the best most accurate posts about management ever written on CP. I should know as I've been here for about 8 years reading/posting and in the industry for 15. This is spot on. I have had DMs tell me the exact same thing. RDs are even more useless. Thanks for taking the time to write this!!!

 

brillant post and true.
the pharma upper managers just can't admit that their thinking is flawed. they are blinded by all the money they made, and think they are smart because they have that money.

but, truth is truth, and money can't buy truth. nothing can buy truth. all of corporate america is a sad tale, an extension of slavery, only done with more complex strategy.

 

We are not surprised you think it was one of the best posts, since it was you that wrote it. Maybe you could get your mom to log on to CP and she can agree with it as well.

Typically, people like you then make a post saying it wasn't you that made the post. Spare us the lame follow up as we are not that stupid.

 

This makes me glad I went to work for smaller companies after my first five years in Pharma. It still went on, just not as much as when I was with bigger companies.

Unfortunately, enough Big Pharma people caught on that small companies were more lucrative to work for, and they began infiltrating the startups that I joined. At my second to the last job, they had a round of promotions because we'd done well enough to expand. Every single person they promoted hadn't done squat to contribute to our success. They were all "it" people; the popular people at meetings, the ones who stood next to the Director of Sales in the booth all day at conventions, talking about their kids and pets and the things they'd bought with the stock options they'd cashed in.

It would have appeared to everyone that I was being "groomed" in that situation. I was national leader in sales, they put my e-mails up on the big screen to show what a team player I was, they made me a Regional Trainer, and gave me extra presentations to do at meetings. When I interviewed, the most important question they asked me was, "Who do you talk to?" That's all they wanted to know. I didn't get promoted, so I didn't talk to the right people, or I talked to the wrong people. I was definitely aligned with their "not it" RBD who was part of the interview panel, and that hurt me too. But, good for them...they got to say their process was so tough and legit that the top guy couldn't get promoted.

I did get a chance to talk with the real shaker and mover in the promotion process in a meeting with the new manager they put above me. He told me that I had not displayed leadership. To this day, I am so satisfied that I got to tell this buffoon right then and there that I had displayed more leadership (based on all that I mentioned above) than anyone else in the Sales Force, including the manager who was sitting at the table across from me. I pointed my finger at her and everything, lol!

At my last job, the opposite was true. EVERYONE who got promoted actually deserved it. They had good sales, they were effective trainers, great speakers at meetings, and had valid ideas to help increase sales.

So if you've stayed with one company, and the situation was/is bad, that's going to be your whole universe concerning promotions, especially if it's a big company. If you want a promotion, or if you don't like what you see, move on. You might have to make some sacrifices like going to a larger territory with more travel, but I'd rather have that than feeling sick, persecuted, and cheated all day.

 

The following entries all have merit. We grew so fast in the 80 s - 90 s that weaker candidates become managers. When I started interviewing in the 1980's, The majority of DM s were in their mid to late forties. They were humble, bright, driven and fair. They had carried the bag for over ten years and were highly vetted before promotion.

Fast forward to today, the majority of DM s are very young, carried the bag briefly and believe they are hot stuff. The sad part is they would not get a cup a coffee in technically based Fortune 500 company related to management.

I could no longer answer: Tell me a time when? The whole industry is the butt of most jokes in corporate America. In five years. Pfizer and LLY will not have company reps. They will all be contract jobs at 48k annually without benefits excluding complex formulas.

Greed too, executives are special people, but not 10 million a year special, not even close.

 

Blah, blah blah. We have heard this same garbage time and time again. People in your day had no clue what they were doing and ruined it for the rest of us. We now have to live with all the garbage you and your type created.

 

Guy I was the one who made the original post I can guarantee you its not the same person posting over and over again. I'm the DM who made the post last night and I'm checking back in for the first time this evening and saw a couple of responses.

Why would you care about this anyway? This thread is about the industry not a particular company or individual for that matter. Nobody's ripping the company you work for or yourself for that matter just the general concept of pharmaceutical managment. What vested interest do you have in pharmaceutical management that would make you so offended by these posts? I'm in management and realize it's a joke, I do it because it pays well and I have a huge mortgage, a wife and kid and nothing esle will pay me as much. Once you realize what a joke it is at any level, rep, manager, Director, VP, managed markets, you can sleep a lot easier.

You're a pharma DM. All that means is you've kissed but and know the right people. Admirable traits in todays corporate America but nothing of substance. If you want to be more constructive you can either accept the facts that Pharma is scam and use your talents in other aspects of your life while you collect your 100K plus pay check or quit and use your bussiness acume to start your own company. Pretending that your managment job in Pharma is anything more than being a corporate spokesperson will be drive you insane.

 

I'm the Manager that made the original post you replied to. I could not agree more with what your saying. My first company was a big pharma nightmare filled with the typicall stuff. My second was a Startup run by big pharma castoffs that failed miserable my third and current company was an excellent speciality bio-tech company. I sell and injectable buy and bill and our division was run by the original reps who sold this product when their were only about 5 reps nation wide. Our company is a mid-size company that has done well with Wallstreet but our division was unique in that we sold not just a pharmaceutical agent but an in-office medical procedure as well. Most of our division was good reps and mangers fed up with big pharma. Most our our VPs and marketing people spent years in the field selling the injectable and had great insight and were very helpful. Just a great enviornment. I was able to move up into managment for just being good at my job. Sure I kissed some but, and toed the company line but it was not that hard considering the success of the managers that I reported too. I was also lucky to be hired into the company by someone who has a lot of influence as to who gets promoted.

Our great injectable buy and bill product then got an big-time FDA approval about two years ago and the whole thing just blew up. Exeuctive management wanted to stress sales of our product to impress Wall Street investors and it went haywire. And like you said we were infiltrated by big pharma on all levels. Our original VPs were moved out for big pharma, mass marketing hacks who use the 1994 pfizer playbook. THese hacks brought in their buddies from GSK, NOvartis, Pfizer to run our training department and marketing department. Long time reps know more than VPs about how to market and sell our product. We sell a speciality drug thats used as a reimbursemable procedure yet we are now forced to sell it like a blood presure pill. Hell we used to be call consultants but they removed that from our titles. We have new managers from companies like novartis that are saying they can get any doctor to start injecting in a week or so, when the process for Prior Authorization for this procedure takes 4 to 6 weeks. Let alone it requires some degree of training to start injecting. Its a joke.

Big Pharma has come in and is literaly in the process of destroying what was once a very good company. As a DM I used to be able to speak up but with our new big pharma VPs we can't say ANYTHING that is not in 100% agreement. I've seen the people they've promoted over the last couple of years and most of them are no-talent hacks or old friends from previous companies. Big Pharma is like a cancer and it will destroy any product or comapny that has any level of success.

 

I was a rep 1985--2005, so I'm not the guy you're responding to. But I can tell you, you don't know what you're talking about. If you did, you wouldn't make such a lame comment.

I say this because if not for those guys, you wouldn't have a job. I didn't care much for the POD/mirror B.S. because I was a rep for small companies. All of a sudden the Merck's, Pfizer's and GSK's of the world needed up to four times as many reps as they did when I started out. Your chance at a job increased four-fold! Around 1990 the appointment books were suddenly filled with reps I considered to be duplicates. No room for us small company guys. But, the jetsam and flotsam that you were among as a new hire and your subsequent career was due to their brilliant ideas that have continued to this day in some companies.

I think it actually worked for a while, so it wasn't a case of "having no clue" about what they were doing but then EVERYONE started doing it. I thought I had escaped the mutant flood of mirror reps by becoming a biotech rep, but then some of the specialty companies started doing the mirror setup as well. Thankfully I'd had my accounts long enough and HIPAA hadn't arrived yet, so I could still get in to my offices without appointments and catering.

What you're really living with is fallout from the opportunity that arose for you in the first place. Hopefully you've learned how to hang on to your job in the time you've been around. It's kinda like you were born in the wrong age: you wanted to be a cowboy like me, but instead you're living in Orwell's 1984, lol!

 

I'm not going to argue about going from a sales position to exec level. I've been out for a few years, so if your RSD or vacation comment was directed at me, you're wrong. I can tell you it was very common with the small companies I worked for, and those people are still in those positions.

What I will comment on is what you said about RD's. It's one of the most incongruent statements I've seen here and does not recognize the nature of the big picture. You do know that there are much fewer RD positions out there than rep positions, yes? Fewer positions means a smaller market and longer job search in these times of downsizing. It's not a question of a title making someone more marketable, it's the individual making themselves more or less marketable while competing for fewer available slots.

RD's were rarely hired from outside, in my experience, so that's another strike against mid- to upper level management people looking for work in this climate. It's unfortunate for them that they aren't usually hired up (NSD) or down (DM), although I worked for a couple of companies in which the former happened.

And truly, who gets promoted to RD as part of a "more marketable" strategy? Yes, it makes you more marketable within your organization, but not so much to the outside world. The first level of management is really the one that makes a person more marketable. From what I saw, the first level sucks, but it opens many doors later on. Perhaps even to RD and then get laid off and become un-hireable later on.

 

The guy you're responding to is an idiot troll. He thinks if he has the last word, he wins, even if he has to be a lying ass to do so. I've reported several of his posts to the moderators. They have taken a few of them off the board. I will keep trying until he learns to do something besides lie and insult people.

 

The idiot troll on this board is you. You don't even work in pharma anymore, so why are you here?