Write up: “Sage Therapeutics Built An Obsolete Sales Model by Hiring Obsolete Sales Leaders”

“#ThisIsSage” represents the arrogance of sales leadership at a company who came from a culture of selling overpriced insulin, and failed through a lack of awareness. The majority of sales leadership came from a company focused on promoting readily available insulin (data: LinkedIn).

This created a compounding situation. Sage had a less than ideal launch as a company, but was also burdened by a first/second/third line sales leadership team—which possessed minimal experience with infusion, reimbursement, buy/bill, and the specialized skill sets to lead a launch of a specialty brand.

Sage Therapeutics, unfortunately will lay off over 50% of it’s sales organization as a result of many failures as an organization—tied not only to product challenges, but also to hiring sales leaders poorly equipped to launch and lead sales teams in specialized category of pharmaceutical sales.

Hopefully, senior leadership at new/existing specialty pharmaceutical companies will learn from this failure.”

 

This is part of its problem. Remember that a phase III study failed. That had nothing to do with sales leadership.

 

I can't speak to the quality of the sales force as I didn't work with them. I do know that there were many smart, talented and motivated people within the commercial organization. I think it is revisionist history to blame this on the sales force. They were largely hired to promote a game-changing, innovative product to over 500,000 moms in the US, mostly in the home setting. What they ended up getting tasked to do was the complete opposite of that. If you asked Sage management a few years ago if they would hire 200 sales reps/KAMs to market an expensive niche product to severe patients in the hospital that is DEA scheduled with a REMS and no reimbursement pathway, I don't think they would have said yes. There were clearly a lot of missteps along the way, and perhaps I will write more later on it, but I think it is pretty clear that this failure is on management, not the sales force. This was a doomed product with a cumulative loss in the hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars.

 

I work (or will have worked shortly) in the commercial organization and there are smart, talented, and motivated people in the sales force. I will admit I came from a certain insulin company and am surrounded by my peers because we did have relationships with sales managers and directors. I do not have any experience in infusion, psychiatry, or the complex sale required at Sage, but nor do the vast majority of my sales peers.

Sales leadership at every level could have mentioned to management that hiring too many people was a bad idea because we did not even have a product at the time or a plan for payer strategy. I told my manager that we were hiring too many people and she agreed. Other managers and reps had the same sentiment. I am sure this sentiment was the same throughout sales leadership.

Corporate leadership and sales leadership at a company this small are all culpable for the disaster that is resulting in over half of the sales force being laid off.

 

‘I will admit I came from a certain insulin company and am surrounded by my peers because we did have relationships with sales managers and directors. I do not have any experience in infusion, psychiatry, or the complex sale required at Sage, but nor do the vast majority of my sales peers.’

The issue with the above statement is that YOU didn’t have experience selling infusion, psych, or complex sales cycle. YOU should not have been hired, but your buddies handed you the job. That’s the issue.

The peers you refer to who didn’t have experience were handed jobs too. Some of us had this experience but management and leadership never listened, thus the situation we are in today.

 

Regardless of whether you have or do not have infusion, psych, etc., everyone is in the same boat for layoffs. That does fall upon all of leadership which includes sales management and corporate. Fair to say?

 

I mean how many people really have experience in hospital, psych AND infusion? This was meant to be a novel product.

 

Hi Kelly Brett. You used to work at Novo if I remember correctly.

 

RN’s for one. Sage should have hired nurses not a bunch of spoiled Novo people. That is the problem.

 

#WeAreSageNovoNordisk

 

Probably only need about 70 reps with large territories

 

CSO. Taylor Strategic Partners, Syneos, Amplity, etc., is sufficient for Sage.

 

Correction to post above that stated 1/2 sales force laid off. The entire sales force plus a good portion of marketing, managed markets, MSLs and other departments are all gone!

 

Yes, plus many other non-commercial departments were hit hard.

 

This is unfortunate - I was recruited for a sales position here because I had a decade of neuro/psych experience and women’s health experience and knew some key players In my territory. I turned this opportunity down (though we were worried about a novel drug) because I knew immediately there would be access/delivery/payer issues and didn’t want to go out and beg friends for scripts. Made the right choice. Doomed from the start.

 

Arrogance has led to the end of Sage as we know it! If the leadership in Ohio is any indication of the nation( which it is) this was bound to happen. When Sage started hiring positions in Ohio they wouldn’t even interview people who where qualified with experiences that would have made this company successful. They hired friends and people that had less experience than they had. A recipe for disaster ! Karma is a bitch so enjoy unemployment and the search process for a new job!

 

Sage hired a bunch of Novo people with overpriced insulin experience, not psych or hospital experience. They should have hired RN’s with clinical backgrounds and hospital experience.

 

The company will go on. This could serve as a learning experience the company and they may very well become successful with their plans.

 

everything the company has done has failed. There have been about 10 failed programs thus far. It was only a matter of time for this to catch up to them.