Dear Pharma Sales Reps,
Here are my observations from 14 years in the business. Do you agree?
Six confessions of a long-time pharmaceutical sales rep:
- Achievement is highly overrated. I’ve been both in the bottom 15% of rankings and at the top. I’ve earned bonuses as high as $47k and as low as zero. Every success felt like a lucky break. I was almost never present when a prescription was being written. Plenty of doctors told me they were excited to prescribe but never followed through. Others, who I thought hated my product (or even me) became my biggest supporters. The money is nice, but quickly spent.
- Doctors don’t care nearly as much as we want them to. I’ve sold lifestyle medicines, chronic medicines, and life-saving rescue medicines and it’s been mostly the same. Doctors typically DO care about their patients. The drugs they use, however, are like tools in a carpenters hand. Unless they cause trouble or fail to work, they’re largely an afterthought.
- Out of sight, Out of mind. For many physicians and their staff, their responsibility is to TELL the patient the right thing to do – not to ensure it gets done. They may prescribe the medicine you sell but give little care to whether or not the patient fills the script.
- For the patient and the office, money trumps all. We reps know this. Our managers know it too but are sometimes too afraid to say it. Patients don’t see medication as being a matter of life and death until they are in pain or are dying. Medicines that make them prettier, better in bed, or (sadly) give them a buzz, are worth cold, hard cash.
- The only thing that makes you an expert, to management, is your numbers. Therefore, never get too full of yourself. We’re all a couple bad quarters from some kind of probationary status.
- If you judge yourself using sales acheivement, you will never fully like your job, or yourself. Whether or not you’ve finally become an expert is a question only you can answer!
Congratulations! You win the Ritalin award for reading the whole article!
Feel free to comment below or send me a note at Meaning2work@gmail.com with your thoughts. And, don’t forget to subscribe if you want to hear more!
Sincerely,