Ed Silverman at Pharmalot turned us on to a survey that has been going on since January at the infamous CafePharma. The survey asked, “Would you encourage a friend to become a drug sales rep?”
As Ed summarized the response:
Only if you’re not interested in remaining friends. At least that’s the take-away message from the latest poll at CafePharma, where sales reps love to dish about docs and detailing.
The survey, which has been going on since January, suggests most reps who value their friendships — or 72 percent — would urge their pals to find a different job. Which job? That didn’t come up, but if the housing market picks up, maybe selling aluminum siding is an option.
Here are the results:
Yes, for sure! It is a great job! — 25, or 10.6 percent;
Probably yes — 40, or 17 percent;
Probably no — 61, or 26 percent;
Hell no! You would have to be crazy — 109, or 46.4 percent.
As a public service to our readers, here is some help with your interview to become a pharma rep, via CollegeRecruiter.com
It also helps if you are young, blond, and have a nice pair of pompons.
SAMPLE QUESTION FROM HIRING MANAGER: What is your perception of a typical day for a pharmaceutical representative?
THOUGHT PROCESS: The Hiring Manager is looking for your perception of what the representative does every day. They are also looking for work ethic (working early, late) and commitment to getting the job done … DO NOT SAY THIS IS A PUBLIC RELATIONS POSITION. Do NOT answer “Drop samples and have dialogue with physicians.” Your interview is dead with that answer…
SAMPLE ANSWER: I have an idea of what the day is like for a pharmaceutical representative and I think it parallels some of what my normal day is like. As a representative I would see as many of my assigned physicians as possible and sell them on why they should use my drug over the competition … I don’t know if you entertain physicians like I do with my customers currently but I would do some entertaining at night (restaurant) or on the weekends, (golf, hunting, fishing) – whatever it takes to beat my numbers.
SAMPLE QUESTION FROM HIRING MANAGER: What do you think is the most challenging aspect of a pharmaceutical representative?…
SAMPLE ANSWER: …There are physicians that don’t see representatives. You have to be creative in finding a way to gain access to them…
SAMPLE QUESTION FROM HIRING MANAGER: You are given a territory and a list of physicians to call on. How would you organize and prioritize your call schedule?…
SAMPLE ANSWER: I would analyze my territory, and determine the accounts that have the greatest sales potential. I would quickly work to determine my most profitable 20 percent of my clients. Once they have been contacted and I feel comfortable with my relationship with these clients, I would then work the rest of my customers and develop new clients.
SAMPLE QUESTION FROM HIRING MANAGER: Tell me about your last manager. Did you like him/her?…
SAMPLE ANSWER: I liked my manager and we had a positive working relationship. We had similar thought processes on how to run my territory and how to best manage me…
SAMPLE QUESTION FROM HIRING MANAGER: How do you think you would get a Physician to switch to your drug?…
SAMPLE ANSWER: … I would determine what influences his behavior: reprints, speaker programs, peers, and formularies. I would use a combination of the appropriate tools to gain physician agreement on my drug’s effectiveness. After this, I would gain commitment from him to use the drug on a specific patient type. After the physician has tried my drug on this patient type, I would get him to notice the success on this patient when the patient comes back in for a follow up visit. When the physician admitted efficacy, I would then gain commitment for use in other patient types.
I think we get the picture.
A new academic study details how drug reps use friendship (and, of course, other attributes) to manipulate doctors into prescribing their company’s medications more often.
An excerpt from the study, as reported by Reuters:
Reps scour a doctor’s office for objects  a tennis racquet, Russian novels, ’70s rock music, fashion magazines, travel mementos or cultural or religious symbols  that can be used to establish a personal connection with the doctor … A friendly physician makes the rep’s job easy because the rep can use the “friendship” to request favors in the form of prescriptions.
The study was published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine. One of the researchers was a drug rep for Eli Lilly and Co., but now works at the University of California San Francisco’s school of pharmacy.
Although it’s not exactly a big secret that drug reps befriend doctors to produce dollars, it appears doctors may be growing weary of the parasitic relationship. The Web site PharmedOut is a good example of physicians fighting back against Big Pharma’s influence over the medical profession.
PharmedOut is “an independent, publicly funded project that empowers physicians to identify and counter inappropriate pharmaceutical promotion practices. PharmedOut promotes evidence-based medicine by providing news, resources, and links to pharma-free CME courses.”
Sorry, drug reps: Doctors are getting tired of “giving you the milk for free,” as they say. It may be time to look for a more meaningful (as in honest) relationship.
Apparently, it isn’t enough for Sally Field to do commercials for Boniva — now she’s pimping it on Martha Stewart’s show. John Mack found this description on an online forum:
Sally Field was on [Stewart's] show today and mentioned that she has osteoporosis and wanted to talk about Bone Health … Sally mentioned medications, and said she takes the once-a-month Boniva. Martha interrupted her to ask if it’s full of vitamins and minerals. Sally said, “No, it’s a treatment.” Martha said, “Reeeally, no minerals?” WTF? Then Sally finally said she wanted to talk about Bone Health again, and again, Martha cut her off for a commercial break … One more segment, Sally has twice said, “I wanna talk about Bone Health,” and Martha just went right back to talking about the flowers they were planting and then asked her about The Flying Nun. Now time’s up, Martha said, “Good luck with the osteoporosis…thing,” and then asked if men can get it. Sally finally got a few seconds to plug…
Hellooo, FDA? FTC? I can’t believe this kind of endorsement (without disclosure) is permitted. Will someone please lock up Sally Field for this deceptive nonsense so we don’t have to watch her on that horrible “Brothers and Sisters” show?
More on celebrity drug money from BrandweekNRX. Oh, and in case you missed Martha, this is pretty much how it went:
Drug reps are having a harder and harder time making ends meet. Big Pharma has flooded the market with reps trying to push their product, and they are now paying the price. From CNN Money via Kevin M.D. and PharmaGossip:
Big Pharma, already reeling from mounting competition and tightening government regulations, now has another problem to deal with: an oversupply of sales reps, many of whom are fed up with what they describe as an increasingly restrictive work environment, according to drug industry officials. The old method of saturating individual doctor’s offices with multiple reps from one company is becoming less popular as the billion-dollar blockbusters they once promoted with relative ease are losing their patents–and having to compete with lower-cost generics.
If you’re wondering who to cheer for during Friday’s Miss USA pageant, we offer you Mia Heaston – representing Illinois and the pharmaceutical industry.
Yep — Mia’s a pharma sales rep. And surprisingly, from our quick scan of the bios of the 51 Miss USA contestants (we didn’t spend any time ogling the swimsuit pictures, of course), she’s the only pharma rep in the running for the crown this year.
Last year was better for Big Pharma, and particularly for Sciele Pharma (formerly First Horizon), which has employed two contestants from the 2006 pageant:
Miss Florida 2006 Cristin Duren, and
Miss Michigan 2006 Danelle Gay.
Still, this is a pretty poor showing compared to our NFL cheerleading squads and NBA dance teams. Sigh — maybe next year.
From the AP via DrugWonks.com:
An AIDS organization sued Pfizer Inc. over ads the group says encourage use of Viagra as a party drug. The nonprofit group said such recreational use furthers the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. The suit, filed in Los Angeles by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, calls Pfizer’s ads for the impotence drug false and misleading. The suit echoes allegations made in an ad campaign announced by the group last month.
The nonprofit group alleges the marketing of Viagra has fostered an increase in the spread of STDs. Studies have found the drug is used — illegally — in conjunction with crystal methamphetamine to form a party drug “cocktail.”
DrugWonks is shocked — shocked! — by the charges:
Drugwonks believes that the combo of crystal meth and Viagra is an off-label use that Pfizer has never promoted. There is no truth to the rumor that the company sought product placement in episodes of Six Feet Under, Entourage or Queer as Folk….
Wow, maybe Pfizer will begin to tone down its over-the-top DTC ads … Naah! (In fact, Pfizer appears to have the perfect sales team for such off-label uses.)
Dr. Peter Rost penned an interesting post listing all the Pfizer representatives on MySpace.
Once I saw Dr. Rost’s post, my curiousity got the better of me and I paid MySpace a visit as well. I performed a similar search but used a search term that produced some amusing results: “pharmaceutical sales cheerleader”.
I found that more often than not, even the male Big Pharma reps were cheerleaders in college. From reading the profiles, it appears that a number of the MySpace reps are pretty hard partiers.
Oh, well. I guess any experience with pharmaceuticals is better than none at all…
The U.S. pharmaceutical industry is, for lack of a better term, a mess. Protected from serious government reform by its powerful lobbyists and big checkbook, Big Pharma flits away billions on direct-to-consumer marketing and developing patentable reformulations of the same old drugs. Then, they pass along the massive costs of their misguided priorities (along with a substantial markup, of course) to you, the consumer.
Sometime back, the New York Times published a story that, for me, symbolized all that is wrong with Big Pharma today. The story told how Big Pharma is hiring the reps who market its drugs to physicians based not on medical knowledge — but purely (and cynically) on sex appeal. As the Times explained, “Stories abound about doctors who mistook a sales pitch as an invitation to more.”
Which is why pharmaceutical companies are systematically recruiting from cheerleading squads — even spawning a cheerleader employment firm.
As an update on the Times’ story, the eDrugSearch Blog decided to do a quick scan of pro sports Web sites to see the occupations listed by the current roster of NFL and NBA cheerleaders. The following is our All-Pharma Cheerleading Squad — current pro cheerleaders who double (and undoubtedly receive double takes) as pharma reps:
Allison, Philadelphia Eagles
Beth , St. Louis Rams
Brooke, Cincinnati Bengals
Carla, Atlanta Falcons
Kellie, Baltimore Ravens
Lindsey, New Orleans/Okla. City Hornets
Monae, Seattle Sonics
Natalie, San Francisco 49ers
Onya, Washington Redskins
Romney, Baltimore Ravens
Stacey, Charlotte Bobcats
Tara, Baltimore Ravens
Tawnya, Philadelphia Eagles
Traci, Tennessee Titans
Trisha, Kansas City Chiefs
Wanda, Washington Wizards
One caveat to our list: the All-Pharma Cheerleading Squad likely includes only a minority of those pro cheerleaders who also cheer for pharma, as many team Web sites do not include occupational info on their cheerleaders.
