Pharmaceutical Sales - The Rep's Viewpoint

With the number of pharmaceutical sales reps in the US more than doubling to c.90,000 since 1995, and the larger companies dedicating upwards of $1bn for field force budgets*, healthcare specialists G & S Research have published RepReview, which analyses the views of 430 reps from leading manufacturers.

RepReview used the ePocrates panel, which includes more than 4500 healthcare sales representatives, together with a web-based survey platform, to get responses covering reps' views of physicians, their employers and the competition, in late July this year.

In an open-ended question asking representatives for their single greatest challenge, 67% indicated access to physicians. 78% reported that they do not get enough time to adequately detail their physicians, with most citing too many competitor representatives as the most significant reason.

42% indicated the amount of time they get with physicians has decreased in the past 12 months.



82% of reps said their competitors have become more aggressive in the past year, but 61% believe that in the past year they (themselves) have become better prepared with respect to selling materials.

Industry guidelines, technology advances and co-promotions are changing the selling environment. In an open-ended question asking how their job has been affected by PhRMA guidelines, 96% responded with negative implications. The two biggest reasons cited were limited access and time with physicians and/or staff (40%) and difficulty with program recruitment (35%). NB many respondents answered with more than one response.

Over half of respondents are aware of physicians discussing and/or using point-of-care (POC) reference tools, selecting ePocrates (96%) and Mobile PDR (67%) most often.

40% of respondents currently co-promote products with another company's sales force, but a slight majority of these regard current efforts as less than effective - generally due to conflicting priorities of the companies involved and issues surrounding the co-ordination of reps (duplication, turnover of personnel, lack of communication etc..).

Most reps feel supported by their product marketing teams, with 79% agreeing that their product Marketing Department does 'a satisfactory job of providing me the necessary resources to compete with my competitors'. However, more think that marketing are 'somewhat aware' of what is going on in the field (48%) than 'very aware' (39%). Marketing are felt to lack experience in the field and in some cases bad at soliciting feedback - a typical comment was 'They base the materials on the assumption that you will have 10-15 minutes face to face selling time'.

RepReview asked respondents for which healthcare company they have the greatest respect and which healthcare company they feel has the best healthcare sales force in the world. 31% and 28% (respectively) selected companies other than the one they work for:


The overall industry experience of the respondents is relatively high, with a mean of 5 years in their current company and 9 years in the industry overall.

The four most common employers were GlaxoSmithKline (12%), Johnson & Johnson (9%), AstraZeneca (8%), and Novartis (7%) and the most common physician specialities Family Practitioners (27%), Internal Medicine ( 26%), Cardiologists (10%), and Psychiatrists (9%).

Further demographics, charts and comments are available in a .pdf format synopsis on the G & S website at www.gs-research.com .


* The figures in the first paragraph of this article are taken from:

'Pharmaceutical Sales: Sales Force Budgets Approach $1 Billion', contact Jan Blanchette, Cutting
Edge Information, Article A100436818.

PMR2 News Notes, Pharma Marketing Research, June 2003, p. 1. Quote of Scott Hensley of The
Wall Street Journal.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.

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