Sales of Pharmaceutical products

Pharmaceutical sales is a tough, but not impossible, area to break into What you need to know is that there are different categories of sales reps in the pharmaceutical arena, and each category tends to carry different requirements, says Frank Heasley, a leading Internet recruitment and professional community that serves biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, healthcare and science. Even without prior pharmaceutical sales experience, you can get your feet in pharma company doors, but you have to know what hiring managers are looking for.

 Pharmaceutical company spending on marketing far exceeds that spent on research. In Canada, $1.7 billion was spent in 2004 to market drugs to physicians; in the United States, $21 billion was spent in 2002. In 2005 money spent on pharmaceutical marketing in the US was estimated at $29.9 billion with one estimate as high as $57 billion. When the US numbers are broken down, 56% was free samples, 25% was detailing of physicians, 12.5% was direct to user advertising, 4% on hospital detailing, and 2% on journal ads.

 Pharmaceutical marketing, sometimes called medico-marketing or pharma marketing in some countries, is the business of advertising or otherwise promoting the sale of pharmaceuticals or drugs. There is some evidence that marketing practices can negatively affect both patients and the health care profession. Many countries have measures in place to limit advertising by pharmaceutical companies

New pharma code & guidelines

Prohibits company sales representatives from providing restaurant meals to healthcare professionals, but allows them to provide occasional meals in healthcare professionals offices in conjunction with informational presentations" Includes new provisions requiring companies to ensure their representatives are sufficiently trained about applicable laws, regulations, and industry codes of practice and ethics. Provides that each company will state its intentions to abide by the Code and that company CEOs and compliance officers will certify each year that they have processes in place to comply. Includes more detailed standards regarding the independence of continuing medical education. Provides additional guidance and restrictions for speaking and consulting arrangements with healthcare professionals.

Some pharmaceutical companies use additional information such as: profitability of a prescription (script), accessibility of the physician, tendency of the physician to use the pharmaceutical company's drugs, effect of managed care formularies on the ability of the physician to prescribe a drug, the adoption sequence of the physician (that is, how readily the physician adopts new drugs in place of older treatments), and the tendency of the physician to use a wide palette of drugs influence that physicians have on their colleagues.

To healthcare professionals Currently, there are approximately 81,000 pharmaceutical sales representatives in the United States pursuing some 830,000 pharmaceutical prescribers. A pharmaceutical representative will often try to see a given physician every few weeks. Representatives often have a call list of about 200300 physicians with 120 180 targets that should be visited in 12 or 3 week cycle. The number of pharmaceutical sales reps has been shrinking between 2008 and 2010, an estimated 30% industry wide reduction has occurred and current estimates are there may only be 60,000 pharmaceutical sales reps in the United States.

To insurance and public health bodies Private insurance or public health bodies (e.g. the NHS in the UK) decide which drugs to pay for, and restrict the drugs that can be prescribed through the use of formularies. Public and private insurers restrict the brands, types and number of drugs that they will cover. Not only can the insurer affect drug sales by including or excluding a particular drug from a formulary, they can affect sales by tiering or placing bureaucratic hurdles to prescribing certain drugs as well.

How do pharmaceutical companies choose sales representatives?

An inside perspective Experience needed: Specialty representatives A tier somewhere in between: Institutional or hospital reps Thinking like the employers think

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