Science Or Sales

Long-Term Success Requires Science
“The pharmaceutical industry is a highly regulated and scientific-based industry, supported by suppliers, consultant and vendors, which are also regulated, and one would think, focused on science. The unfortunate truth, though, is that there are still vendors and consultants out there that focus their advice to the industry on their company’s revenue goals and often distort the actual topic. This can go so far that vendors, supposedly scientifically oriented, either try to deliberately influence regulatory authorities to adopt their opinion or do so as an undesirable side effect. The end result is that the drug manufacturing industry has to comply with the artificially created regulatory enforcements created by a vendor and consulting industry which thinks about short-term financial goals instead of an economic, safe, and efficacious drug product. Ultimately, a science-based philosophy by vendors and consultants will create an industry-beneficial, one-voice approach instead of unnecessary bickering and confusion. Maybe one day all supply and support function of the pharmaceutical industry can see that long-term success is built on science, not short-term sales.” I couldn’t agree more.

My Perspective
I always have been a believer in — if you put the patient first, sales will take care of itself. This philosophy has served me well and is why I can sleep well at night. It also served as a point of contention with pharma sales management throughout my career. For example, at a district meeting with one of my previous employers, I was explaining to my national sales director (NSD) my approach to promoting our current antibiotic. This particular technique I had picked up from my father, who at the time was a practicing pediatrician in an area outside of my territory. Our product was cefprozil oral suspension — a cephalosporin antibiotic indicated for Otitis Media, fancy words for an ear infection. The cause of these infections can be either bacterial or viral. Most clinicians treat this empirically, meaning based on local information or previous cases they might begin treatment based on their best guess. Thus, if they believe it to be viral, prescribing an antibiotic will not prove beneficial. If it is bacterial, then the odds are good that an antibiotic may prove useful. So, here was my approach, which I referred to as the ABC of treating Otitis Media. Start with Amoxil — a generic, inexpensive penicillin antibiotic. If after 10 days, then consider Bactrim — a generic combination sulfonamide trimethoprim antibiotic, and thus, also cheap. If these didn’t work, then consider my company’s product — Cefzil. If that didn’t work, then reach for Zithromax, a macrolide antibiotic and what many clinicians like to refer to as a big gun. I liked this approach, as did my clinicians. First, this is how they practice medicine — conservatively. Second, it gave me credibility because I wasn’t asking for how many scripts they would write for my product in the next week. Third, it was in the best interest of preventing a problem we are now seeing resulting, in part, from the overprescribing of antibiotics — bacterial antibiotic resistance. My NSD did not like this approach at all, making it clear to me that our product should be prescribed as a first-line treatment. He even gave a directive that we had to sample cefprozil on every single call, even if the office didn’t need samples. Trust me, they didn’t need samples, since we had about five sales reps overlapping the area with a surplus of samples. Going against the company line didn’t hurt my sales. I still won a sales award for growing share with this product. More importantly, my clinicians realized I was on the same page of trying to help them treat their patient and not pad my wallet. The people I saw sell for short-term gain tended to have fairly short-term careers, as clinicians lost trust in those individuals.