4 Reasons Job Auditions are the Future of Medical Sales Recruiting

It’s time to pull the cloth off of traditional interviews and reveal their true identity. That’s exactly what recruiters in LinkedIn’s 2018 Global Recruiting Trends report are doing. In fact, 63 percent feel traditional interviews fall short when it comes to assessing candidate soft skills, and 57 percent said the same about understanding candidate weaknesses. That’s why companies are turning to job auditions. Unlike traditional interviews, job auditions last an entire day and allow candidates to do real work. This gives recruiters hiring for medical sales jobs the opportunity to see a candidate’s true personality, sales skills, problem-solving skills, and cultural fit in action.  Here’s why you need to start incorporating job auditions into your recruiting process today:

The top 15 drug patent expirations of 2018

FiercePharma | Eric Sagonowsky

Each year, dozens of branded pharmaceutical products lose their patent protections in a process that routinely paves the way for cheap generics. This year is no different, and the drugs opening up to copycat competitors represent some serious sales heft. And as usual, you'll see some household names at the top of the list of U.S. expirations.

What's different these days can be summed up in one word: biosimilars. In the past, patent expirations brought immediate generic competition and the sales hit that come along with them. Now, with biosimilar development a more spendy and complicated proposition—not to mention the delays triggered by the biosimilar pathway's "patent dance"—a patent loss doesn't necessarily open the gates to copycats.

2018 Med Rep Job Satisfaction Report

 “…the company goes above and beyond to make sure each employee has the resources they need in order to succeed.” — CONMED employee

This is a common sentiment from medical sales reps in this year’s Best Places to Work report. These passionate pros aren’t just satisfied with high pay and opportunities for growth. Their satisfaction and love for their companies goes much deeper — and it shows.

In fact, our research revealed an almost 50 percent decrease in reps who are looking for a new job this year. So, what’s the catch?

Here’s how medical sales employees say their companies are going above and beyond to make them stay happy and dedicated:

Going beyond the paycheck

An impressive 76 percent of sales reps are very or somewhat satisfied with their jobs. That’s an incredible 50 percent jump since 2003. So, even though high pay remains a lively source for job satisfaction, the best medical sales companies are diving further into employees’ needs and passions.

Top 10 Pharmaceutical Companies 2018

The global pharmaceutical market was estimated at USD 1.11 trillion in 2017 and projected to reach USD 1.43 trillion by 2020. In 2017, North America, Asia Pacific and Western Europe pharmaceutical market approximately accounted for 37%, 22% and 20% global market share respectively. 

In 2017, top-10 global pharmaceutical companies generated sales of USD 437.257 billion accounting for roughly 40% global market share and top-15 global pharmaceutical companies generated sales of USD 568.617 billion accounting for 51% global market share. A comparative analysis of the top-15 organizations was used to develop a ranking for these companies.

The ranking model incorporated seven criteria for each organization with focus on revenues generated by pharmaceutical products and growth in pharmaceutical revenues (2016 – 2017). The criteria includes pharmaceutical revenues, annual pharmaceutical revenue growth, total R&D expense, total expense, total income, proportion of revenue from top three pharmaceutical products and revenue per employee. A score statistic was developed based on these selected criteria. Each company was assigned a score for each criteria and a weighted sum was used to arrive at the final score statistic. Pharmaceutical revenue received the highest weight (45%) while revenue from top 3 products (5%) receives the lowest. The score statistic represented the pharmaceutical financial health and diversity of product portfolio of each company.

Αυτή είναι η πραγματικότητα στο χώρο του φαρμάκου

Με αφορμή την υπόθεση Novartis ο ΣΦΕΕ και το PhRMA Innovation Forum με μια μακροσκελή κοινή ανακοίνωσή τους δηλώνουν ότι καταδικάζουν οποιαδήποτε παράνομη πράξη, επισημαίνουν, ωστόσο, ότι ο δημόσιος διάλογος περιλαμβάνει ανακρίβειες, υπερβολές και φήμες, οι οποίες δημιουργούν -εσκεμμένα ή μη- λανθασμένες εντυπώσεις και επηρεάζουν αρνητικά τους ασθενείς και την κοινή γνώμη, δημιουργώντας έντονη ανασφάλεια και αμφισβήτηση, ενώ επιχειρούν να μηδενίσουν τη συνεισφορά ενός ολόκληρου κλάδου όχι μόνο στην υγεία των πολιτών αλλά και στην εθνική οικονομία.

Οι δύο φορείς, παραθέτουν ορισμένα βασικά δεδομένα που σχετίζονται με το χώρο του φαρμάκου, τονίζοντας ότι το πλαίσιο λειτουργίας του είναι υπερ-ρυθμισμένο από το Κράτος, και ίσως άγνωστο στο ευρύ κοινό:

Ασθενείς και Δημόσιο Σύστημα Υγείας

Η περίοδος 1995-2010 χαρακτηρίζεται κυρίως από την επανάσταση στην τεχνολογία και την ιατρική καινοτομία με την εισαγωγή πολλών νέων καινοτόμων φαρμάκων και σωτήριων θεραπειών – στον καρκίνο, τη Σκλήρυνση κατά Πλάκας, σημαντικό αριθμό Σπάνιων Παθήσεων κοκ – που οδήγησαν σε αύξηση του προσδόκιμου ζωής.

Top Women in Medical Sales: Smashing the Right Plates

Women are outnumbered in medical sales. In fact, in the 2017 Medical Sales Salary Report, 70 percent of the respondents were men. In addition, the report found that women earn just 83 percent of what men do and make up only 30 percent of the respondents.

While this picture seems bleak, if you look for them, you will find highly successful women in medical sales. We’re talking to these professionals to find out what it means to be a woman in the field and what it takes to be successful.

If you would have asked Emma Tod two years ago which direction her career was going, she never would’ve uttered a title involving ‘manager.’ Now, as the manager of the national strategic accounts team at Allergan, Tod still isn’t a fan of that specific title. Instead, she prefers to fall under the category of ‘leader.’

As a leader, Tod’s passions are deeply rooted in growing large, corporate accounts alongside her team. But work isn’t the only place you’ll find her enjoying her time. Tod spends much of her time on her two greater passions: her children and rowing.

Όλη η δικογραφία για τη Novartis

Για να τη διαβάσετε πατήστε εδώ

6 Tips to Rewriting Your Resume for Pharmaceutical Sales

Pharmaceutical sales are an immensely popular industry because of the excellent earning potential and the fact that sales reps often have the opportunity to create their own schedule rather than being tied down nine-to-five in an office. There is also a lot of growth in the field, from sales representative to district manager to regional or territory manager and finally to corporate roles.

With that in mind, it is no surprise that hundreds, even thousands, of resumes are received each month by pharmaceutical recruiters and the HR offices of pharmaceutical companies.

So how is someone supposed to stand out?

Well, the first thing is experience. If you have a strong background in sales, especially pharmaceutical sales or medical sales, you’ve got an edge — maybe. Like everything else, there isn’t one hard rule on the ideal pharmaceutical sales candidate. For example, some companies prefer candidates without any industry experience — at least for those more entry-level positions — because they prefer new hires go through the company’s training program to learn their way.

Do brands matter in pharma? Not as much as outcomes, patients say

Pharma brands don’t matter nearly as much to consumers as results when it comes to new drugs, according to a new report. Accenture Life Sciences found that 69% of patients said product benefits were more important than brand. Only 25% ranked brand loyalty or popularity as a top factor in their healthcare and product and treatment decisions.

So instead of spending millions on brand advertising—or maybe along with it—pharma companies should be thinking about promoting evidence-based solutions that will appeal to these patients, Jim Cleffi, managing director at Accenture Life Sciences, said.

The recent inaugural survey of 8,000 patients in the U.S., U.K., France and Germany, which focused on product launches in the pharma industry, also found that only 38% of patients felt they had a lot of knowledge about products coming to market to treat their condition, while 25% had limited or no knowledge.

“I think we’re underserving the notion that the patient’s role in the treatment decision is starting to become much more prevalent, especially as the cost burden becomes more and more,” Cleffi said. “Saying you’re patient centric is fine, but you’re still doing it in the context of the value that a pharma company gets predominantly through the provider and payer. The voice of the patient hasn’t been as dominant as it is and will be becoming.”

Treating patients as a population works for general treatments today with diseases like diabetes. However, as new personalized medicines to treat diseases such as cancer come to market and take into account individual genetics and biomarkers, that will force a change in what it means to be patient centric. Pharma will be required to go from a “population view of patient centricity to almost a population of one patient-centric view,” Cleffi said.

The opportunity for pharma is in informing patients better and earlier in the process with new product launches—starting before they are diagnosed, when they may be symptomatic or have lifestyle or genetic risks—according to the paper.

Pharma spending on TV ads for 2017 - The full list of the top 20

Think you saw a lot of TV ads for drugs in 2017? That's because you did. Pharma spending on national TV ads for 2017 climbed even higher than in 2016—by more than $330 million. The total tally was $3.45 billion, compared with $3.11 billion in 2016, according to data from real-time TV tracker iSpot.tv.

AbbVie antiinflammatory Humira led the way with $341 million spent on 16 commercials across three of its different indications: arthritis, psoriasis, and Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. However, the drug fell short of topping its 2016 total of $344 million. Broken out by indication, AbbVie spent $179 million on arthritis, $114 million on Crohn's and colitis, and another $48 million on psoriasis Humira commercials.