Pharmaceutical Sales Drug Representative Jobs Blog

#pharmaceutical #pharma #drugs

The last blog post introduced an interesting real life case where a drug representative found some significant sales activity for one of his products at a cancer clinic.  The interesting thing here was that this sales activity was not generated by a doctor.  Instead, it was the clinic nurses who routinely recommended the product to all radiation patients as they handed out info sheets they made up with the product’s name on it.  This case clearly demonstrates that pharmaceutical sale training should be beyond just physicians offices.

The drug representative took these findings back to his company and it was soon determined that all nurses working in similar cancer treatment centers across the country should be called on by the company’s sales force.   Some other cancer centers were already on board with this product while many were not.

All drug representatives from this sales force did a special campaign to call on all cancer clinic nurses to inform them about how other cancer nurses were recommending the product and soon, all cancer treatment centers enthusiastically came on board with adding the company’s product as part their post-treatment care guidelines.

Many of these cancer clinics also had small pharmacies in house and upon follow up visits, the drug representatives found that many of these pharmacies have been stocking up on the product.  In fact, the majority of these tiny cancer pharmacies carried more of the product in stock than typical major retail pharmacies!

Sales of the company’s cream product skyrocketed to record levels not because of increased promotion to doctors, but to cancer clinic nurses. Although these nurses were not physicians, they proved to have the power to recommend certain products directly to patients which in turn significantly increased sales.

Of course, I will admit that the original drug representative who found out about these cancer clinic nurses in this case was in fact myself.  It was a great feeling to help my company find such an enormous pharmaceutical sales opportunity that became relevant right across the country.

This was not the only case I ever encountered where nursing staff proved to be very important in regards to recommending products directly to patients.  In fact, many hospital specialist representatives see this very same thing happening at many other different clinics in hospital settings where patients spend time with nurses.

So it is quite important for drug representatives to cover a component about calling on health professionals besides just physicians during pharmaceutical sales training sessions with their companies.  Other professionals should include nurses and pharmacists.