Yesterday's Pharmalot ran an interesting piece that suggested rumors of the pharma salesman's death -- with apologies to Mark Twain -- have been greatly exaggerated. It's worth a read.
Our thoughts? The "downsizing" of field staff's (from a high of 105,000 to nearly 75,000 now) has been a boon to the CSO industry and digital agencies to name just two who are benefitting from this change.
It's clear that there is still a need/vale in s "rep service", but that is evolving into a tier strategy; reps to service the sample closet, MSL's for high end resource linking and disease management discussions, hospital/medical center reps focusing on education and the future physicians, national account people calling on key managed access customers.
The sheer volume of reps has and will continue to fall, but there has been a rise in "specialty reps" who are considered very valuable in the area of oncology, infused, injectable products and specialty pharmaceuticals.
The days of the "dine and dash" are gone, but the need and value of reps that can bring "clinical utility" and "practice value" for their products to key providers is still strong and growing. Our company, in fact, specializes in working to matching the needs of the providers with the type of rep needed.
