Useful Advices - Business

If you’ve seen the movie adaptation of David Mamet’s stage play “Glengarry Glen Ross”, no doubt you’re familiar with Alec Baldwin’s infamous scene in which he delivers one of the most memorable motivational sales speeches of all time. If you’ve worked in sales at any time during the last 14 years since the movie was released, chances are either yourself or someone you know can recite chunks of Baldwin’s speech, or at least some of the key takeaway phrases

According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product

(“coffee is for closers!”). For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, Baldwin portrays a real estate shark (albeit briefly: he’s only onscreen less than 10 minutes) brought in by fellow brokers Mitch and Murray in order to rally their sales team and roll out the guidelines for the monthly sales contest. The top two salespeople get to keep their jobs while everyone else is canned. At the end of his tirade, Baldwin responds to Ed Harris’s question of

; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug.

Examples of combination products may in

why he’s there. “I came here because Mitch and Murray asked me for a favor,” Baldwin sneers. “But I said the real favor is follow my advice and fire your (rear-end) because a loser is a loser.” Meeting dismissed. Harsh? Absolutely. Motivating? Without question it motivated the unproductive reps to take action, just not the actions Mitch and Murray would have hoped for (you’ve got to watch the movie to find out what truly desperate people in these circu

lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together.

mstances will do). The first five minutes of movie blatantly establishes that the entire sales department, with the exception of top-producer Al Pacino (nominated for an Academy Award for his role) has already begun the downward death spiral many salespeople go through once industry burn-out has begun to set in. For those of you with a background in sales management who have seen the movie, you probably recognize that the intent of the sales meeting at t

here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe

he fictional Rio Rancho Properties was not to motivate the reps to sell; it was to motivate them to leave. Mitch and Murray’s reasoning: turn up the pressure to an unbearable level and the ensuing war of attrition will weed out the ones that can’t take the heat, thus saving the management team from the unpleasant tasks of either confronting the reps regarding their lack of production or terminating them in person.

For many sales managers across companies

d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations.

Combination pro

of all sizes, turnover is a way of life. Dealing with performance issues comes with the territory: either you address it with your reps individually or someone will be addressing yours with you. Whether a sales rep leaves voluntarily or is escorted to the door by security, it’s a painful process to watch someone go from excited candidate to promising newcomer to frustrated rep to underachiever to latest casualty. I have yet to meet a manager who wouldn

ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc

’t rank firing people at the bottom of the list of “most rewarding aspects” of their job. Looking back at the interview process, most sales managers will admit they recognized the red flags that ultimately led to the undoing of a particular candidate once he or she became an employee, but for whatever reason chose to overlook or downplay them. I’ve spoken with sales managers and business owners who, after an exhaustive parade of unsuccessful hires and t

easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi

erminations, have come to the conclusion (incorrectly, I might add) that it’s virtually impossible for them to predict whether or not any one candidate will be successful in their organization based on a handful of interviews. “Salespeople are professional interviewers, right? Aren’t they trained to tell you exactly what you want to hear?” So they devise a recruiting strategy that consists of establishing some rough hiring guidelines (ie., Bachelor’s de

nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically

gree, minimum of 2 years sales experience) bring on the first person that looks presentable, throw them a bunch of dead leads and/or disgruntled customers, point them to a phone and if they fall to produce in the first 90 days, get rid of them. Recruiting the RIGHT people is no easy task, so it’s understandable how one could adopt this scattershot philosophy. My advice would be that if you want to make every working day feel like a week while ushering in

and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ

your own demise, then adopt this strategy immediately.

While this is an extreme example, most hiring managers would concede there have been occasions when they have overlooked critical flaws in a candidate’s background, character, etc. simply because they were desperate for someone to step into the position, only to watch it blow up in their face down the road. If you are the type of manager who is swift in taking action upon the realization you have ma

ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi

de a bad hiring decision (and by that I mean terminating the employee), then I applaud you. There is nothing worse than watching someone toil away just to collect a paycheck. But wouldn’t life have been easier if you hadn’t hired them in the first place? One of the keys to successful recruiting (particularly in sales, where the candidate criteria can be more subjective than with other roles) is to pay close attention to your gut instincts and if somethi

ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it.

Following aspects would a

ng about a candidate doesn’t sit well with you, move on to another candidate! If you’re an individual with a lot of pet peeves, then you’d better do your best to determine early on in the interview process whether or not a particular candidate has the potential to drive you crazy. You can save yourself a lot of frustration by recognizing those subtle indicators of future “termination-worthy” actions. Here is a handful that I watch out for when interview

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well?
Which combination prod

ing sales candidates:

The Inaccessible Candidate. It bothers me when I am unable to connect with a sales candidate on their cell phone after 2 or 3 tries. If I’m not able to get through to them after a reasonable number of attempts, why should I assume that one of their prospects or customers would be able to? I can appreciate not answering calls from blocked numbers, but I don’t think refusing to answer because they don’t recognize the phone nu

cts are meaningful and rational?
Which therapeutic categories to select?
Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients?
Do combin

mber is a legitimate excuse. Who’s to say I’m not a referral from a client?

The candidate who gets too personable, too quickly. Like many of our clients, sales reps in our industry are essentially consultants: we do not sell a product and the services we provide are highly customized based on the needs of our clients. In addition, our firm operates on a retained basis (whereas the majority of our industry is comprised of contingent firms), so in

tions increase the patient compliance?
What would be the developing cost?
How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen

order for us to justify an up-front engagement fee it’s imperative that we establish credibility and capacity very early on in the relationship. Our clients look to us as professional consultants and solution providers, first and foremost. If a personal relationship develops beyond the scope of our obligations, great, however, our clients to do hire us to discuss deep-sea fishing, my nephew’s wedding and whether or not the Marlins can pull a rabbit out

t?

As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel

of a hat this Saturday against the Cubs. If this is the route a candidate takes in an attempt to immediately try and establish rapport with me, what makes me think he or she is going to act any differently with one of my clients? There is a time and place for those conversations: just make sure they’re not in the first 15 minutes of our initial conversation (that is, of course, unless I happen to mention the Marlin’s current winning streak).

The Agre

ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality.

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

eable Candidate. It always bothers me when someone sits across from you, looks you in eye and agrees 100% with everything you say. It’s one thing if I’m at a cocktail party making small talk with my co-worker’s spouse with whom I’ve just met. It’s another thing when I’m having a serious business conversation with an individual I’m either considering recommending to my client or adding to my own team. If you’re interviewing a candidate that appears

y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products

to be in agreement with everything you say, you’ve either got a “yes man” on your hands or you’re talking way over their heads and they’re too intimidated to say so. There’s an old business clich? that says if you have two people within an organization that think exactly alike, you have one too many people. Either way, you need to keep looking.

The Blame Game. The majority of people leave their jobs either because they do not get along with thei

.

As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de

r immediate supervisor or they simply do not like what they’re doing from the hours of 8 to 5 each day. That’s understandable; I think all of us have been there at one time or another. The problem I have is when a candidate consistently points the finger at someone or something that stood in the way of their success, thus forcing them to look for a new line of work. This is particularly troubling when you have a candidate with a less-than-consistent wor

elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

k history (more than 2 jobs in the last 5 years). “The job was not as described,” is a way of saying “I didn’t fully investigate the opportunity.” “The company was not financially sound,” in the candidate’s mind is better than saying “I failed to do my due-diligence and research because I was desperate for work.” “My boss had unrealistic expectations.” They probably should have figured out what those expectations were before they accepted the position.

tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products

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Every business needs to attend events and activities throughout each week. Often the number of activities becomes overwhelming with little time to do the actual work.

In the last few years, the Philippine economy has seen the proliferation of quite a number of call centers or contact centers providing thousands of high-paying jobs to Filipinos. Recent estimates that the Philippines has replaced India and other countries as the preferred destination for many offshore contact centers that provide services to American and other western markets. This phenomenon has made the Philippines the country of choice for western companies who wish to set up call center operations.

2006 is quickly becoming history. Your results as a manager are evident by the achievements you have accomplished and the challenges, failure and un-met goals that were for whatever reason not realized. One of the behaviors I have been advocating for many years for managers is that they carefully and routinely evaluate the areas where they have made progress and where they have not.

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Useful Advices - Red Flags Of Sales Recruiting: No Need To Take Action (Don't Hire Them In The First Place!)

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