Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman (13 page)

“I’m starving! Anything good left?” he asked with a smile. Unable to speak with my mouth full, I shook my head no as the office manager ducked her head and bolted out of the room. After watching his employee leave, he looked again to the table, and then turned his full attention to me. Seeing me with a practically whole sandwich in my hand, Dr. Blank quickly deduced what had happened. I started to offer an apology, but he cut me off with a bigger smile and a wave of his hand before grabbing a handful of Oreos and a Diet Coke. “Don’t worry about it, man. It’s not like I’m important around here or anything.” With a loud clap on my shoulder, he headed down the hall to see more patients. I never ate before a physician again.

Interestingly enough, the purpose of these lunches was not to feed the office staff or inflict mental trauma on drug reps. From the pharmaceutical companies’ perspective, these lunches provided salespeople with their best low-cost opportunity to interact with their most important customers, the doctors.

At an ideal lunch, three things would happen:

1. The rep would get the opportunity to sit down with a physician for twenty to thirty minutes, during which the doctor would eat her lunch while listening to the rep’s sales pitch.
   

2. The doctor would be interested enough to ask a few relevant questions such as, “How does Drug X compare to Drug Y side effects–wise?”
   

3. The physician would agree that Drug X had some clinical advantages and commit to using it in a few patients later that day.
   

If things went really well, the doc would hang around after the presentation to shoot the breeze. Some guys wanted to talk Pfizer stock, others wanted to talk Notre Dame football, and some—usually married men—just wanted to hear the latest escapades in the life of a single guy. Once I had identified who liked to discuss what, I’d plan accordingly. For the stock savvy, I would call my father the financial planner to get the latest Pfizer price just before pulling into the office parking lot, and for the gridiron gurus, I’d read the current
Irish Sports Report
the night before to catch up on the latest news regarding Lou Holtz’s boys. To entertain the husbands living vicariously through a bachelor, I’d call “active” friends for memorable shenanigans when mine were lacking. Regardless of the topic, these BS sessions were important because they could spark friendships while giving a rep a hot button to push the next time he saw the physician.

Unfortunately, most lunches did not end this way. Fairly often, reps barely got the opportunity to speak to a doctor, many of whom preferred to pop in, grab a plate of food, and dash out mumbling through a mouthful of pasta, “Sorry. Way behind today.”

Considering the actual price of the lunch plus the time value of the cost of having a rep out of the field for up to an hour (in addition to picking up food at a restaurant, a stop at a supermarket was standard to acquire sodas and desserts) without getting a solid selling opportunity, such an experience was extremely expensive to Pfizer, not to mention very discouraging to a rep. The only saving grace in that situation was the leftovers.

I stumbled upon the miracle of leftovers by accident. Scheduling a lunch for a pediatric office, I mistakenly wrote down twenty-two people instead of twelve. Wearing differing sizes of the same baby-decorated scrub top, ten women (the two docs no-showed) did their best to remove any evidence that I had brought Olive Garden, but an entire tray of chicken parmigiana and a half tray of lasagna sat untouched along with several salads and countless bread sticks. The staff thanked me for bringing in lunch, and I replied, sincerely, that it was I who should do the thanking because getting a free, hot meal was the best part of my job. This statement was met with confused looks.

I explained that I was a bachelor for whom Tater Tots often served as the main course, not the side dish. This prompted a chorus of “You poor thing!” and “We need
to get you a wife!” As I tried to alleviate their maternal concerns, an angel disguised as a receptionist stood up and pointed to the leftover food. “Jamie, why don’t you take it home?”
Oh, I could never do that.
“You have to!” they cried.
That wouldn’t be right.
“Pack it up for him, girls.” Not wanting to offend a group of customers, I grudgingly accepted their kind offer. And did cartwheels in the parking lot.

On the way home, I called my friend Lou, another bachelor with limited skills in the kitchen. “We’re eating Olive Garden tonight. Bring the beer.” Lou was stunned when he saw the spread on my kitchen counter. “And they just gave it to you?” he asked, incredulous. “This is amazing.” Indeed.

Soon, I was accidentally over-ordering a few times per week. Buddies were calling to see if they could “stop by with beer around dinnertime.” I started scheduling lunches not to create more sales opportunities with doctors, but for the leftovers. My boss noticed my increase in spending and told me to keep up the good work. “Gotta spend it to make it, Jamie.” That quickly became a mantra. Whereas I originally mentioned my bachelorhood by chance, I now brought it up routinely, shamelessly inserting “For a single guy, this is the best part of my job” into the first five minutes of every lunch. Maternal instincts kicking into overdrive, nurses practically fought over who got to pack up my leftovers. Turns out I wasn’t alone.

Over cocktails one night at a sales meeting, I cautiously revealed my scam to several people. I couldn’t wait to see the awe in their eyes as they secretly wished they were me. “You mean you just started doing that?” one guy cackled. “That was, like, the first thing I figured out.” The others nodded in agreement, and I realized I was more than a bit behind the learning curve. It wouldn’t be the last time.

There was another area in which I tried to exploit cracks in the system, and that involved my work activity. Or lack thereof. Back in July 1995 when I emerged from the interview room with job in hand, Brandon the-HR-guy, Class of ’68, sat me down for a heart-to-heart. “I’ve taken Notre Dame guys to the top, and I’ve kicked Notre Dame guys out on their ass!” he said in a threatening voice. “Don’t think you’re going to get any special treatment.” I shook my head, signifying that was the furthest thing from my mind.

He laid out the ground rules for working at Pfizer. In the field by seven-thirty. Making sales calls until five-thirty. Maybe even calling on pharmacies after that. When he told me more specifically that leaving South Bend for Chicago before five o’clock on Friday was not an option, I nodded my head. I mean, what job let you quit work before five? Brandon-the-HR-guy and I were in complete agreement that I would not be leaving for
Chicago at five. Of course, neither one of us realized I’d be leaving every Friday at three.

My total abandonment of anything resembling a work ethic did not start right away. Rather, I began my Pfizer career by working fairly hard. I got up on time and usually started my day by Pfizer’s appointed seven-thirty. Okay, that’s not really true, but it felt pretty good to write it. For the first three days I got up on time. On the morning of Day Four, I hit “snooze” a few more times than normal, prompting a great deal of guilt. The next day, I turned off the alarm immediately—so much for being wracked by guilt—and fell back to sleep till nine
A.M.
, when I awoke in a panic.
Oh my God! I’m going to get fired!

Out of the shower and back in my bedroom, I noticed the quiet in my apartment. Looking out the window, I saw an empty parking lot. All my neighbors had left for work. Yet, no one had phoned to find out why Lieutenant Reidy wasn’t at headquarters or why Jamie Reidy hadn’t called on Dr. Sweeney by nine o’clock. Gradually, I figured out that no one at Pfizer—more specifically, Bruce—knew where I was, let alone when I had gotten up. This realization marked the beginning of the end. Pfizer hired ex-military officers like me expressly because we were already self-starters who did not need someone monitoring our work efforts at all times.

“You gotta be shitting me!” That was how my former army boss, Major Curt Croom, reacted upon learning that my new boss lived in Detroit, four hours from South
Bend. “That is a
big
mistake on their part,” he guffawed. Displaying an amazing lack of self-awareness, I asked him why. “Because you need constant adult supervision, Jamie,” he said, continuing to laugh. His assessment quickly proved accurate.

I hadn’t always been a slacker. Up until tenth grade, I studied hard in school. Then I experienced an epiphany, only in reverse. I say reverse because most epiphanies concern positive changes in life, whereas mine had negative connotations. At least that’s what my parents said.

In high school I realized I could study hard and get an A, or I could coast and get an A–. At Notre Dame, the coasting continued, but the grades declined. An English major, I skipped the assigned reading more often than not, and my class attendance was less than exemplary, but I managed to get Bs. Lots and lots of Bs. I was perfectly happy with those marks, although—once again—my parents did not share my satisfaction. Postgraduation, the U.S. Army provided me with unlimited opportunities to refine my “zero-effort” technique.

Similar to Pfizer’s Initial Training, the Officer Basic Course (OBC) required only an 80 on each exam. At the end of the course, an honor graduate was recognized, but there were no other good reasons for doing more than the minimum. The tests covered the material presented in class, often highlighted by the instructor stomping his foot like a mule as he winked, “This might be on the exam.”

My OBC advisers were troubled by my lack of effort, and they urged me to take advantage of my “tools and talents.”
Why would I want to do that?
I wondered. I mean, when you did well in the army, they gave you “better” jobs, and their idea of better and my idea of better were not remotely related. Better jobs in the army meant an increased chance of getting muddy or shot. Thanks to my poor performance, I got assigned to one of the worst (read: wimpiest) duty stations in the entire army: Camp Zama, Japan. It would have been impossible to have a
less-army
army existence than mine. The dirtiest I ever got resulted not from diving into a foxhole, but slicing into a sand trap. We never stayed at work past five o’clock. At least
I
never did.

The first time I pulled my white Chevy Lumina onto I-80 heading west toward Chicago on a Friday at three o’clock, I felt a little guilty, for some strange reason. For about ten seconds. Then I thought,
This job rocks!

As usual, my friends had already beaten me to that conclusion.

About three weeks into my sales career, a classmate from training called. A happy-go-lucky guy nicknamed “The Mayor,” he had once responded to my question, “How are you doing?” with “You know me; I’m always good.” If there was a silver lining to be found, Matt could do it. He and I shot the breeze for a few minutes before he floored me with a verbal left hook.

“Are ya working?” he asked in his East Coast accent.
Oh my God! He knows I’m sleeping late!
I expected Bruce
to knock on the door any second and ask for the keys to the Lumina.

“Uh, er … what are you talking about, man?” My voice cracked just the way it did in seventh grade when my dad asked me if I was smoking cigarettes with the ninth-graders at the bus stop.

“Ah, c’mon, dude,
nobody
is working.” Matt responded like a cool guy, sounding very much like the aforementioned ninth-graders who had encouraged me to smoke in the first place. “I didn’t work at all last week,” he added.

This confused me. “How could you already have saved up five vacation days when we’ve only been working three weeks?”

“I didn’t
take
vacation, man.”

“What, were you sick?”

Matt laughed. “No, I wasn’t sick! I just didn’t feel like working.” I started to relax a bit.

“Soooo, you just didn’t go to work for a few days?”

Matt was getting impatient. “
Nooo,
I didn’t go to work for all five days.” This was way too much for me.

“You didn’t go to work for
five days!”
His laugh confirmed this. “What … what … how did you cover yourself?” His wife would have
killed
him had she discovered his high jinks.

“Well, I got up every morning, showered, and ate breakfast like a normal day, and then I kissed my wife good-bye and headed out the door.”

“And then what?”

Matt snickered. “And then I went to the gym, worked out for a few hours, got a steam or whatever.”

“Yeah, but …”

“And then I’d buy the paper and eat lunch before catching a matinee or two. Hey, dude, if there’s anything you want to see, just ask me; I’ve seen every movie that’s out.”

There was something I still didn’t get.

“Yeah, but
how
did you cover yourself work-wise? I mean, how are you going to show that you called on doctors and dropped off samples and everything?”

Again with the snicker. “I keep forgetting you’re new to pharma sales,” he said, his words dripping with condescension. Matt came from a long line of pharmaceutical salesmen and had obviously picked up a trick or two. “You just have to work your ass off and see a ton of docs the next week. Or just get a nurse to sign her doc’s name; they do it all the time anyway.”
They do?

We chatted for a few more minutes, but I didn’t pay too much attention to the conversation. My head was swimming with the possibilities. Matt had opened my eyes to an unforeseen world of laziness and deception, and having taken a bite of the apple, I was dying to catch the first Lumina out of Eden.

After we hung up, I quickly called a few more friends from training, just to see if Matt was an anomaly. He wasn’t.

“Why do you think people are dying to get into pharmaceutical sales, dude?” one clued-in southern guy asked me. “I can’t believe you didn’t know about this before you interviewed.” More of the same out west. “Are you kidding?” a woman in southern California screamed. “Please tell me you didn’t get into this because you want to
help
sick people.”
Uh, no, of course not. I got into this because my daddy made me.