Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman (20 page)

Staring at mediocre sales and undesirable number-one rankings didn’t deter me from thinking I deserved to get promoted, however. After all, I was Jamie Reidy; people loved me wherever I went, and northern Indiana had proven no different. Also, I was getting pretty tired of
the Lumina, and promoted reps received a car upgrade. Hence, I should be climbing the corporate ladder faster than the one hundred reps who were kicking my ass numbers-wise. Bruce did an impressive job of not laughing in my face when I shared this view with him.

Fortunately, Pfizer shared another similarity with the U.S. Army when it came to promotions. As a lieutenant I saw several people who should have been
de
moted due to their incompetence, but they were inexplicably elevated to the next rank. This phenomenon was succinctly explained: “Fuck up, move up.”

Let’s say a commander had grown tired of dealing with a nitwit who wasn’t due to change duty stations for another two years. Since U.S. Army HQ managed all personnel assignments, a commander could not unilaterally decide to transfer a soldier out of his unit. Quite often, however, a promotion prompted a reassignment to another organization, thus removing said headache from the commander’s world. While certainly not beneficial to the army in the long run, a promotion like this accomplished a valuable short-term mission: Let him be somebody else’s problem.

Considering how many former military officers worked for Pfizer, it wasn’t shocking to learn that a variation of the “Fuck up, move up” concept managed to find a home in pharmaceutical sales. Reps were rarely fired at Pfizer, as termination proceedings required reams of evidence documenting repeated shortcomings and counseling
sessions concerning those shortcomings. Faced with such hassles, managers preferred to make life miserable for a substandard rep by spending more field days with him, requiring more paperwork, and having him perform other onerous chores, until he quit. Senior management condoned such an approach, as it decreased the odds of lawsuits. What could a manager do about a perfectly mediocre salesperson, someone whose numbers weren’t good or bad? If the individual’s reputation was good, promote him.

I don’t think it ever occurred to Bruce to push for my promotion outside of his district. Looking at my middle-of-the-pack sales ranking, he must have resigned himself to the fact that he was stuck with me until
he
got promoted. However, once I expressed my ridiculous belief that I was upwardly mobile, he made making me someone else’s problem a top priority.

My first opportunity for promotion came in September 1997. A position within Pfizer’s Neuroscience Division (calling on psychiatrists) opened up in Detroit, and Bruce had convinced district manager Bob Kelley to look no further: Jamie Reidy was the man for the job.

Since managers routinely spent a day in the field with prospective hires, Bob met me in South Bend to check out my sales style and other skills. Accordingly, I scheduled appointments with physicians who liked me and always talked with me for several minutes. The morning went extremely well—though I hoped Bob hadn’t noticed
several doctors express surprise at my actually discussing drugs as opposed to Notre Dame’s lack of a pass rush—and we went to Chili’s to eat lunch and discuss my future. Pfizer taught its managers that past sales history was the best indicator of a rep’s future sales success, so when he asked for a copy of my sales numbers from each year with the company, I could see my future with Bob dimming.

I tried nonchalantly to eat chips and salsa while he read, his brow growing more furrowed by the page. He shook his head upon finishing. “You know, Jamie,” he began, sounding annoyed, “I told Bruce I’d come down here to see you because he said you’re a top rep. I think I’m going to have to have a little conversation with him when I get back.” Bob, I discovered over lunch, had been a military officer, too. Undoubtedly, he had sniffed out Bruce’s plan.

Having nothing to lose, I explained to Bob that I had certainly dogged it my first year out of the army, taking it easy in the civilian world. However, I explained, I was now “on fire,” a rep who had seen the errors of his ways and taken giant steps to overcome them. I pointed out that I had finished among the top two in my district in calls per day for the past two months, and that my sales numbers had trended positively for the past three. I assured Bob that I was a new man, a reenergized selling machine, and he started to buy it. He shared with me his concept of leadership, explaining that he borrowed heavily from Phil Jackson’s book
Sacred Hoops,
which chronicled
his attempts to get supertalented players, i.e., Michael Jordan, to focus on improving the team. I had played team sports my whole life, and I related a few examples of my ability to thrive within a team atmosphere.

The more I talked, the more Bob’s eyes brightened, the more he leaned across the table toward me. He believed me; more important, he
wanted
to believe me. Then without warning, his face clouded over and he picked up one of the pages listing my sales numbers. Grimacing, he shook his head. Then he listened to more of “I know what it takes to be great, now,” and the gleam returned to his eye. Back and forth his facial expressions battled, as though the angel and the devil from
Animal House
were sitting on either shoulder, prodding him. Finally, it was over.

“Jamie, I think you’d do great in this job, and I’d like you to work for me,” he said, nodding. “But there’s just no way my boss [a regional manager, like the former Marine with whom I originally interviewed] would let you in the room, let alone interview you, with these lousy numbers.” Bob urged me to “stay on fire” and said he’d have no problem promoting me once I put up some decent sales numbers. As I drove him back to his car, he saw a Borders Bookstore and asked me to pull in. He returned a few minutes later with a new copy of
Sacred Hoops.
“Read this,” Bob said, “and we’ll talk about it the next time I interview you.” Fortunately, we did not run into each other again, since I left the book in the seat pocket in
front of me on a flight a few weeks later and never bought another copy.

Overall, I thought the day had gone extremely well. For starters, I hadn’t really wanted to get promoted to
Detroit
so much as I wanted to get promoted
in general.
It would have been interesting to see how I would have reacted if I had gotten the job and had to move to the Motor City. Also, I learned that there was no getting around my boss’s theory on work activity and the credibility it gave a rep in lean sales years.

Bruce had explained, “Good numbers absolve a multitude of sins. When you’re number one, nobody cares how many signatures you get per day.
But,
when you’re dead freaking last, you need to show that you are working your tail off! You can always blame bad sales on things out of your control—like the biggest HMO in the state doesn’t cover your drugs—but you need to make sure the things
within
your control—signatures per day, the number of dinner programs you hold—are at the top.”

Bob had wanted to believe I was on fire, that I was getting more signatures than anyone else, but sixty days of evidence wasn’t nearly enough; I needed to sustain that for at least a semester. Last, and most important, I saw firsthand that people wanted to hire someone they liked, and the more they liked you the more willing they were to take a chance on you.

That was where my best opportunity lay. In order to get a promotion interview, a rep’s boss and his boss’s boss had
to officially support it, thus providing a filtering system; not just any loser could interview for any job. Because of this, the managers conducting the interviews operated under the assumption that all candidates were solid ones. The fact that I was interviewing in the first place meant that someone thought I was promotable. Bob refused to send me on in the interview process because he knew his regional manager would chew him out for recommending a candidate with horrible sales and work activity. As long as my stats were passable, then, all I needed to do was get the interviewers to like me.

I didn’t have to wait long for my next opportunity. In December 1997, rumors began circulating that “they” were interviewing for the new Urology Division, the one that would sell Viagra. I hadn’t heard much about the drug for erectile dysfunction, but that didn’t matter. All I cared about was getting promoted, and the creation of a new division improved my chances dramatically. I called Bruce.

“I haven’t heard anything, Jamie,” he told me, sounding a bit alarmed.
A chance to get rid of this guy, and I’m asleep at the switch?
An hour later, he called back to say he’d made contact with an HR person. “You’re willing to go anywhere, right?”

Originally, I had been completely mobile, but something changed when I interviewed with Bob in September. Even though I hadn’t gotten the job, hadn’t even gotten an offer, I felt emboldened, as though I were
a terrific candidate who held all the cards rather than a lucky-to-even-be-considered slacker.

“No, I’m interested only in Denver or San Francisco,” I told Bruce matter-of-factly. He did not attempt to hide his surprise and suggested that, as a guy ranked in the bottom half of the nation, perhaps I should expand my wish list. I refused.

Bruce called back to say interviews were being conducted in Washington, D.C., over the next week and that he had arranged one for me. “Are San Francisco or Denver available?” I asked, sounding like Norma Desmond making demands of Cecil B. DeMille. Bruce sighed with worry; Denver was already filled, but S.F. was still open.

Each candidate was guaranteed interviews with two people: his prospective district manager and the assistant regional manager (a position beneath DM but above sales rep, like an aide-de-camp in the military). If both interviewers gave him the thumbs-up, the candidate met with the regional manager. All three would later convene and decide which reps they wanted and which they did not.

My first interview started at nine with Jackie, the district manager for the Pacific Northwest. Unaccustomed to getting up so early, I had set the alarm for seven and worked out for an hour in order to get the blood pumping. “Enthusiasm sells!” With my sales numbers, I’d need a lot of it to sell these people on Jamie Reidy.

An enthusiastic person herself, Jackie answered the door of the hotel room with a big smile. A single woman in her late thirties, her dark, curly hair bounced in time with our handshake. Once inside the room, she slid behind a table and pointed to a chair for me. Jackie put me at ease immediately. “Well, you certainly are a popular person, Jamie!” she said. “I got several messages from the district managers in your territory, and I have to say I was quite impressed.”

During my layover at O’Hare, I had voice mailed three managers with whom I had come into contact over the previous two years, none of whom were Bruce. Basically, these were three guys who loved me: the Managed Care supervisor (it was his job to get Pfizer drugs added to HMO formularies) because I led the charge to get Zyrtec added to Partners Health Plan, the biggest HMO in northern Indiana; the Pfizer Labs district manager because he was a Notre Dame grad, and I used my contacts in the alumni office to get him football tickets; and a Pediatric Division district mana-ger because he had played football at a Division II college and I gave him a tour of the Notre Dame Monogram Room (home to every bit of important Fighting Irish memorabilia, including all seven Heisman Trophies) when he was supposed to be calling on doctors with me.

I gave these three men Jackie’s voice-mail number, asking them to tell her what an amazing rep I was. A
person didn’t get promoted to a management position within Pfizer without being able to sling the bull a little bit, and these guys were no exception.

The Managed Care supervisor told Jackie I made things happen. “I needed a ‘go-to’ guy, and Jamie was it. He builds great rapport. You’re going to love having him work for you.” The Labs DM echoed those sentiments. “You’re going to love having him work for you. He’s a go-getter. What a rapport builder!” The Pediatric Division manager concurred. “He gets things done. Unbelievable rapport.” Interestingly, nobody mentioned anything about my ability to sell drugs. She failed to pick up on that omission. She also made a rookie mistake of not calling Bruce to ask about my weaknesses.

Already convinced she had a superstar in front of her, Jackie jumped into the interview. Her questions had a familiar ring to them, possibly because Bruce had thrown a few “hypotheticals” at me prior to my departure, and I breezed through until asked about my less-than-stellar sales numbers. My conversation with Bob several months earlier convinced me that honesty was my best policy—just acknowledge having been a slacker and then provide evidence of my “new man-ness.”

“Jackie, I was lazy for the first two years of my career. I did just enough to get by,” I admitted, thinking that was probably the first time any prospective job candidate had said that in an interview. The blank look on her face informed me I was correct. I continued.

“When I got out of the army and started with Pfizer, it was a relief to be free from such a restrictive environment [Jackie didn’t know anything about Camp Zama’s country-club atmosphere, and I felt no need to enlighten her]. I kind of went crazy. But then I got a wake-up call. Reps in my division whom I knew couldn’t
spell
rapport were killing me sales-wise, and I got angry with myself that I had totally lost my competitiveness. I knew I had to get it back, and I knew the only way to do that was to start working my tail off.” I pointed to my Brag Book, a fancy folder that contained all the lousy reports Bruce had mocked during lunch months earlier. This time, it was filled with positive info. “You can see there that for the past five months, I have been.”

She quickly flipped through the pages, eager to find data that would allow her to defend her hiring me. When she didn’t raise an objection, I closed her. “Is there
anything
keeping you from hiring me, Jackie?” She said I got her vote, but she was concerned that she didn’t have a territory I would like.