Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman (8 page)

In a specific order retreating toward the back, the most commonly requested samples followed. We had three different forms of Zithromax: an oral solution for children with ear infections, capsules for adults with bronchitis, and a 1 gram powder to be taken only one time to treat chlamydia. Without thinking, I had packed the latter up front and the former in back. Bruce pointed out that this made no sense, since the majority of my customers were pediatricians and would be more likely to be treating kids who could not swallow pills, rather than promiscuous, non-condom-wearing adults. The studies touting our drugs’ effectiveness or highlighting our competitors’ weaknesses were kept in folders hanging in a plastic milk crate placed in the center of the trunk. The other items were often left in their shipping boxes with the box tops cut off for easy access.

Forty-five minutes later, I again stood with my tonsils exposed, only this time with disbelief as I realized how much stuff—how much
more
stuff—Bruce had been able to fit in there (I had thrown a number of boxes in the backseat). The bulky, plastic models of the respiratory system could barely be seen.

Thankfully, I hadn’t been the only “packing challenged” new hire; several fellow rookies described similar scenes via voice mail. The packing system made sense, I’d grudgingly admit weeks later. As Bruce pointed out, by setting up the trunk improperly, a salesperson doomed himself to wasting time searching for things—time that might allow a competitor to get into an office first.

My makeover was not yet complete. Bruce next turned his attention to the cumbersome, square, shiny black valise I had been trying to avoid since it arrived on my doorstep. “Dude, you gotta load up your bag.” I quickly learned that a rep’s detail bag was a smaller version of his company car, filled with studies and pens and pads and samples and, most important, the detail book with the vis aids for each of a salesperson’s drugs. Sometimes, detail books grew to more than a hundred pages. I saw doctors flee from their favorite reps after spotting the dreaded “book” on a medical counter. After Bruce finished packing my detail bag in a similar anal fashion to that which he had employed with the trunk, I cautiously hefted it, testing its weight. Taking a practice stroll in the parking lot, I came to an immediate realization: It was impossible to look cool carrying The Bag.

Having squared me away, Bruce took off to do the same with the other seven new reps in our district. I still was not ready to unleash my talents on the unsuspecting pediatric and ob-gyn communities of northern Indiana, though. Before letting me pedal on my own, Pfizer needed one last assurance that I was ready for my first solo ride.

Since Bruce was busy unpacking and packing trunks throughout Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio, he had a senior rep on our team give some of us a two-day indoctrination. In Jack, a sarcastic twenty-eight-year-old who had been with Pfizer for four years, I could not have gotten a
better mentor; we shared both a similar sense of humor and the desire to drink beer after work. Carrying less hair and a few more pounds than he had displayed on the ice, the former collegiate hockey player also assumed an “I can still go into the corner and knock you on your ass” air. Jack knew what worked and didn’t work in the field (Detroit Red Wing tickets did, tongue depressors—regardless of flavoring—did not) and he had little tolerance for corporate efforts to alter his style.

He laughed when I relayed the details of Trunk 101. “Don’t worry,” he assured me. “Nobody knows how to do it at first. But since you’re going to be spending a
lot
of time leaning into this fucking thing in the rain and snow, you want to make it as efficient as possible.” Jack had my complete attention.

He spent the next two days monitoring my behavior in the field, including how I (A) schmoozed with receptionists, (B) introduced my products and myself to nurses, and (C) handled brief, unscheduled meetings with physicians. A and B went pretty well, but C demonstrated plenty of room for improvement. Having gained access to the Promised Land—the back office—I quickly established rapport with a nurse who subsequently asked the doctor to speak with me for a moment.
Bingo! This job is going to be even easier than I thought!
Jack and I exchanged knowing winks, neither one of us aware that the dam in my brain was about to burst, unleashing six weeks’ worth of acquired knowledge.

Not wanting to scare off the first physician kind enough to take the time to meet me, I was simply supposed to introduce myself, give him a
brief
synopsis of Zithromax, and ask if he had any questions. If he did, then I could launch into my “detail,” as I had been trained to do. To say that I dropped a torrent of information on the poor, unsuspecting pediatrician would be quite an understatement. To this day, he may never have spoken to another rep. Pfizer people called it “brain dumping”; even today, I can still hear the truck backing up.
Beep … beep … beep.

“Hello, Doctor, my name is Jamie Reidy, and, having recently gotten out of the army, where I was an HR officer, I am a new member of Pfizer’s new Pediatric Division, and I will be bringing you Zithromax, the world’s first once-a-day for only five days oral antibiotic for your ear infection patients. Zithromax works great, as evidenced by its equal efficacy when compared to Augmentin in this six-hundred-thirty-plus patient study, and has thirty-three percent less diarrhea, which will give you one-third more sleep at night as you’ll get thirty-three percent fewer phone calls from angry moms at three in the morning, and, with its cherry flavor, Zithromax tastes even better, and I know how important that is for your moms not to have to fight with the kids to get their medicine down because, after all, if they don’t take it, it’s probably not going to work. Am I right or am I right?”

I had plenty of time to ponder my own question as
the previously nice nurse escorted us out of the office. Jack held a little coaching session with me in the parking lot. “Dude! You need to chill the fuck out!” Thus my first sales call proved both ironic, because rarely in my career would I ever again convey so much product information to a physician, and prophetic, because my postcall behavior revealed an innate desire to cheat the system.

I slunk into the Lumina and pulled out my laptop computer so I could enter my “postcall notes,” a brief description of any information I learned or shared during the sales call. Before my next visit with that physician, I was expected to read through those notes and then use the information to my advantage. For example, “Doctor, the last time we spoke, you expressed interest in using Zithromax in your bronchitis patients. …” Of course, after that stellar debut, I could only say, “Doctor, the last time we spoke I verbally vomited on your loafers.” As my laptop booted up, I turned to Jack and asked, “Does that count for four calls or just the one?”

He turned in the passenger seat to face me, his head tilted and eyebrows scrunched. “How many docs did you talk to?” he asked.

“One,” I said.

“Well, then I guess you made only one call. You weren’t a math major, were you?”

I shook my head. “No, it’s just that he has three partners, so I thought maybe, ’cause I got to the back office, it counted for four calls.”

Jack stared at me for a long time before the smirk crept into view. Nodding his head slowly, he started to laugh.

“You made only one call
today,
but in a few months, after you stop getting lost and doing twenty U-turns a day and people start to know your name, that’ll count as four calls.” I looked up from my typing to see him staring at me with a sparkle in his eye. “You’re gonna do just fine at this job, Reidy. Oh yeah,
just fine
.” We drank a lot of beer that night, after Jack taught me how to chill warm beer in just two minutes by filling a hotel sink with ice and then spinning a beer can on top of the cubes over and over.

Before he departed the next day, he encouraged me not to say anything to our boss about how one call could someday be entered as four calls. I was sad to see Jack go; talk about a mentor.

When Bruce returned to South Bend for his first official field day with me, I felt an apprehensive curiosity regarding his management style. Bruce was a brand-new manager, a role I knew well. Having been a brand-new manager in the army only three years earlier, I was quite familiar with the myriad mistakes that such an individual could make. Army lieutenants were fortunate to have seasoned sergeants working for them, people who warned us to duck when approaching low-hanging branches. My right-hand man, Sergeant First Class Jose Santiago, had eighteen years under his belt prior to breaking me in. Although newly promoted sales managers underwent
weeks of extensive training at the University of Pfizer, they had no one to lean on day in and day out.

In addition to my concern over the lack of a steadying hand, my fears multiplied after hearing several horror stories about other new managers, and I grew concerned that I might be forced to update my résumé shortly. One new DM in Cincinnati required his reps to fill out a time sheet broken down into fifteen-minute intervals specifying how they spent every minute of the day, “8:00—Drove to Dr. Johnson’s office. 8:15—Arrived. 8:45—Departed to Dr. Smith’s office.” A manager in Kansas City forbade his salespeople from gassing up their Luminas between seven-thirty
A.M.
and five
P.M.
, saying it was a waste of time that could be spent selling. When Bruce pulled into the parking lot at our designated meeting place, I was more than a bit nervous.

He quickly put my worries to rest. We were stuck in traffic on a two-lane road in rural Elkhart, Indiana, when Bruce began fidgeting in his seat. Soon after, he rolled down his window to lean out to see what was causing the delay. Banging out a drumbeat on the dashboard, he instructed me to pull onto the shoulder and go around the stopped cars. I looked in that direction and spotted a series of sizable potholes. “No can do,” I explained. “Those things will wreck the car.” The tapping stopped, and he stared intently at me.

“Jamie,” Bruce began, clearly annoyed, “what’s the difference between a company car and a four-wheel drive?”

I shrugged.

“A company car can go
anywhere
.” He motioned to his right. “Now, hit it.” Like Elwood Blues, I did as I was told, and my freshly washed Lumina lurched and bucked unhappily but successfully through the mud and past the traffic jam. Bruce nodded approvingly.

A district manager’s main job was to monitor and modify behaviors. For a person managing new reps, however, his most important task was to
create
those behaviors, to instill in his people the need to make ten sales calls every day, during which they would detail at least two products and close the physician for a specific number of future patients. Having created such a behavior pattern over the course of several months, the DM could then encourage certain habits, tweak others, and overhaul the remainder. The creating, monitoring, and modifying of the behaviors took place during field rides.

As former salespeople, managers loved field rides. As
current
salespeople, reps felt differently. All salesmen thrive on their autonomy, their freedom to decide which customers to see when, and they hate the idea of reporting to the same office every day cooped up behind a desk. Once promoted out of the field and into management, though, DMs relinquish total control of their schedules, and they are suddenly forced to spend innumerable hours in management meetings or completing paperwork in their offices. Field rides gave managers an excuse to get out of their rut and do what they loved most: selling.
Sales reps preferred their bosses indoors approving expense reports.

Bruce and I started off at the biggest pediatric office in northern Indiana, and he hung back in the waiting room as I approached the receptionist in my blue suit, white shirt, and red tie. An attractive woman with an approachable air, she smiled brightly at me while introducing herself as Brenda. I felt easy like Sunday morning. “Do you have an appointment?” she asked. I did not. “Our doctors only see reps who have appointments.” No longer humming Lionel Ritchie, I began stammering about being a brand-new rep who only wanted to introduce myself to the office manager to find out what the practice’s policies were. She tilted her head sympathetically. “
Amy
is our office manager, but she’s busy all morning and asked us not to interrupt her.”

Heart sinking, I glanced over my shoulder at Bruce, whose abnormally large eyes had been observing intently. Turning back to Brenda, I tried to look as pathetic as possible, hopefully appealing to her maternal instincts. Subtly motioning behind me with my thumb, I whispered forcefully,
“That is my boss! This is my first call ever! Is there any way I can see the office manager?”
She leaned toward me conspiratorially and said she’d see what she could do.

As Bruce nodded approvingly, I could hear Brenda telling no one in particular, “He looks like he’s ten years old! You
have
to see this rep.” At this, several administrative workers stood up to check me out, which resulted in
a chorus of giggling hellos. Soon, a well-dressed, dark-haired woman emerged from behind a door in the back of the office. Brenda gave me a thumbs-up sign. It was Amy.

Amy opened the door leading from the waiting room to the back office, and I smiled and walked toward it. She then closed the door and met me in front of the receptionist’s window; there’d be no back office invitation for me. After I introduced myself and she very pleasantly explained that she had little time to talk, I sensed someone behind me; Bruce had stealthily crept up. Sweat beaded on my forehead. I explained to Amy that I was a member of Pfizer’s new pediatric sales force and that we had a new antibiotic; could I leave information for the doctors? She asked for nine packets of information (six pediatricians and three nurse practitioners), saying she was certain they would be very interested. “Why don’t you schedule a lunch for the office?” She winked at this last part, letting me know she knew how much she was helping me out.