Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman (25 page)

Unfortunately for my manager and my sales, I could relate to a doctor’s hesitance to try it. A hay fever sufferer my whole life, I had overslept on several occasions thanks to Zyrtec’s sedative effect. This became an issue with Bruce when I called to inform him that I would be late for a meeting in Detroit because I had to go to the dermatologist for an incredibly itchy rash that had appeared overnight.

“
Hel-lo!
You have a trunk full of an antihistamine that relieves itching better than anything!” he yelled, annoyed. I hesitated. “Well?”

Seeing no way out, I explained. “Uh, well, it’s a long drive, man—maybe four hours—and I don’t want to get sleepy—”

“That’s just great, Jamie!
Way to have confidence in your product! No wonder you’re ranked last in the district in Zyrtec sales, with passion and faith like that!
Why not go work for Schering?” The interruption was not unexpected.

Based on physician anecdotes and personal experience, I did not push doctors on the sedation issue. If an allergist liked to use Zyrtec, then great. If not, I stopped calling on him. Then I got a voice mail that changed my attitude. That neither my teammates nor I managed to recognize the story as a possible knockoff of the aforementioned Jim Henson tale still baffles me. Regardless, we didn’t, and we believed it. A Schering rep walked into an allergist’s office and dropped a six-pack of beer on the desk. Similar to the aforementioned internist, he asked what that was all about.

“If you prescribe Zyrtec for your patients, Doctor, you might as well tell them to drink this beer before driving home because that’s how impaired they’re going to be on Zyrtec.” Again, the physician allegedly tossed the rep out of his office, and, again, without any questioning, I instantly hated the company responsible for said story. My Zyrtec focus and effort quickly increased and, combined with the soon-to-follow Partners Health Plan formulary success, my sales ranking improved to number two in the Great Lakes region.

That was all it took: two stories—or should I say, two versions of the same story—for me to write off every Abbott and Schering-Plough rep in America. Of course, the fact that Biaxin and Claritin were my two biggest competitors may have slightly heightened my sensitivity
to such pharmaceutical urban legends. I certainly didn’t develop a venomous hatred for Ortho-Biotech’s birth control reps or Eli Lilly’s diabetes reps with whom I did not compete. Similarly, I didn’t have an instinctive dislike for the people who sold Muse, the nation’s leading treatment for ED at the time of Viagra’s launch. After all, the Muse reps may have been competitors, but they were no competition.

As recently as 1990, there were no pharmaceutical solutions for impotent men, their only options being penile implants. Guys weren’t exactly lining up to get a Terminator penis.

Prospects brightened considerably with the introduction of Caverject, the first FDA-approved, nonsurgical treatment. Injected directly into the penis, Caverject caused an erection within seconds. Not surprisingly, the inclusion of the words “injected” and “penis” in the same sentence greatly reduced demand.

Men suffering from ED got another boost of hope in 1997, when a company called Vivus introduced Muse, the first transurethral delivery system. In layman’s terms, that means a pellet of Muse was delivered through a tube
shoved into the hole
at the top of the penis. In 2005 this may not sound like a tremendous breakthrough, but in 1997 this was great news for ED patients! Sales of Muse skyrocketed as men across America chose sticking a tube inside their penis over sticking a needle into their penis. Unfortunately for Muse users, inserting the tube into their
urethra was only the start of the procedure. The following instructions are taken directly from the Vivus Web site. I think my dad had an easier time assembling my first bike.

Administration

• Stand or sit for the administration of MUSE
  

• Extend the penis in an upright position
  

• Slowly insert the applicator up to the collar
  

• Completely depress the button, then keep the MUSE in position, up to the collar, for 5 seconds
  

• While in position, gently rock the applicator back and forth to dislodge the pellet
  

• Roll the penis between the hands in the upright position for 10 seconds to distribute the medication
  

• Stand or walk around for 10 minutes after administration as the erection develops
  

Roll the penis between the hands?
Was he fixing a joint or trying to get an erection?
Walk around for ten minutes?
Uh, baby, why don’t you, uh, keep busy while I, uh, do a security sweep of the property?

Given the previous choices of needle or tube, it was not surprising that many men who had resisted seeking treatment for their ED now wanted to try a little blue pill. Muse was about to become the Betamax of the pharmaceutical industry, yet some of their sales reps refused to see the truth.

I was standing in a Fresno parking lot in May 1998 when I met my first Muse rep. He drove a gold Lexus and had slicked back hair; the attitude was palpable.

“Oh, the Viagra guy,” he said. “How’s it going?” I wanted to respond,
You mean, how’s it going selling the most popular drug in the history of the world, jackass?,
but I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

I shrugged sheepishly. “It’s crazy.” He nodded, silently assuring me that he had expected as much.

“Yeah, I think it’s only going to help all of us.” I asked what was going to help all of us. “The hubbub over Viagra,” he replied testily. He might as well have harkened back to fourth grade and said, “No doy.” I asked this Pat Riley clone for further clarification.

With a huge sigh, he tried to explain. “It’s like this: With more and more people trying Viagra, the law of averages says it isn’t going to work for everyone, so there will be more men trying Muse. I think our sales will go up, too.” After reaching $130 million in 1997, sales of Muse dipped to $59 million in 1998, eventually falling to $20 million in 2002.

I met a more realistic Muse sales rep a year later. Enjoying cocktail hour at a wedding in San Francisco, I spied a very cute Asian woman in a short dress across the room. I made a mental note to get the scoop on her from Greg, the groom. Later in the evening, I felt someone smack me hard on the arm. Assuming an overserved friend had given me an over-enthusiastic greeting, I
turned with a smile to find the very cute Asian woman in the short dress staring at me, no smile in sight. A glass of Chardonnay, certainly not her first, sloshed in her hand. “Thanks for putting me out of a job!” she spat.
Excuse me?
This turned out to be the groom’s cousin. She explained that she sold Muse, or
had
sold it until the Viagra explosion forced her to seek employment elsewhere. She later turned down my dance request.

CHAPTER

Twelve

SEX SELLS

H
OT GIRLS MOVED PRODUCT.
This is a law of nature, like short guys make better jockeys. No amount of sales data or media coverage demonstrated Viagra’s market dominance better than Greg’s cousin’s inability to sell Muse. That an attractive female rep waved the white flag in the face of a superior drug was noteworthy.

In the pharmaceutical world, men and women continuously debated whether it was better to be a man or a woman. The guys argued that given the choice, male doctors would always choose to speak with the sales-person wearing a skirt. While conceding the veracity of that point, the ladies—understandably concerned that their success would be written off as the result of what’s on the outside, as opposed to intelligence, personality, and strategy—insisted the boys had a huge advantage in accessing the physicians because the predominantly female receptionists and nurses preferred to talk with
male reps rather than attractive women of whom they might be resentful. I could see both sides of the discussion, and with the benefit of hindsight I can objectively state that the women’s view was stupid.

Admittedly, nurses liked guys better because we weren’t a threat and they could flirt with us. Even if the head RN adored me and granted me access whenever I wanted, though, that did not guarantee the physician would drop everything to speak with me. On the other hand, no matter how much a “gatekeeper” disliked a female rep, if the doctor let it be known that he would always see Tammy, she would always be allowed into the back of the office. People have been fired for less grievous errors than preventing an orthopedic surgeon from his monthly drool over the Celebrex rep. The women had the most basic human response on their side; regardless how behind schedule or how crazy the day, a male doctor would snap to attention at a mere whiff of perfume or a glance at a pretty girl, his instinctive desire to reproduce having kicked into gear.

I witnessed men undergo complete personality makeovers in the presence of female salespeople. Entering a pediatric practice in Goshen, Indiana, I stamped the slush from my shoes with an uncharacteristic frown. The weather was not the cause of my sour mood. The doctor I was attempting to call on, an older stiff well known for being impervious to humor or insightful commentary on Notre Dame’s offensive woes, rarely saw reps. So, I’d
driven thirty miles in the snow to probably not see the guy, and even if I did get to see him, it would be a less than pleasurable experience.

Deeper inside the waiting room, I found him standing outside the check-in counter, an unusual location for a man normally holed up in his office when not with patients. Stranger still, the doctor—the
Mennonite
(think “Amish with electricity”) doctor I’d never seen smile—was laughing heartily. Joining him in joyous laughter was the Cefzil rep, a cute brunette with a rocking body, whose back he was rubbing. The closest I had ever come to receiving a backrub in my career occurred while being shown the door by an annoyed allergist. I exited quickly; no one seemed to notice.

Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), a company whose human resources manager must have formerly been in charge of the Hawaiian Tropic annual talent search, marketed Cefzil, an antibiotic no more effective than the other members of its class. The other Cefzil rep in northern Indiana just so happened to be a cute blonde with a rocking body. Seemingly aware of their assets, the “Cefzil girls” dressed up for various holidays; their cavewomen Halloween costumes made Halle Berry’s wardrobe from
The Flintstones
movie look conservative. They sold a lot of Cefzil.

There was no need to look solely at my competitors for evidence of the female advantage in the marketplace, for examples aplenty existed within Pfizer. During my initial
visit with a physician, I rarely delved too deeply into a sales pitch. To my managers’ dismay, I preferred to get to know my customers on a more intimate level, asking about spouses, kids, colleges attended, and other personal data. Speaking for the first time with a younger urologist in Modesto, I instantly connected with this fresh-faced guy from the Midwest who, like me, loved beer and the Yankees. A five-minute appointment had stretched to fifteen when Dr. Hawkeye shared the exciting information that he used “a ton of Cardura,” our drug for men who urinate frequently at night.

In initial training, we had been taught to reinforce positive behavior, so I asked a question that would allow me to drive home our message. “What made you such a big Cardura fan, Doctor?” I waited for him to respond, “twenty-four-hour effectiveness” or “rapid onset of action.” This married father of four smiled broadly and said simply, “Donna told me to.”

I had heard of an attractive rep in her mid-thirties named Donna, but she lived in Fresno, not Modesto. Clearing my throat, I asked, “When did Donna call on you in Modesto?”

He shook his head. “Not in Modesto—Turlock. I used to have a clinic there,” he added, referring to a town twenty minutes south. This still didn’t clear things up for me, though.

“But that had to be awhile ago,” I half stated, half asked. Dr. Hawkeye nodded, eyes sparkling at the memory.

“Yep, four years ago.”

Who knows how many times competitors from Merck (Proscar) and Boehringer Ingelheim (Flomax) had called on him in those four years, how many times he had been wooed with free golf and extravagant dinners. Had they only known their efforts had been rendered futile by a rep named Donna he hadn’t seen in fourteen hundred days. When I finally met her months later, I immediately shared the story and thanked her for the contribution to my Cardura sales. She beamed at the news saying, “Oh, he’s so cute. Tell him I say ‘Hi.’”

I agreed, and when I saw Dr. Hawkeye next I added, “Donna said you’re cute!” I got twenty minutes with him that day.

In addition to any subjective superficial advantages female reps possessed over their male counterparts, the ladies had an objective edge: Considerably more doctors were men than women. According to the American Medical Association’s Web site, females made up 24.6 percent of the physician population in 2001, meaning that three-quarters of prescription writers were male. To me, it was a no-brainer. If I had been promoted to district manager and given hiring authority, people would have mistaken our team picture for a Delta Delta Delta sorority photo.