Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman (3 page)

Although I did not have a clue as to what I wanted to do with my life, I knew that sales was not it. Not that I had anything against salesmen, I just thought of them as short, sneaky guys who tried to sell you shit you didn’t need.

“Uh, I don’t,” I said in a monotone. Mr. Dryer was undeterred.

“Okay, well, what do you think about a base salary of forty thousand plus bonus, an expense account, a company car, and a laptop computer?”

Forty thousand dollars?
In my last year as a lieutenant, I had made $31,000. Maybe. Forty thousand seemed like a lot of money to a twenty-five-year-old guy standing in his boxers three feet from his boyhood bedroom. I ditched the attitude.

“Oh, did you say pharma
ceutical
sales? I’m sorry, I thought you said
farm tools
.” I paused, shaking my head.
Farm tools?
“I am very interested in pharmaceutical sales, John.”

Having hooked his fish, Mr. Dryer continued. “All right! The company’s name is Pfizer. I’m sure you’ve heard of them.”

I had not. For a guy conducting a “job search,” I knew amazingly little about the business world. Outside of IBM, Microsoft, and Abbott Labs, I had not heard of many companies. The only reason I knew anything about Abbott was because they had, amazingly enough, hired a college buddy who spent more time on academic probation than off and didn’t get his driver’s license until two weeks before the job interview.

“Uh, yeah, uh, no, no, I don’t think I have. To tell you the truth, I’m not very familiar with the pharmaceutical industry. How do you spell that, F-y-z … ?”

If John had ended the conversation right then and there, Pfizer would have been a lot better off.

“No, no. It’s P-f-i-z-e-r. Believe me, Pfizer is one of the best corporations in the nation, and you should be honored that they’ve selected you for an interview.”

“Oh, I’m honored, John. I am honored.” I was so honored that I missed the next few things he said, as I kept mouthing, “Forty thousand dollars!” I had some questions as to why such an outstanding company would want to hire a guy who nearly flunked high school chemistry and had no sales experience, but I kept such thoughts to myself.

“Okay, Jamie, then I’ll put an information packet on Pfizer in the mail to you today. Can you be in Chicago next Friday for an eight o’clock interview?”

“Uh, hang on a second while I check my calendar.” Putting the phone down, I checked my “calendar,” which bore a striking resemblance to the
New York Post
’s sports section, crinkling some pages to make it sound as if I was checking a daily planner.

“Next Friday? Uh, yeah, I think I can make it then.”

“Super. I’ve got a good feeling about this, Jamie. I’ll be in touch.”

As he said his good-bye, Katey’s face exploded into my mind.

“Wait! John, there’s one more thing. I know when I filled out your information sheet that I listed Chicago as my preferred city; this job
is
in Chicago, right? Because that’s the only place I want to live.”

He didn’t hesitate. “Sure, Jamie, they have plenty of openings in Chicago. You just knock ’em dead at the interviews, and everything will fall into place.”

Relieved, I hung up the phone and immediately called my dad.

“Reidy.”

He always answered the phone as if he was an FBI agent bunkered down in a command post, not a financial planner.

“Hey, Dad. Listen, what do you know about Pfizer?” I asked, uncertain whether I was even pronouncing the name correctly.

He paused for a long second before answering.

“
Take the job! Take the job!
” He pounded his desk as he spoke, and I imagined his suffering chest pains as the result of his exuberance.

“Dad, relax, they just called to set up an inter—”

“
Take it!
They are a
great
company. The
best!
We rated their stock number one in the industry this year. Jamie, listen to me, you are an
idiot
if you do not take this job.”

Again with the idiot thing! I had graduated from the University of Notre Dame and earned a commission as an officer in the United States Army, yet my old man acted as if I had gotten an AA from West Texas State–Southern and had spent the past three years working at a car wash. The first time he called me an idiot, I pretty much blew it off. This time, however, I really believed him. Truth be told, I was starting to sweat not having a job. Hence, I wussed out.

Fortunately, I was a lucky wussy. At a wedding the weekend before my interview, a friend told me about his fraternity brother who worked for Pfizer. “You need to give him a call,” Michael said. Dismissing it as typical
drunken nonsense, I nodded and ordered another round. Michael was serious, though, and he called me the next day with his buddy’s number. “You know, you can make a lot of money as a drug rep,” Michael said. “Like, a hundred grand.” Suddenly, he had my full attention. “He’s expecting your call. There’s a bunch of stuff in pharma sales that you have to know to ace the interview, and he can help you out. Have you done any research on your own?”
Good one.
“Yeah, you really should call him.”

I called him. Man, did he help me.

“The whole thing is about getting scripts,” he said matter-of-factly. He correctly interpreted my silence as confusion.

“Scripts.
Prescriptions.
That is what this job is all about: getting docs to write prescriptions for our drugs instead of another drug.” I nodded as I scribbled on the pad: Scripts!

He continued, discussing HMOs, samples, company cars, nurses, daily routines, and so on. He gave me a nice tip on a possible interview question—What is something you worked and worked and worked for, but ultimately failed at?—that I was asked on Friday. Most important, however, he taught me how to act like a “closer.”

“What’s a closer?” I asked, as my mind raced with images of baseball relief pitchers like Dennis Eckersley. His sigh was audible.

“A closer is a guy who asks for the business, a guy who breaks docs down and gains a commitment to use our product.” I was very confused.

“How am I going to show the interviewer I’m a closer if I have never sold anything?”

His answer was the money shot, a piece of advice that has made me—and a number of people with whom I have shared this story—a lot of money. “You just have to make him believe in you, make him see that you have it in you to be a closer.” He paused dramatically before continuing.

“At the end of the interview, he’ll ask you, ‘Jamie, do you have any questions for me?’ You’ll ask him the typical ones: ‘How long is training? When can I get promoted? Do I get stock options’ And after he has answered them, you drop it on him.” I stopped scribbling the three questions he assumed I would know to ask but that I had, in fact, never thought of.
It?

“You get on the edge of your seat and look him right in the eye and say, ‘Mr. Interview Guy, I
know
I’m the right guy for the job. I
know
I’m going to blow it out sales-wise and do great at this job, but I’m wondering if there is anything—
anything
—that would stop you from hiring me right now?’”

All that sounded a bit cocky, even for an egomaniac like me. I said as much.

“That’s the point!” he said. “Sales guys
need
to think they are the best, and you have to get that across in the interview or you’re finished. Even if the rest of the interview went shitty, you
have
to close him at the end. See, a big part of our job is simply asking doctors for the
business, ‘Doc, will you use our drug first to treat bronchitis?’ If the guy says yes, great! If he says no, that’s okay, too, because then that’s when the
real
selling starts.”

I hung up the phone with my head spinning.

The interview took place at eight
A.M.
on a Friday in late June. I reported to the hotel at 7:45 in a blue suit, white shirt, red tie, and wing tips, and immediately spotted ten other guys with short haircuts dressed exactly like me—my first introduction to the fact that Pfizer
loved
military guys. Pfizer had just added a new sales force specializing in pediatrics and, as a result, had to hire 150 new reps by August 1.

After filling out the typical paperwork, I was ushered into a hotel suite to meet with the local HR director, Brandon Somethingorother. Bearing more than a slight resemblance to Nick Tortelli, Carla’s ex-husband on
Cheers,
Brandon exuded an annoying “I’m-
the
-HR-guy!” vibe. He waved me in with a hurried motion, suggesting that every minute of his time was precious. Somehow, his day was already going poorly at eight
A.M.
, and he greeted me tersely. “So, you’re willing to relocate anywhere in the Midwest, right?”

“Uh, excuse me?”

His condescending stare suggested that I was less than intelligent.
What was with these middle-aged guys thinking I’m stupid?

A sigh. “The Midwest. You’re willing to relocate anywhere in the Midwest, right?”

There must be some mistake, I told myself. He must have me mixed up with some poor guy who didn’t have a recruiter set up his interview, a
recruiter
who knew that his candidate would only work in Chicago and had guaranteed his candidate that the job was, in fact, in Chicago.

“Uh, no, no, I’m not.” The look got worse. “I was told the job was in Chicago.”

Brandon-the-HR-guy closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose where his glasses had left a mark.

“Then don’t interview.”

“Excuse me?”

He had already begun gathering my résumé and other papers to put them back into their manila folder. “Don’t interview.” He stood, hands on hips. I sat, mouth agape. “I don’t have a spot in Chicago. I don’t want to waste your time, and I don’t want to waste my time. So, don’t interview.”

I should have walked out. Better yet, I should have said, “Blow me,” before leaving. And then I should have called ace recruiter John Dryer and told him to go screw himself. (Imagine, a recruiter misleading a job candidate?) I did none of those things.

Instead, I asked Brandon-the-HR-guy what territories near Chicago he had open. He stared at me silently, as though I was now officially wasting his time. I quickly explained that, due to the stipulations of my early out from the army, I had to live within a seventy-five-mile radius from an Army Reserve unit outside Chicago. Still silent,
he began nodding up and down. Grabbing a sheet of paper, he read off the names of various cities with openings. When he said, “South Bend, Indiana,” I jumped out of my chair. “I’ll take South Bend!” Brandon squinted at me suspiciously and asked why. I pointed out that I had graduated from Notre Dame and was familiar with the area.

At this, his face underwent a complete transformation from total jerk-off to long-lost buddy. Extending his hand for a hearty handshake, he smiled. “Brandon Riley, Class of ’68.” I was in.

Which wasn’t good, at least not according to my girlfriend. The way I later unsuccessfully explained it to Katey was, “I dunno what happened. It was like when my freshman football coach told me I might never set foot on the field or my drill sergeant said I wouldn’t be able to climb his wall; it was some kind of challenge, and I just couldn’t let him get away with it.”

Girlfriends do not want to hear about former coaches or army guys and the pointless challenges they may have made to your machismo years ago. Nor do girlfriends want to hear about how “South Bend is just a two-hour drive from Chicago, which is quite an improvement on the twelve-hour flight from Tokyo.” The only thing girlfriends want to hear about is when you are moving into their neighborhood.

Even though Brandon Riley, Class of ’68, had welcomed me to the club, I still had to interview with a regional manager, for whom approximately seventy-five
reps worked. Brandon came out from behind his desk to give me the skinny on this guy.

“He is going to want to hear examples of your overcoming challenges, and he loves to hear about competitiveness. He may give you a hard time about your lack of sales experience.” He paused, as if he had forgotten something. “Don’t forget to close him. Tell him that you and I discussed it, and South Bend is the place for you. Now, you go in there and show him what an ND man is all about!”
Go Irish!

The regional manager barely got out of his chair to shake my hand. He showed even less energy during the rest of the interview. Livelier fish could be found at Tokyo’s famous seafood markets. I regurgitated Michael’s friend’s hip terminology such as “scripts” and “asking for the business,” but got no reaction. It was as if this guy was an energy vampire, sucking the life out of me in order to (barely) keep himself alive. My voice lacked its usual enthusiasm, and I slouched in my chair. As I mumbled on about overcoming great odds to get a B in German 201, he interrupted me.

“So, how’d you like Zama?” he asked, relevant to nothing.
How’d I like what? Did he say something?

Somewhere in the back of my nearly numb brain, his question struck a chord. Zama, Zama, yeah, sounds familiar … oh, yeah! I had been stationed at Camp Zama in Japan. A tiny army post that served little purpose, most
soldiers
had never heard of it, let alone civilians.
My friends and family routinely butchered its spelling and pronunciation—Zuma, Zema, Zoma; only people who had been there called it Zama, for short.

Waking from my coma, I looked at him with my head cocked to the side, my brow furrowed with confusion. He smiled briefly.

“I did some R and R there while flying in Korea,” he said, suddenly sitting straighter in his chair, his voice displaying a timbre absent during the previous thirty-five minutes. We quickly struck up a lively and entertaining conversation about serving in the military in Asia. He had been a Marine pilot, as my father had hoped to become before blowing out his knee at Marine basic training at Parris Island. “Semper Fi!” I said, before sharing my dad’s story, which garnered an approving nod.