Takeaways from the Orlando One Team meeting?

hmmm. EVERYONE I talk to would prefer virtual meetings! Especially when the ones we do have are such bottom barrel. Awful hotels, bad food, long lines, nothing new to discuss, poorly planned workshops, zero gifts, zero time to do anything personal. No one wants to go to a crap hotel and be working from 8 am till 8pm.

 

EVERYONE wants Teams meetings instead of live meetings except for the corporate office trolls like YOU that wait all year to get up on stage, read a scripted teleprompter speech so that you can justify your position at your year-end review.

WE KNOW how this works.

We can get the exact same things accomplished and save millions of dollars (and improve Glint scores/our culture) by using Teams instead of doing old school live meetings. Ask the field anonymously and be honest with the results. You'll see.

 

Meetings were fun at one point with leadership here wasn't horrendous. I would rather listen on a teams meeting the in person. Highly likely they won't catch my eye rolls when they talk on teams

 

Wait until next year when the entire Novartis US company goes to Vegas! That will be the true cluster f*ck! I can see it now….being late for everything because it takes forever to get an elevator. So dumb.

 

Through my years in pharma/medical sales, the only positive to leaving family and life for a week was being wined and dined and appreciated by the company. Novartis doesn’t do that. Every meal looks like the cheapest way to feed 4 thousand people, no gifts, no sit down meal, and my team didn’t even get a free night to expense a dinner. Sessions went until 6 at least so we didn’t even get a break before dinner. They think it’s some big gift to stay at a cool resort and then never allow us a free moment to even see it. Looking back over how much work that meeting was, literally 12-13 hours of work every day, and thinking about how they didn’t exactly roll out the red carpet for us makes me hate this company even more.
#culture

 

Live meeting will always be as it’s a massive tax right off for the company.

 

Objectively the meeting was a B+. Our team enjoys the hustle and bustle of NSMs.

 

Opening session C-
Workshops C
Hotel and food D

they should hire a better company to produce these with fresh ideas.

 

For a group of people that make 6 figures and that works only 2 to 3 hours a day, lies about calls and everything else, you little shits complain an awful lot! You are a considered a “temporary but necessary evil”, that is until AI and the following AI devices make you guys go the way of the buggy whip salesman. It’s all just a few years away then all we will need from reps is a small force to launch a new drug and then those reps will be contract. AI will change the face of pharmaceutical marketing and selling. It’s inevitable and it’s closer than you think.

 

Very true pharma companies need live meetings as a way to legitimize their fraudulent existence. Of course, home office, marketing and sales leadership are lame and need reps to justify their jobs. However, entitled reps were created in the midst of all this phony Pharma BS. Let’s be honest…. Reps are are nothing more than entitled walking billboards who serve as dine & dash delivery drivers. It’s all laughable at all levels of Pharma. End of day the entire industry does mindless work and steals paychecks. All of Pharma has zero transferable job skills outside of these lame industry. So cry away…

 

I don’t mind a national meeting once a year. Don’t think it’s necessary to put all the diff divisions together at the same time, but prob cheaper for Novartis to do it this way.

Liked how they mixed us up with other regions for the breakouts. Good to hear what others doing in other parts of country esp w/Leqvio. Some of which sounded non compliant from what our region told but good to know apparently not.

My take….
Overall, hotel good. I never waited for an elevator. Distance to get places not bad. Food…. Tasted fine. Too long of wait at food stations. Awards night should have been a sit down meal. The meeting app (USummit) was poorly managed. Would change last minute. Wasn't accurate at times. Meeting content. Was easy.. no certifications, not a lot of role playing. Economics of healthcare was interesting. I did not enjoy the astronaut, but prob just me. Also, very poor form to keep people past the 6:00pm scheduled end time on their free night.

The CV Dallas meeting was so bad and set the bar so low, that this meeting came off as a success. Also, nice to not have to listen to Duane up there on stage.

 

Considering how unhappy field sales is with the culture and the lip service that has been paid by repeating the word “culture” in every presentation, I was expecting a lot more sucking up. I expected another “year of the field” communication, a nice welcome gift, a full service dinner awards meal, a new contest announced, and a mention in every general session about how much they appreciate the accomplishments of the field.
Instead it was more of the same. Budget meeting so we could listen to them take credit for our accomplishments. I’d like to tell someone who really needs the “upskilling” in this company.

 

Counterpoint - every rep on your team fucking hates it. Some of us have lives and families and don't want to come home with food poisoning.
Its a regrettable relic of the '90's that they just can't let go of.

 

I could have written a more effective launch plan on the back of a cocktail napkin than the one they devised for Leqvio.
I can't wait for A.I. because the marketing department will be the first to go.
You are right about reps, but they're tougher to replace than the assclowns who are responsible for the Leqvio clusterfuck.
You could have programmed a better strategy with a Commodore-64, you don't even need A.I.

 

Truth

 

Truthful post. Thanks

 

The food was awful, the reception lines ridiculous, and the big tent presentations were moronic. Only good part was living the meeting hotel for some late nite partying.

 

I know at least two divisions where half the team didn’t make bonus last trimester, how motivating is that? On top of it, you give managers an ungodly amount of field days to micromanage us to death. Newsflash des and rest of CE: some of our large accounts have 40-50 Novartis reps trying to gain access. It’s arrogant of you to not even think about the other 50 companies doing the same thing. We know your field time didn’t pass primary care level, but it’s not fair to treat the entire salesforce like we are PC. It’s insulting and makes you look tone deaf. The least you could do is let up on the micromanagement tactics. Managers should be coaching, not acting like inspector gadget.

 

Let’s not get carried away. Your job is to be a walking electronic product billboard. Your manager has the authority to re-program your billboard as he/she sees fit. . Your job is to get the food order right.

 

"Lip service" is a very accurate description. You can't ask the people that caused the problem...to fix the problem. That would entail a little self-reflection...