The answer to all of this lies in the MATH at the executive (Non-VP) level. Yasu, Doug, and the Chief Financial Officer. When you buy a new house there's an equation they use to figure out how much house you can afford, it basically says your payment can be no more than X portion of your income. So here is the golden question........How many Field Sales Reps can or should X million in revenue fund?
Example:
500 Million in annual sales can sustain 1,800 Takeda Reps??
500 Million in annual sales can sustain 1,800 Ventiv/CSO Reps??
or.......
500 Million in annual sales can sustain 1,000 Takeda Reps, but we will gamble by keeping 800 more for another 2 years (Frank Morich 2 year comment) until the fire gets lit with more revenue from new products.
I think we all should agree that when 3.5 Billion is gone, and our existing products combined make up less than 1/7th of the 3.5, then something has to change.
Or for the very optimistic.....maybe it's normal to have 1,800 reps to support 500 million in total sales. 500 million is still a lot of money! Who really knows? Doug maybe, Yasu for sure, CFO likely.