2012, THE YEAR OF MISERY

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Anonymous

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it's almost here. Lives will be ruined in a few weeks, then more at the end of the year. AZ will begin a slide into mediocrity, and ultimately a merger in order to survive. Pressure will be incredible, and to no avail. The U.S. market will be relegated to the back seat, replaced by emerging markets. The Brand Teams will continue their journey deeper into incompetence. Field sales will take the "check-the-box" mentality to another level. Remember, AZ loves metrics, not sales, and will continue to stifle sales with their insane policies.

I hope you're ready for the madness. If you have one ounce of brains left in your head, if you haven't already begun, start now to pave your way into a new industry/career. This one has just about run it's course.

Good luck everyone, God Bless and Happy New Year!!!
 




Anonymous said:
it's almost here. Lives will be ruined in a few weeks, then more at the end of the year. AZ will begin a slide into mediocrity, and ultimately a merger in order to survive. Pressure will be incredible, and to no avail. The U.S. market will be relegated to the back seat, replaced by emerging markets. The Brand Teams will continue their journey deeper into incompetence. Field sales will take the "check-the-box" mentality to another level. Remember, AZ loves metrics, not sales, and will continue to stifle sales with their insane policies.

I hope you're ready for the madness. If you have one ounce of brains left in your head, if you haven't already begun, start now to pave your way into a new industry/career. This one has just about run it's course.

Good luck everyone, God Bless and Happy New Year!!!
Click to expand...

My friend you make some great points. 2012 will be a very difficult year for AZ and the pharma industry. One comment you made...."AZ will begin a slide into mediocrity." AZ has been SLIDING for quite sometime...for a few minutes I was trying to think when it started. I believe when SALES allowed marketing to dictate policy and direction. Instead of id'ing needs and solving them.....we gave messages. That, in turn shut doctors off as we were not giving value. It went down hill after that as we all know. Any other thoughts on when AZ started it's dive downhill??? Would be a fun thread... Good luck friends...and happy new year to you and yours..
 




Anonymous said:
My friend you make some great points. 2012 will be a very difficult year for AZ and the pharma industry. One comment you made...."AZ will begin a slide into mediocrity." AZ has been SLIDING for quite sometime...for a few minutes I was trying to think when it started. I believe when SALES allowed marketing to dictate policy and direction. Instead of id'ing needs and solving them.....we gave messages. That, in turn shut doctors off as we were not giving value. It went down hill after that as we all know. Any other thoughts on when AZ started it's dive downhill??? Would be a fun thread... Good luck friends...and happy new year to you and yours..
Click to expand...

Too bad I can't quote both of you. Level headed, direct and without all the sarcasm other posts have. I think the real unfortunate souls (other than those that get stuck in unemployment) will be those who stay. I pray for one of the jobs I have interviewed for along with a severance. That would be my little version of hitting the lotto!
 




When AZ became of ashamed of what we do, that was the beginning of the end. Their obsession with metrics over sales, also became a pivotal point. But THE biggest problem of all, is the current crop of upper management. Their disconnect with our reality helped to bring us to this current state of misery. 2012 will be bad. I have 2 interviews over the next 2 weeks, and I pray I can leave this diseased corpse of a company forever.
 




To me the changes came largely with the style of management. Project leap frog, performance based management, scorecards, like it or leave, a rank and yank mentality. AZ became process based, and the importance of people, who were recognized as important at one time in the old Zeneca ranks, faded away.

Minimize the impact if you will, but I believe this has hastened the decay of an entire organization at every level of operations, much like a democracy will decay when driven by a select few. At one time Zeneca appeared to make efforts to invert the triangle, but AZ has become even more top down driven. There is an attitude that strong direction from management will cure all ills. Given the companies current state it seems to have reached the opposite.

Not long ago I was talking to a nurse filling out a job questionnaire . The responses she noted were candid and honest. I asked if she was comfortable doing this and she explained that management wanted to know staffs feelings, for otherwise how would they know their needs and what to change? Change based on input as she described it, was ever evolving. Frankly, I was stunned. The culture I came from was nothing like that - not in reality.
 




The decline actually started in the 80's when Merck and Pfizer led the way with expanding the one rep per territory model. AZ and the entire industry followed. First it was 2 reps per territory, then 3, 4, and how many are we up to now? All selling the same drugs to the same customers.

Doctor's offices were faced with more and more reps wanting a piece of the physicians time. They could no longer manage it in the same ways they had previously.

When I started in this business there were basically 3 ways to see a physician in their office. Stop in any time and see them between patients. Come in at predertermined times, like 11:00-12:00 any morning. Or make an appointment and actually sit down with them in their office.

For the first few years on this job I never brought a lunch to an office. It was unheard of. Then offices found that with all the reps competing for the doctor's time, they could extract something in return.

This problem has only been exacerbated over the last 20 years with reps delivering nothing but canned marketing messages, providing no real value. And so we have the access problems we do today.

AZ and the industry in general has done much to bring us to the sad state of affairs we have today. Some has been dictated by outside forces like 3rd party and government payor. And much has been self inflicted like AIG investigations and CIO's, but this was the beginning of the decline.
 




Anonymous said:
Not long ago I was talking to a nurse filling out a job questionnaire . The responses she noted were candid and honest. I asked if she was comfortable doing this and she explained that management wanted to know staffs feelings, for otherwise how would they know their needs and what to change? Change based on input as she described it, was ever evolving. Frankly, I was stunned. The culture I came from was nothing like that - not in reality.
Click to expand...

One of the differences here is that the N is large and the "survey" outsourced to a consultant. Scores are usually weighed with averages "across the industry." Lets' say the overall average on a particular question indicates dissatisfaction, but the score falls just below the "mean," which incidentally may already be a "low" score. It can then be justified as being near average for the industry and therefore no real changes are necessary. I've heard management and HR play this off a dozen times now.

That way management can continue to do a bad job, because on average, others in the industry are also doing a bad job. The consultants can continue to "sell" managment on their survey design because it doesn't sting too badly and management will continue to "buy" in. Management can justify its existence by staying close to the curve. If management improves even slightly, even if scores are still generally poor, they will claim it as a victory showing improvement, and also indicate that they are listening! I've even seen managers accentuate only the positive while glossing over the negative.

Isn't it interesting however that when industry is ranked by our custormers, it is done so in top down fashion. There is no wiggle room. Where you fall is where you fall and it is the reps fault as representatives if the company is not ranked at the top. We then hear how lousy we are and how much we need to improve, even if we increased sales in comparison to a competitor that may have been higher ranked.

Massaging the numbers is an art and in essence those in power get to shuffle the deck.
 




it happened when we starting shoving that computer up their ass. NO doc wants to see it yet..they still do it. You cannot find ONE doctor who thinks that is a value...that is why they hate us...yet we've been doing it for 6 years...give it a rest!
 




Anonymous said:
When AZ became of ashamed of what we do, that was the beginning of the end. Their obsession with metrics over sales, also became a pivotal point. But THE biggest problem of all, is the current crop of upper management. Their disconnect with our reality helped to bring us to this current state of misery. 2012 will be bad. I have 2 interviews over the next 2 weeks, and I pray I can leave this diseased corpse of a company forever.
Click to expand...

The industry has been ashamed of selling drugs for a profit for a long time now, especially AZ. GSK is probably the worst. Pipeline failures and a change in management philosophy played a huge role as well. The company has failed for years in providing us with data to distinguish our products from the competition, with the possible exception of Crestor. When was the last time, if ever, you had good clinical data to sell Symbicort, Vimovo, or XR? All they know how to do is to have role play meetings, like the one next week, because they have no idea how to do anything else. They force us to do programs when we plead with them that they have no ROI, but they don't care. It's the "process" that matters, not the results.

Now AZ is in a very desperate situation and they don't know what to do. They will revert to all they know, role play meetings, LBX speaker programs, blocked MD's, etc., etc., etc. What a pathetic, incompetent group we have "leading" this company. Watch them become more and more desperate when sales and profits start to drop in 2012.
 




Anonymous said:
To me the changes came largely with the style of management. Project leap frog, performance based management, scorecards, like it or leave, a rank and yank mentality. AZ became process based, and the importance of people, who were recognized as important at one time in the old Zeneca ranks, faded away.

Minimize the impact if you will, but I believe this has hastened the decay of an entire organization at every level of operations, much like a democracy will decay when driven by a select few. At one time Zeneca appeared to make efforts to invert the triangle, but AZ has become even more top down driven. There is an attitude that strong direction from management will cure all ills. Given the companies current state it seems to have reached the opposite.

Not long ago I was talking to a nurse filling out a job questionnaire . The responses she noted were candid and honest. I asked if she was comfortable doing this and she explained that management wanted to know staffs feelings, for otherwise how would they know their needs and what to change? Change based on input as she described it, was ever evolving. Frankly, I was stunned. The culture I came from was nothing like that - not in reality.
Click to expand...

It has nothing to do with any of this.

There are NO products. None ten years ago, none now. Toprol XL, come on. Crestor, last to the market. Nexium, one hour longer duration than Prilosec. The list goes on. No sales team or marketing group can sustain that group of garbage. Blame lies at the top. Brennan, mostly and that moron MCKillop before him. Nice job Brennan, with Medimunne. What can you expect from a pharmacist.
 








Anonymous said:
It has nothing to do with any of this.

There are NO products. None ten years ago, none now. Toprol XL, come on. Crestor, last to the market. Nexium, one hour longer duration than Prilosec. The list goes on. No sales team or marketing group can sustain that group of garbage. Blame lies at the top. Brennan, mostly and that moron MCKillop before him. Nice job Brennan, with Medimunne. What can you expect from a pharmacist.
Click to expand...

Ha ha. I didn't know he was a pharmacist. Nerds who flunked the MCATs.
 




Control what you can control. Focus on closing and painting a patient profile. Get 6 signatures a day and stay on message and things will work out. Its not about AZ, its about patients. Decisions will be made Jan. 9, 2012.

Signed,

SSLT
 
















Anonymous said:
AZ became process based, and the importance of people, who were recognized as important at one time in the old Zeneca ranks, faded away.

At one time Zeneca appeared to make efforts to invert the triangle, but AZ has become even more top down driven. There is an attitude that strong direction from management will cure all ills. Given the companies current state it seems to have reached the opposite.
Click to expand...
Who do you think has "led" the U.S. business? Fante and Palczuk are both Zeneca. The last three VP of Sales have been former Zeneca, too.
 




Anonymous said:
Who do you think has "led" the U.S. business? Fante and Palczuk are both Zeneca. The last three VP of Sales have been former Zeneca, too.
Click to expand...
Fante was not Zeneca. He was a TZ butt buddy and don't put Hickey and Palczuk in the same category with Tilton. Everyone worked at Zeneca knows there is a huge difference. Tilton was an Astra nazi before we even knew what Astra was.
 




Anonymous said:
Fante was not Zeneca. He was a TZ butt buddy and don't put Hickey and Palczuk in the same category with Tilton. Everyone worked at Zeneca knows there is a huge difference. Tilton was an Astra nazi before we even knew what Astra was.
Click to expand...
If you had taken a poll prior to the merger and asked for a list of 10 names predicting who would be the next VP of Sales at Zeneca, Tilton's name wouldn't have even been on the list. In fact he most likely would have made the top of the list of least likely to succeed. So what went wrong? How in the hell did this fucking joke make it to VP of anything let alone sales.
 




Anonymous said:
If you had taken a poll prior to the merger and asked for a list of 10 names predicting who would be the next VP of Sales at Zeneca, Tilton's name wouldn't have even been on the list. In fact he most likely would have made the top of the list of least likely to succeed. So what went wrong? How in the hell did this fucking joke make it to VP of anything let alone sales.
Click to expand...

When the Astra-Zeneca deal was inked, Bob Black, the US head of Zeneca, announced his retirement. As a "Zenecan" who really loved the whole philosphy of the Company, I got a sick feeling when I listened to Mr Black's farewell message.
While I was at sign-up/orientation after first being hired at Z, Black addressed our class and gave us an admonition: "In life, you have three priorities, God, family, company. Always keep them in that order!"
Friends, I haven't heard anything like that from SSLT since, but it's still a good rule to live by.
 




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