Applied







I don't even know what this means?

Are you asking why is Ethicon losing business to Applied? For the same reason people buy regular gas vs premium. Cheaper and for the most part does the same thing. $$$ that's why.
 


















Why can't we lower our price?

So let's say we lower our price....can you make up the difference in your territory? Say your current territory trocar biz is $500K at the current price but we lower it and just from erosion, that $500K drops to $150K. How will you make up that $350K and grow on top of that?

It's not just as simple as, "Why can't we lower our price?" The erosion has to be made up somewhere.
 












Why can't we lower our price?

This has to be from a new rep or someone who doesn't understand the philosophy of JNJ. First and foremost JNJ believes they are a premium brand therefore the customer should pay a premium price even if it is for products that are a commodity like trocars. Quite frankly hospitals should use the cheapest priced commodity product since they have zero clinical benefit and do the same thing. If you have a job where you sell a product like this, quit now because it has no future.

Reps who say just lower the price are the type of reps who usually have a hand out and expect to get paid regardless of performance and very rarely have any sales ability. Their idea of selling is "the competition is lowering price or giving product away with promo's etc so we should too". When price is your best selling point you know you are in deep shit. Live by price, die by price. Its a losing proposition.
 






This has to be from a new rep or someone who doesn't understand the philosophy of JNJ. First and foremost JNJ believes they are a premium brand therefore the customer should pay a premium price even if it is for products that are a commodity like trocars. Quite frankly hospitals should use the cheapest priced commodity product since they have zero clinical benefit and do the same thing. If you have a job where you sell a product like this, quit now because it has no future.

Reps who say just lower the price are the type of reps who usually have a hand out and expect to get paid regardless of performance and very rarely have any sales ability. Their idea of selling is "the competition is lowering price or giving product away with promo's etc so we should too". When price is your best selling point you know you are in deep shit. Live by price, die by price. Its a losing proposition.

Very well said. I don't work for JnJ. I work for another device company. My main competitor for a long time was a Boston Scientific rep who consistently sold on price. He'd always go lower. Well guess what. Bard would come in behind him, and then beat his price. Then some time would go by, and some knock-off-me-too would follow Bard and go even lower. Then there would be a problem and I would get called...

I kept telling the Boston rep "You're being really shortsighted. You're going to work yourself out of a job - competing on price. You have to bring value in other ways and only use price as a last option. He didn't listen. He took some business, for sure. But guess what? He was let go recently, and the majority of his accounts are now "house accounts". They are being managed from inside. So I'm going around now, picking them back up, because I will show up, help them, train them, etc. Really dumb. So don't compete on price.
 






Unfortunately, in this day and age, health care is being driven a lot by price. To say it shouldn't matter would be the ideal situation, but I think the majority of reps are seeing price being too important for alot of these "commodity items." One thing that I would definitely agree with the above poster on is that trocars, catheters, etc have seen there hey day come and go and I wouldn't be caught dead selling that shit because dr's and hospitals have stopped caring. Sure, there are a few hospitals out there that are still using Ethicon or Covidien or Bard, but their days are numbered...... Especially with companies like Applied Medical that sell mostly on price.
 






Unfortunately, in this day and age, health care is being driven a lot by price. To say it shouldn't matter would be the ideal situation, but I think the majority of reps are seeing price being too important for alot of these "commodity items." One thing that I would definitely agree with the above poster on is that trocars, catheters, etc have seen there hey day come and go and I wouldn't be caught dead selling that shit because dr's and hospitals have stopped caring. Sure, there are a few hospitals out there that are still using Ethicon or Covidien or Bard, but their days are numbered...... Especially with companies like Applied Medical that sell mostly on price.

Very true. How about Agron medical? Same shit?