If buyout does occur

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When Pfizer bough Wyeth they laid off 90% of Wyeth's salesforce. Pfizer just gave Wyeth's products to their existing reps or contract reps. Pfizer retained some Wyeth reps where there was a vacancy. Bottom line is they did not need more reps. Actavis already has reps in the uro and ob offices. They don't have anyone jn the gastro or derm offices, so those reps may fare better. Don't be naive. Look out for yourself.
 


















Anonymous said:
Wrong, do your homework. They have whc and uro. Please don't feed us this crap about them firing their whc and uro while keeping ours. That makes no sense at all. Osteo is likely gone too since atelvia is a dog and actonel is declining fast. Derm, will doryx 200 even have an acne indication, with generic 150 not much of a future anyway. Not matter what rubbish about your "safety" is concocted, companies Never acquire another then layoff their own people while keeping the vanquished. As far as home office, its a wrap Rockaway won't exist in a year and Rockaway won't exist. It is 100% duplicative.
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Once again, no one said they would fire the Actavis reps in favor of the WC reps. Actavis needs the branded presence and like it or not the success WC has had in the offices. It will be a great thing for all WHC and URo sales reps and DM's. Sorry to disappoint you.
 






You guys are seriously cracking me up with this whole "branded presence" and "branded rep" nonsense. You are looking at this solely from the sales rep perspective, but home office decisions would be made from the doctors' perspective/business decision perspective. So here's the insight you aren't considering: OBGYNs don't look at a Watson rep and see a generic rep and then see a WC rep and see a branded rep. Both bring OCs with samples - period. Back when the Paragard reps were also bringing Mircette, the doctors didn't have this mental shift when the rep switched from talking about a branded IUD to a generic, ancient OC. It was still the same person. Likewise, when there were the WC mirror reps, one with Loestrin 24 and the other with Femcon, they didn't see the Lo24 as the superior, branded rep and Femcon as a generic rep. Might the doctors have a pill preference? Yes, but that doesn't guarantee job safety for WC reps after this buyout.

At the end of the day, Watson and WC have overlapping sales forces in a couple of specialities. You can expend mental energy justifying all day long these scenarios when Actavis could keep all OC reps from both or, more laughably, keep just the WC reps and can the Watson reps. When a buyout occurs, things like product and pipeline are the assets, and duplicate sales forces are just excess payroll costs. Watson/Actavis is not blind to the sales tactics that earned WC its market share, and how can it logically justify keeping people who sold through excessive med eds, making 5-10 doctors speakers, etc., when there is NO PROOF that sales can be earned long-term once these tactics are gone? Especially when they have a sales team already in these offices?

If there is a Watson vacancy where you call, then maybe you have a shot at staying. If not, be a realist and stop puffing yourself up as a "branded rep." That is just the dumbest thing ever. Outside of WC, no one looks at you that way.
 












Anonymous said:
You guys are seriously cracking me up with this whole "branded presence" and "branded rep" nonsense. You are looking at this solely from the sales rep perspective, but home office decisions would be made from the doctors' perspective/business decision perspective. So here's the insight you aren't considering: OBGYNs don't look at a Watson rep and see a generic rep and then see a WC rep and see a branded rep. Both bring OCs with samples - period. Back when the Paragard reps were also bringing Mircette, the doctors didn't have this mental shift when the rep switched from talking about a branded IUD to a generic, ancient OC. It was still the same person. Likewise, when there were the WC mirror reps, one with Loestrin 24 and the other with Femcon, they didn't see the Lo24 as the superior, branded rep and Femcon as a generic rep. Might the doctors have a pill preference? Yes, but that doesn't guarantee job safety for WC reps after this buyout.

At the end of the day, Watson and WC have overlapping sales forces in a couple of specialities. You can expend mental energy justifying all day long these scenarios when Actavis could keep all OC reps from both or, more laughably, keep just the WC reps and can the Watson reps. When a buyout occurs, things like product and pipeline are the assets, and duplicate sales forces are just excess payroll costs. Watson/Actavis is not blind to the sales tactics that earned WC its market share, and how can it logically justify keeping people who sold through excessive med eds, making 5-10 doctors speakers, etc., when there is NO PROOF that sales can be earned long-term once these tactics are gone? Especially when they have a sales team already in these offices?

If there is a Watson vacancy where you call, then maybe you have a shot at staying. If not, be a realist and stop puffing yourself up as a "branded rep." That is just the dumbest thing ever. Outside of WC, no one looks at you that way.
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How about you stop puffing yourself up as the only one who knows anything. This is a different kind of sale and there are tons of opportunities for both Actavis and WC reps. Sorry it is not the normal blood bath that you trollers hope for but life will go on at the new Actavis.
 






Anonymous said:
How about you stop puffing yourself up as the only one who knows anything. This is a different kind of sale and there are tons of opportunities for both Actavis and WC reps. Sorry it is not the normal blood bath that you trollers hope for but life will go on at the new Actavis.
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Keep telling yourself that. Right now Actavis is strategically planning how
to legally start offering WC reps their severance packages. It's a slow
process that can take between 6 months to a year. I truly believe if your making
under 70k at WC your job is safe. There is no way a Generic Pharma company Actavis, is going
to pay Sales Reps over 100k when their own reps aren't making over 75k. My point is this if your making over 70k start looking.
 












Anonymous said:
How about you stop puffing yourself up as the only one who knows anything. This is a different kind of sale and there are tons of opportunities for both Actavis and WC reps. Sorry it is not the normal blood bath that you trollers hope for but life will go on at the new Actavis.
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I call BS on this crazy crap. The person you are responding to is absolutely correct, stop being so emotional. There will NOT BE 200 WC WHC reps PLUS however many Actavis reps PERIOD!! You are on crack if you believe that will happen. The new sheriff in town "ACTAVIS" will assess their needs for an OC sales force, and align accordingly.

Some territories on either side will be deemed not viable, and eliminated. Some territories will overlap, thus rendering ONE OF THEM, as not viable. In these two in scenarios one or more sales reps wll either be placed in a vacant territory (if it exists or is feasible) OR THEY WILL BE FIRED, PERIOD!!

The net net of this is that there will NOT be more territories combined than the two companies have separately. For example if WC has 700 territories and Actavis has 300 (just a number) territories, there will NOT be 1000 territories in the combined company period! Hundreds of territories would be eliminated but this DOES NOT mean that reps would be fired.

If there is a hiring freeze and with an annual attrition rate of 30% -40% , in one year you could eliminate hundreds of WC territories without even firing a single person. In the end SOME folks WILL be fired but mainly vacant territories will be eliminated. Home office will definitely be decimated though. Actavis expect to create $400 million in annual efficiencies and where do you think that comes from? It comes from lots of salaries. Warner Chilcott is not coming out of this unscathed. There is no doubt that Rockaway will close and a very large number of those folks will lose their jobs.

I have been with WC for several years. Trust me, the fact that we are be absorbed by an actual professional organization is a plus. Ask any other former p&G rep what the difference between a real drug company and Warner Chilcott is and you will share my view. It only gets better from where we are.
 






Anonymous said:
Keep telling yourself that. Right now Actavis is strategically planning how
to legally start offering WC reps their severance packages. It's a slow
process that can take between 6 months to a year. I truly believe if your making
under 70k at WC your job is safe. There is no way a Generic Pharma company Actavis, is going
to pay Sales Reps over 100k when their own reps aren't making over 75k. My point is this if your making over 70k start looking.
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You obviously dont know much about our company and are trolling. Most of our reps are new to the industry (less than 3 years) and DO NOT have salaries even close to 75k. Also I know for a fact that we have a policy against paying more than 100k to any sales reps period. There are exceptions and outliers for sure but that is the policy. Ask the P&G reps who had to take paycuts in order to keep their jobs.

WC reps are paid well when you take experience into consideration. Our salaries are much lower than the industry but our experience is also non existent compared to the industry. Lastly the Actavis reps are drug reps just like us and you have know idea of what they make.

Stop acting as though we at WC carry some cutting edge drugs. Doryx, Femcon Lo Lo, Asacol, Atelvia? come on! We are nothing but a glorified branded generics company. And with literally no pipeline to boot. By 2015 products that represent 40%+ of our revenue will be off patent and counting! Please do not throw stones while sitting on your glass porch.
 






Now that the dust has settled, time to face reality. There's some people who I've talked to that are so in denial of the situation. It is a hard thing to digest. For the past 10 years, historically the company that does the buying keeps their reps and only absorb reps where there are vacancies, which are not many. My sister-in-law works for Actavis and they have over 160 reps on the women's healthcare side and over 130 reps on Uro/PCP side for a total of almost 300 reps. Do the math...they don't need all of us. She said the derm and gastro reps would stand the best chance to be retained since they do not have reps in those offices. Her mgr was Not too confident for our women's healthcare and uro reps, obviously. She said when Actavis bought Columbia they let the majority of their reps and retained only a handful. Just making people face reality. We all know other rep friends who were downsized from a buyout, etc. It's NEVER good for the employees of the company that's been purchased and especially with our reputation as being unethical. Nature of the business.
 






Anonymous said:
Now that the dust has settled, time to face reality. There's some people who I've talked to that are so in denial of the situation. It is a hard thing to digest. For the past 10 years, historically the company that does the buying keeps their reps and only absorb reps where there are vacancies, which are not many. My sister-in-law works for Actavis and they have over 160 reps on the women's healthcare side and over 130 reps on Uro/PCP side for a total of almost 300 reps. Do the math...they don't need all of us. She said the derm and gastro reps would stand the best chance to be retained since they do not have reps in those offices. Her mgr was Not too confident for our women's healthcare and uro reps, obviously. She said when Actavis bought Columbia they let the majority of their reps and retained only a handful. Just making people face reality. We all know other rep friends who were downsized from a buyout, etc. It's NEVER good for the employees of the company that's been purchased and especially with our reputation as being unethical. Nature of the business.
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I am assuming that your post is factual and truthful. If so, it really eliminates all of the BS, especially from the "dont worry we are special" guy. Actavis and WC each have almost the same number of territories in WHC and URO; that means that the equivalent of an entire WHC and URO sales force will be eliminated, thats around 350 reps in those two alone! Then you throw in that OST was going to be decimated even without the sale of WC.

As thois poster has stated, NO company acquires another company, and fires their own people. You should rest assured that mass firing WILL occur. Actavis expects 400 million in annual "efficiencies". A large part of "efficiencies" is salaries and benefits of employees.

This poster is not trying to be a Debbie downer, and neither am I. Anytime your company is acquired, you need to immediately prep your resume, and begin looking for a job. It will take a while to find something else, so you need to start now. Their are over 35,000 unemployed reps who were laid off over the last few years so you will have plenty of company.

Management has to keep the ship steady so they will feed you all kinds of malarky about being positive. They have to do this because if you "check out" sales will suffer etc. DO NOT BELIEVE THE KOOL_AID. WC leadership is now irrelevant post integration. They are not even close to qualified to assure you of keeping your job. Just you logic and check other boards if you want to. You will see clearly that every single time a company was purchased mana many of their reps were fired, PERIOD!

Ask yourself this for example; if Actavis has 160 WHC reps and that was determined to be sufficient, why do they need 192 more WC territories? If Actavis has 170 URO reps and that was determined to be sufficient, why do they need 150 more WC territories.

Use common sense. YOUR fulltime JOB as of the announcement of the acquisition is to look for another job! Period
 






Because Actavis does not have the number of boots on the ground that they will need to cover all three OC pills and everything else in their bag. They need a branded presence and that is what buying WC offers them. Will there be attrition- of course, there always is attrition even when a sale is not happening. Just keep your head down and sell, that is the only way to really know how it will all turn out.
 






Anonymous said:
Because Actavis does not have the number of boots on the ground that they will need to cover all three OC pills and everything else in their bag. They need a branded presence and that is what buying WC offers them. Will there be attrition- of course, there always is attrition even when a sale is not happening. Just keep your head down and sell, that is the only way to really know how it will all turn out.
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Pure BS, you must be the "dont worry be happy guy. So the folks selling Generess can't sell Lo Lo? GIVE ME A BREAK. If we have 200 territories in WHC and they have 200 territories in WHC , the combined sales force will NOT be more than 200 territories. Same goes for URO!

Attrition and layoffs are two different things, and you do make a decent point here. We know that based on the normal firings and resignations rate at WC, at least 30% of the existing reps wont even be here at the time of the integration of the two companies. It is very likely that 50% or more of the eliminated territories will be vacant therefore no rep to be fired.

The bottomline though is that there will be a reduction simply based on not filling vacant territories. In the case the enormous turnover that we have will benefit us greatly. THERE WILL ALSO BE LAYOFFS meaning your territories will be eliminated and the occupying rep gets fired.

I agree that we should "put our heads down and do our jobs". As an employee in a vanquished company our primary job is to find another job. Serving your sandwiches and gathering signatures is now secondary. PS if you are a DM, your odds of being laid off are significantly higher than that of the WC reps. The RSD odds are even higher!
 






Anonymous said:
I am assuming that your post is factual and truthful. If so, it really eliminates all of the BS, especially from the "dont worry we are special" guy. Actavis and WC each have almost the same number of territories in WHC and URO; that means that the equivalent of an entire WHC and URO sales force will be eliminated, thats around 350 reps in those two alone! Then you throw in that OST was going to be decimated even without the sale of WC.

As thois poster has stated, NO company acquires another company, and fires their own people. You should rest assured that mass firing WILL occur. Actavis expects 400 million in annual "efficiencies". A large part of "efficiencies" is salaries and benefits of employees.

This poster is not trying to be a Debbie downer, and neither am I. Anytime your company is acquired, you need to immediately prep your resume, and begin looking for a job. It will take a while to find something else, so you need to start now. Their are over 35,000 unemployed reps who were laid off over the last few years so you will have plenty of company.

Management has to keep the ship steady so they will feed you all kinds of malarky about being positive. They have to do this because if you "check out" sales will suffer etc. DO NOT BELIEVE THE KOOL_AID. WC leadership is now irrelevant post integration. They are not even close to qualified to assure you of keeping your job. Just you logic and check other boards if you want to. You will see clearly that every single time a company was purchased mana many of their reps were fired, PERIOD!

Ask yourself this for example; if Actavis has 160 WHC reps and that was determined to be sufficient, why do they need 192 more WC territories? If Actavis has 170 URO reps and that was determined to be sufficient, why do they need 150 more WC territories.

Use common sense. YOUR fulltime JOB as of the announcement of the acquisition is to look for another job! Period
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Roger? Is that you?
 






Anonymous said:
Pure BS, you must be the "dont worry be happy guy. So the folks selling Generess can't sell Lo Lo? GIVE ME A BREAK. If we have 200 territories in WHC and they have 200 territories in WHC , the combined sales force will NOT be more than 200 territories. Same goes for URO!

Attrition and layoffs are two different things, and you do make a decent point here. We know that based on the normal firings and resignations rate at WC, at least 30% of the existing reps wont even be here at the time of the integration of the two companies. It is very likely that 50% or more of the eliminated territories will be vacant therefore no rep to be fired.

The bottomline though is that there will be a reduction simply based on not filling vacant territories. In the case the enormous turnover that we have will benefit us greatly. THERE WILL ALSO BE LAYOFFS meaning your territories will be eliminated and the occupying rep gets fired.

I agree that we should "put our heads down and do our jobs". As an employee in a vanquished company our primary job is to find another job. Serving your sandwiches and gathering signatures is now secondary. PS if you are a DM, your odds of being laid off are significantly higher than that of the WC reps. The RSD odds are even higher!
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I'll say this. The Actavis/Watson reps suck. Just look at all their numbers! There are also circumstances where they not only suck, but doctors flat out don't care for them, my territory is one of them. Most don't even know their names, that's pathetic. So, theoretically, could we hand over LoLo to a Watson rep and have them do contract work of just dropping it off? Absolutely. However, WC reps, and I don't care what you say, have momentum with this product and flat out better relationships, which in turn, can drive more business. This could go either way, and there are surely to be lay offs in whc, mostly on WC's side, however, it would not make business sense to take reps who have always done well and are still doing well, out of their territory and give the product to a rep who has done nothing in a territory with no relationships. We have done all the leg work, selling, and transitioning over the last two years on this product, so, again they essentially could get away with a neutral growth, but nothing more. And in a territory where docs particularly like their WC rep, it MAY hinder rx's. At the end of the day, both companies combined will now have 3 OC's, Estrace, Osteo drugs, and a couple other products Watson brought. That's a huge portfolio that in my eyes will be divided amongst both reps in any given territory. Territories where there is a 3 tier over lap, someone, most likely WC employee, will be let go. But I do not think it will be to the tune of 300 reps.
Not even close.
 












Anonymous said:
I'll say this. The Actavis/Watson reps suck. Just look at all their numbers! There are also circumstances where they not only suck, but doctors flat out don't care for them, my territory is one of them. Most don't even know their names, that's pathetic. So, theoretically, could we hand over LoLo to a Watson rep and have them do contract work of just dropping it off? Absolutely. However, WC reps, and I don't care what you say, have momentum with this product and flat out better relationships, which in turn, can drive more business. This could go either way, and there are surely to be lay offs in whc, mostly on WC's side, however, it would not make business sense to take reps who have always done well and are still doing well, out of their territory and give the product to a rep who has done nothing in a territory with no relationships. We have done all the leg work, selling, and transitioning over the last two years on this product, so, again they essentially could get away with a neutral growth, but nothing more. And in a territory where docs particularly like their WC rep, it MAY hinder rx's. At the end of the day, both companies combined will now have 3 OC's, Estrace, Osteo drugs, and a couple other products Watson brought. That's a huge portfolio that in my eyes will be divided amongst both reps in any given territory. Territories where there is a 3 tier over lap, someone, most likely WC employee, will be let go. But I do not think it will be to the tune of 300 reps.
Not even close.
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Lets stop the nonsense please! You are comical. You just stated that "WE" MIGHT allow Actavis to do contract work? You still do not get it, WE WERE ACQUIRED, WE ARE THE VANQUISHED, WE ARE THE POORLY TRAINED REPS FROM THE COMPANY WITH THE HORRIBLE AND UNETHICAL REPUTATION.

As far as relationships, WC as an organization does not care about relationships. This is why our annual turnover is 35% and management LIKES IT THIS WAY. How can you have strong relationships as a whole, when you turnover your entire organization every three years. Remember, compared to Actavis, WC reps SHOULD be doing well! They have a superior product. Also there is a large base of Lo 24 volume to steal from. How much is your/our Lo LO volume coming from other WC products vs. competitor products? When you also factor in that we, until recently, were allowed to have fake "med-ed"s and "Speaker" to use for sanctioned bribery, we simply had an easier time. Comparing our share vs. Actavis will not indicate that we are "superior" since the expectations are likely to be different. Oh, and there will NOT be two reps in the same territory selling to the same doctor. One of you will be transferred OR Fired. Unless on the acquiring territory has a rep who is on a PIP, it is usually the acquired rep who is fired.

I also do not think that 300 WC reps will be fired. Just look at the current vacant territories. It is likely that vacant territories will continue to be filled at a low rate if at all. The integration will probably occur about 12 months from now in that time even under normal conditions around 250 WC reps would have been fired. If you add most of that to the existing vacancies there could be 200-300 positions eliminated at WC just based on attrition, no layoffs.

Lets be honest and stop the sugar coating. If you are in WHC or URO (rep or DM) and share the same geography with an Actavis rep, you have at least a 50% chance of being displaced. If you are in OST you are in a business that is imploding and your chances of survival are no more than 50% in 2013 even before we were acquired.

Again, never in the history of mergers and acquisitions has a company purchased another company then when it came to overlap, fired their own legacy people NEVER!
 






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