• Mon news: Novartis in $745M radiopharma pact. Novo launches Wegovy in China. COVID-era telehealth prescribing extended. Hims & Hers GLP-1 tracker. Promising Gilead liver disease trial. See more on our front page

Killing our business with flield visits and teleconferences

Quote

Burnt out

Guest
Why must we sit back and watch our business go down the drain?
Is anyone in headquarters listening? Does canyon give a bag of beans?
Nearly 20 years at Merck and I still need a baby sitter??? Really? Every two weeks I need a field visit? Every week I need a 1 hour + teleconference to "De-brief" the week or a 1 hour + teleconference to kick off the week?
Not to mention the 1 hour at least every month franchise "update" or the 1 hour business briefings to tell us zilcho.
I thought that the bottom line was to build a relationship with our customers and be there as much as we could was the new model? I guess not.
20 years ........what a waste.
Dear God please give sense to all of this.
 




The field visits only hurt sales, to be sure, but Merck's sales will tank with or without them. The writing is on the wall. Tell your babysitter that and see how long you last.
 




Burnt out said:
Why must we sit back and watch our business go down the drain?
Is anyone in headquarters listening? Does canyon give a bag of beans?
Nearly 20 years at Merck and I still need a baby sitter??? Really? Every two weeks I need a field visit? Every week I need a 1 hour + teleconference to "De-brief" the week or a 1 hour + teleconference to kick off the week?
Not to mention the 1 hour at least every month franchise "update" or the 1 hour business briefings to tell us zilcho.
I thought that the bottom line was to build a relationship with our customers and be there as much as we could was the new model? I guess not.
20 years ........what a waste.
Dear God please give sense to all of this.
Click to expand...

They are not for you. They, along with every other meeting they can think of, are for managers , to give them something to do.
 












We never had more than 1 day ride alongs per month until we bought Schering. Then the CTLs discovered they weren't working so they had to increase field visits with EVERYBODY so as to not appear discriminatory to the Schering people.
 




Burnt out said:
Why must we sit back and watch our business go down the drain?
Is anyone in headquarters listening? Does canyon give a bag of beans?
Nearly 20 years at Merck and I still need a baby sitter??? Really? Every two weeks I need a field visit? Every week I need a 1 hour + teleconference to "De-brief" the week or a 1 hour + teleconference to kick off the week?
Not to mention the 1 hour at least every month franchise "update" or the 1 hour business briefings to tell us zilcho.
I thought that the bottom line was to build a relationship with our customers and be there as much as we could was the new model? I guess not.
20 years ........what a waste.
Dear God please give sense to all of this.
Click to expand...

There is no sense to it, other than the field visits are designed to get you to be frustrated (as you clearly are) and quit your job. Merck is run by managers for managers...Hell will freeze over before Merck takes any group into account other than their managers...they truly reward these folks with jobs for life for selling their souls to the devil...

that is why I finally quit Merck...what a total WASTE of time it all turned out to be...
 








My customers cringe when they see me with my manger. The only time it was worse was when I had to let them know that I would be stopping by with my Director. You would have thought that I was bringing Hitler and the Devil in on a raid of the office. I was told that under no circumstances was I welcome back with anyone that was there to pry and poke through the office. One Doctor says to me, "the amateur Colombo you brought in was an insulting waste of my time" Don't let that happen again or you are out too. Bye bye, performance bonus...hello subjective bonus. All BS. Gotta go, we have a nice end of the day situation meeting to go over strategy. another aggravating manure session.
 




Anonymous said:
My customers cringe when they see me with my manger. The only time it was worse was when I had to let them know that I would be stopping by with my Director. You would have thought that I was bringing Hitler and the Devil in on a raid of the office. I was told that under no circumstances was I welcome back with anyone that was there to pry and poke through the office. One Doctor says to me, "the amateur Colombo you brought in was an insulting waste of my time" Don't let that happen again or you are out too. Bye bye, performance bonus...hello subjective bonus. All BS. Gotta go, we have a nice end of the day situation meeting to go over strategy. another aggravating manure session.
Click to expand...

It's time to suggest to our customers to have a No Manager/Director policy and allow only one rep per customer interaction. I am not saying one rep per company, I am saying just allow one rep at a time and no more reps bringing in managers. Our customers should love the idea and put that sign up with glee.
 




Merck is like a cult. Merck is a cult. A cult has members (like Merck reps or common employees) who follow leadership (Merck managers at all levels) without any question of their action or activity that doesn't make sense and that persons with common sense would readily question. That is Merck.
 




I am afraid you are not building trust with your customers when you bring in a manager every month. Certainly 2 to 3 visits per year by a manager is ok but customers feel like they can't trust you because your manager can't trust you.

Perhaps a feedback or suggestion to PLC, director, manager, or VP on this topic. Looks like everything has changed in sales except the "watching of managers"
 




Guess who just sent me a text? Yep. My manager. She wants to know if she can ride with me today. This should be fun. I guess she doesn't know that it's cold as a witches tit in a brass bra and snowing like crazy. Yea, sure let's go see some of my best customers. I could use a bit more distraction between the already hazardous conditions. Shall we deep dive into our itsy bitsy kindergarten computers? Or maybe we should discuss career options? Or better yet, let's talk about the "continuum" of our last 20 calls on the same freaking customers. I can not agree more with the people on this strand. This is is comparable to an elementary school led by preschoolers. 15+ years here not a newbie. Leave us the freak alone. Watch sales rise on that alone.
 








Remember, box checking, silly teleconferences, endless processes, and counterproductive field visits only works if you play along. Of course its all BS on a level that is becoming increasingly hard to tolerate, so you really have 3 choices, quit, wait to be kicked to the curb (optimized, right sized or whatever the euphemism of the day is), or swallow what little pride you have left and say "thank you sir may I have another".
 




Anonymous said:
Guess who just sent me a text? Yep. My manager. She wants to know if she can ride with me today. This should be fun. I guess she doesn't know that it's cold as a witches tit in a brass bra and snowing like crazy. Yea, sure let's go see some of my best customers. I could use a bit more distraction between the already hazardous conditions. Shall we deep dive into our itsy bitsy kindergarten computers? Or maybe we should discuss career options? Or better yet, let's talk about the "continuum" of our last 20 calls on the same freaking customers. I can not agree more with the people on this strand. This is is comparable to an elementary school led by preschoolers. 15+ years here not a newbie. Leave us the freak alone. Watch sales rise on that alone.
Click to expand...

I feel your pain. I too have 15 years and my manager feels the need to ride with me twice a month. It's bad enough I can barely see the IM's and some FP's for selling vaccines alone but now I have to take my manager who likes to jump into my conversations, if I get any, and take them over with all of these suggestions he wants to give to them. I always have to give my customers the look and mouth to them, "sorry, I'll make it up to you".

I'm also being told by my manager that my customer service relationship type selling is not the way to sell anymore. I am supposed to take it to the next level and get customers to move faster down the sales continuum. In other words, screw the relationships, I need you to be a pushy car salesmen with customers who are already at their wit's end with pushy pharma reps that come into their office demanding something from them every day. It's so easy for a manager to say that knowing they don't have to face this customer in the next two weeks like I have to. I'm with what some other poster stated on this thread.

I'm going to suggest to my customers not to allow managers in the office anymore. We are not children that need to be hand held in everything we do by insecure managers that feel the need to bully the reps and our customers to feel important. Access is already limited as it is and Merck's solution to gaining more sales is to brow beat the customers. The rep's solution should be to empower our customers not to let these prick managers in the office anymore so we can actually get some real work done instead of annoying milk runs that can cost us sales and access.
 




Anonymous said:
We never had more than 1 day ride alongs per month until we bought Schering. Then the CTLs discovered they weren't working so they had to increase field visits with EVERYBODY so as to not appear discriminatory to the Schering people.
Click to expand...

Wake up, Fool. They are trying to get people to quit. This has nothing to do with Schering.
 




Burnt out said:
Why must we sit back and watch our business go down the drain?
Is anyone in headquarters listening? Does canyon give a bag of beans?
Nearly 20 years at Merck and I still need a baby sitter??? Really? Every two weeks I need a field visit? Every week I need a 1 hour + teleconference to "De-brief" the week or a 1 hour + teleconference to kick off the week?
Not to mention the 1 hour at least every month franchise "update" or the 1 hour business briefings to tell us zilcho.
I thought that the bottom line was to build a relationship with our customers and be there as much as we could was the new model? I guess not.
20 years ........what a waste.
Dear God please give sense to all of this.
Click to expand...

flield.....


wow
 




Re: Killing our business with field visits and teleconferences

Face it. When you are lead by the ignorant and greedy you get the results you see.
Treat your people like worthless crap you are looked at like fools.
Take away every shred of human decency and respect you will be hated and despised.
Reward hard work and dedication with a slap in the face and people will roll over and just give up. That is the problem in our subculture. Headquarters see sales people as liabilities and leaches. Not the working ants that build and strive for more. Read the surveys. analyze them. We do not want NMIP, we do not want pats on the back. We do not want your trips. We want to be treated like human beings that count and contribute. Stop stealing the future of our once great and respected company. The board of directors and our senior leadership is failing and failing badly. Wake up and recognize the problem begins when you look in the mirror.
Once we agree this is the problem change will come. Until then, enjoy your endless filed visits, regional meetings, and teleconferences. Sales and face time with our customers is secondary to the hoop law.
Now go warn your customers that your boss wants to take over your job. That should make them feel better.
 








Top Bottom
Back
Quote