Well, this round of layoffs is in the books with another claim that this will take BMS Oncology through the next several years. How is this different than what Derek Dawid told us 13 months ago? Over the last 10 -12 years this has happened 7 or 8 times and somebody has to recognize that even the most positive person has a breaking point where apathy sets in. I think this is a reasonable b'ness model, certainly less complicated for our customers to understand. That raises another good observation, how many times can we make changes in who calls on a practice before the doctors and nurses stop trying to get to know the rep or stop coming to L and Ls? Now apathy has spilled over into our accounts.
But here's the deal LH, the changes make sense but are not significantly different than what the older reps have been saying for years should happen. BMS spent a lot of money to put together something that tenured reps have been screaming about for years. You should listen to them, might save BMS some money.
I was impressed with the talkpoint you lead leading up to the slaughter. I was particularly impressed when you said your vision for the division changed after you were in it for awhile. I'm not sure the changes were minimal though. I haven't talked to anybody that didn't have some change. Six percent layoffs by definition might be minimal but adding up everything doesn't come across as minimal.
Things will get better they always have but this time the low is about as low as I have ever seen. There are lots of things that can't change or that BMS can't change because of all the regulations but there are lots of things that can change to bring back a positive attitude to those in the sales force. I think that's the key here, you need to get the reps to want to thrive in this environment and do something to overcome the apathy which may be the biggest expense we have going right now.
Good luck and I mean that sincerely