Please tell me your honest opinion of the CVAS job selling Brilinta

[Anonymous]

Well, Plato was mostly non U.S. and that is a problem. AZ first needed to have done the following in the right order:
1. line up the biggest U.S. thought leaders at major institutions in their camp to talk at all conventions and online forums
2. hire a great MSL team, line up top program speakers and hire a cathlab specialized instituional salesforce responsible for about 5 hospitals tops
3. get your managed care ducks in a row and underprice the drug until it is picked up by most of the major insurers and MC/MA
4. overlay a hospital only team with sampling counterparts who have two to three other products, again in smaller territories to follow-up with piles of resources at clinic and retail level
5. have MSL, contracting people and higher admin teams work with hospital C-suite and pharmacy to pull-through protocols
6. use the media, abuse the media so that every time anyone turns to ACS news, there is a B story
7. use national and regional speakers to travel to key accounts for round tables without a slideshow requirement
8. as cathlab institutions pick up B, then expand responsibility to smaller and smaller community hospitals

That's my two cents. The focus should have been real tight and expanded out. Everything that could have been done out of order, was. Right now, everyone runs around like chickens with their heads cut off.

Thank you for this sincere reply. I do appreciate it! I actually feel for you guys!

 

[Anonymous]

Well, you make the territories smaller and put CVAS and "Hospital" on same level. Train any CVAS without hospital experience to better work a system and work with contracting and pharmacy. Right now they compete. You get the damn contracting reps out of cardiology and keep the Crestor reps on a one month call plan rather than every two wks. You knock off the call plan requirement for number of calls on a whole bunch of truly no sees (that no rep is ever going to tell you about) and switch to pure targeting to drive results. Let the rep decide and sink or swim based on their choices. You do not need TWO fricking CVAS people per territory. You change the speaker programs to be discussion groups as well. Then, work harder to get better managed care coverage. Eat the loss. Sadly, AZ blew it by paying so much to MDCO who will do absolutely nothing to drive scripts. Work better on stocking issues. Make sure that every pharmacy has at least one bottle of 30 tabs. That would be a good start. There is no reason to have two CVAS and one Hospital plus three Crestor people tripping over each other in offices and hospitals. They cannot possibly be productive and getting everyone to work together is absolutely impossible, time consuming and expensive. I know hospital reps that drive three hours one way to get to their accounts. That's right. That is stupid when there are also CVAS reps there too but not direct overlays and the hospital reps are telling them to NOT go in without them present as well. Since the accounts really only want one, everyone starts to compete and sneak around rather than work together. They all show up to Cath lunches and piss off the account. Good job.

Well in my area we need at least four people but if you include medco we have 8. The problem in my area is that there is the very restrcted hospital access and the reps -can't say I blame the have been lying about it for years. So they can only see the pharmacy a few times a year. They hace pretty much lucked out with sales numbers. So along come the big b and they have little to no experience selling or working in team. I so tired of reps that have called on a hospital for 10 years and have not one contact in pharmacy or even know how smart to use rhe internet to find out who is the director of cardiology.

 

[Anonymous]

The sales force (hospital and cvas) have completely dropped the ball. This drug is far superior to Plavix and they still can't sell it. I can't believe they have done so poorly. It's time to clean house.

Well, better maybe but not superior. But the cost is SUPERIOR to all other OAP's on the market.

Is the HUGE price difference from generic plavix to Brilinta really worth it to the older people with no job and little if any drug coverage?

To you, yes, because you are selling it. For ONCE, step into the patients shoes.....

AHHHHH. Now you got it.

A little better a LOT to late!!!!

 

[Anonymous]

Well, better maybe but not superior. But the cost is SUPERIOR to all other OAP's on the market.

Is the HUGE price difference from generic plavix to Brilinta really worth it to the older people with no job and little if any drug coverage?

To you, yes, because you are selling it. For ONCE, step into the patients shoes.....

AHHHHH. Now you got it.

A little better a LOT to late!!!!

No, it is not a "huge" price difference for anyone with insurance of any kind. In fact, it is less than a Starbucks coffee once a month and the product's CV death benefit IS superior.

 

[Anonymous]

Former Plavix rep here - 1st - BID dosing is your problem. 2nd - IC's are very comfortable with Plavix and now Effient. 3rd - Brilinta is expensive compared to every other anti-platelet. 4th - Data for Brilinta is not sound and IC's are skeptical. Not to be negative, but, all facts...

 

[Anonymous]

Former Plavix rep here - 1st - BID dosing is your problem. 2nd - IC's are very comfortable with Plavix and now Effient. 3rd - Brilinta is expensive compared to every other anti-platelet. 4th - Data for Brilinta is not sound and IC's are skeptical. Not to be negative, but, all facts...

You left out current "Effient rep." Data for Brilinta is some of the best in recent history for cardiovascular trials. The Triton trial was garbage and engineered to make the bleeding complications (which are severe) to be as minimized as possible. If there is skeptisim, it is because of how bad patients bleed on Effient and ICs thinking Brilinta must be just as bad and BID.

 

[Anonymous]

Very tough job. Lots of turnover. If B is not moving, you are gone.

 

[Anonymous]

brilinta failed in the us trial leg and failed in the cath lab....nuff said