What's with the pay around here?

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Anonymous

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Before I come off arrogant and disrespectful, let me just say that I don't hate the company, or anyone in it, and i'm appreciative of having a job, but I would like to ask why the pay in our division is so low? Bonuses are small, and though I can't speak for everyone, my salary is very low too. Does anyone else think the company will ever take into account that doing rep moderated programs and speaker dinners takes people away from their families and forces reps to work overtime and pay out higher wages?

Our benefits cost more, gas is more, bills at home are more, school costs are up and we are spending more time doing the work, but aren't getting paid any more than other reps at other companies that don't have to perform these programs at night.

And before anyone gives the koolaid remarks, don't forget that Teva is growing at a very fast pace and has deep pockets.
 












Anonymous said:
Before I come off arrogant and disrespectful, let me just say that I don't hate the company, or anyone in it, and i'm appreciative of having a job, but I would like to ask why the pay in our division is so low? Bonuses are small, and though I can't speak for everyone, my salary is very low too. Does anyone else think the company will ever take into account that doing rep moderated programs and speaker dinners takes people away from their families and forces reps to work overtime and pay out higher wages?

Our benefits cost more, gas is more, bills at home are more, school costs are up and we are spending more time doing the work, but aren't getting paid any more than other reps at other companies that don't have to perform these programs at night.

And before anyone gives the koolaid remarks, don't forget that Teva is growing at a very fast pace and has deep pockets.
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We might be growing at a fast pace, but that is due to acquisitions, and those cost MONEY. The deep pockets are to fund the toys that we insist on buying....sorry but that's the truth. Companies are not going to overcompensate anyone which is why our pay will be low and they will suck the life out of us in the meantime. Wahoo!
 












I'm having a hard time adjusting my attitude and need some helpful reminders only the wisdom of Cafe Pharma posts can provide.

I've consistently been a top performer and am now staring down a year of little to no bonus. My family costs have unexpectedly gone up, and my salary is barely enough to stay afloat. So the question is what should I do to make more money?

a) tank my numbers as best I can so next year will be a good year?
b) try my hardest to sell more and hope the company sees it fit to pay a bonus
c) sell something on the side in my spare time?
d) fill in your own idea here...
 






Anonymous said:
I'm having a hard time adjusting my attitude and need some helpful reminders only the wisdom of Cafe Pharma posts can provide.

I've consistently been a top performer and am now staring down a year of little to no bonus. My family costs have unexpectedly gone up, and my salary is barely enough to stay afloat. So the question is what should I do to make more money?

a) tank my numbers as best I can so next year will be a good year?
b) try my hardest to sell more and hope the company sees it fit to pay a bonus
c) sell something on the side in my spare time?
d) fill in your own idea here...
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While I don't know about the "wisdom" of CafePharma, I think your post is "spot on" to the frustration that everyone at TR is feeling right now. With regards to your questions, here is my take; Yes, our salaries are lower than our average for the industry. However, my hope is that as long as they keep our sales force "lean and mean" and our salaries low, the ROI for us is reason to keep the sales force around. This leads to your following question of how to make more money. Our only hope of making more money THIS YEAR is if they put an additional "kicker" bonus program in play for the last quarter (like they did last year when so few where close to quota). Aside from that, the goals are just too far off from reality to make any real money.

What TEVA has failed to realize is that when you make goals to high to attain, you remove any incentive to try (85% of goal pays the same as 25% of goal). I have talked with a number of reps that are taking the same tactic of letting their numbers tank so as to have more attainable goals next year. For me, I have chosen to skip taking a vacation this year, and put off home repairs until next year (hoping it will be better). You can try jumping ship to another company but that holds a potential set of new problems.

Best of luck to all this year as we are in line to receive little or no bonus for the current and following quarter. All I can do is look at the bright side, and be thankful that we have a job with great benefits.

--sorry did not spell check, what you read is what you get!
 












I am glad to see my concerns are being shared outside my region. They are creating very little short term incentive to get any effort out of their employees...unless this is intentional to scale back the sales force. i can't imagine this is the case though with the pipeline we hear about consistently. Hopefully, some higher ups do read these boards and are able to gauge corporate morale. It's not good.
 






to those who are trying to "tank" their goals, you are wasting your time. Goals do not go down they will continue to go up. As long as we are chasing the magic numbers that Big Teva wants and has promised to investors then we will have increased goals every time.
 






Anonymous said:
to those who are trying to "tank" their goals, you are wasting your time. Goals do not go down they will continue to go up. As long as we are chasing the magic numbers that Big Teva wants and has promised to investors then we will have increased goals every time.
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That is not entirely accurate. The goals will always go up as you said, however, they are a percentage that is tied to TRX history. Increasing 20% on 1000 TRX's is easier than growing 1500 by 20%. So yes, we cannot control the ridiculous goals but we can control the baseline. Anyone that has been in the industry long enough knows it is easier to come off a bad year than a good one as history becomes your enemy. And as one of the previous posts so accurately stated: "the payout is the same for 85% as it is for 25%". So then the question becomes "why should I bust my hump when i have no chance of getting anywhere close to 90%?".
 






Anonymous said:
That is not entirely accurate. The goals will always go up as you said, however, they are a percentage that is tied to TRX history. Increasing 20% on 1000 TRX's is easier than growing 1500 by 20%. So yes, we cannot control the ridiculous goals but we can control the baseline. Anyone that has been in the industry long enough knows it is easier to come off a bad year than a good one as history becomes your enemy. And as one of the previous posts so accurately stated: "the payout is the same for 85% as it is for 25%". So then the question becomes "why should I bust my hump when i have no chance of getting anywhere close to 90%?".
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Wow, this sounds like the conversations I have had with friends that I went through training with when we got together at the August meeting. We are all having the same issue with goals across the country.

Has anyone heard if Teva is going to do a 4th qtr. kicker bonus program like one the previous posters mentioned? If not, I don't think anyone is going to really try.
 






Anonymous said:
Wow, this sounds like the conversations I have had with friends that I went through training with when we got together at the August meeting. We are all having the same issue with goals across the country.

Has anyone heard if Teva is going to do a 4th qtr. kicker bonus program like one the previous posters mentioned? If not, I don't think anyone is going to really try.
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Well, it sounds like CC will lay out the new bonus plan on the conference call this Monday. They must have caught wind of reps that quit trying to move the numbers do to apathy. Apparently, 95% of goal will become the new 100% bonus attainment so that more people can get a couple of dollars at Christmas time . There is a caveat to this because rumor is strong that what ever you come up short for 3rd qtr. will just be rolled over to the ridiculous 4th qtr goals, thereby wiping out any bonus payout in April. So rather than admitting they overshot the goals they are going to put a small carrot out for us. I hope I am completely wrong on this, we shall see on Monday morning!
 






Anonymous said:
Well, it sounds like CC will lay out the new bonus plan on the conference call this Monday. They must have caught wind of reps that quit trying to move the numbers do to apathy. Apparently, 95% of goal will become the new 100% bonus attainment so that more people can get a couple of dollars at Christmas time . There is a caveat to this because rumor is strong that what ever you come up short for 3rd qtr. will just be rolled over to the ridiculous 4th qtr goals, thereby wiping out any bonus payout in April. So rather than admitting they overshot the goals they are going to put a small carrot out for us. I hope I am completely wrong on this, we shall see on Monday morning!
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Well, no adjustment unless nation is at 95% or less at end of year. No admission that they set the goals too high, just that we sampled too much. We are up over 20% vs last year on a 10 year old product (which is amazing) yet the nation nowhere close to goal. Anybody feel motivated?
 






Anonymous said:
Well, no adjustment unless nation is at 95% or less at end of year. No admission that they set the goals too high, just that we sampled too much. We are up over 20% vs last year on a 10 year old product (which is amazing) yet the nation nowhere close to goal. Anybody feel motivated?
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For some of us it is even worse because of the actions of a few. Our entire area has no funds for lunches, coffee, rep led programs, etc. till next year because one region in our area went nuts with their funds. Our area director pulled everyone's funds to cover the deficit and we were told any opportunity fund expenses would not be approved. Some of you would see this as a blessing, but I believe lunch and learns, etc. have a positive effect on my numbers. Bottom line is this can only hurt me, not help me. And no, I do not feel motivated to do more than the minimum.
 






Do more than the minimum because you're better than that. I'm not gonna be on a soap box, but this is your job and you signed up for it. However, the company should act accordingly too. Pay your sales people for the double digit growth...

Bad mouth GSK all you want, but reps over there are getting more in bonus dollars for taking quizzes.

Anyone who contributes to the bottom line of millions of dollars has a hard time swallowing there's little to commission dollars being payed out.
 






Anonymous said:
Do more than the minimum because you're better than that. I'm not gonna be on a soap box, but this is your job and you signed up for it. However, the company should act accordingly too. Pay your sales people for the double digit growth...

Bad mouth GSK all you want, but reps over there are getting more in bonus dollars for taking quizzes.

Anyone who contributes to the bottom line of millions of dollars has a hard time swallowing there's little to commission dollars being payed out.
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I don't know about the previous poster but I am in the group that lost all of our OP funds for the rest of the year. I love my job so I will do what I can under the circumstances. Many in my area have very low base pay so they depend on hitting at or close to the bonus goal just to survive. When the company starts making it impossible to reach our targets, motivation will disappear and animosity will grow. This is human nature and why bonuses are offered to begin with, it is how we are wired. If Teva is wondering why there is a lack of motivation in the sales force, they only need look in the mirror.
 






Anonymous said:
Well, it sounds like CC will lay out the new bonus plan on the conference call this Monday. They must have caught wind of reps that quit trying to move the numbers do to apathy. Apparently, 95% of goal will become the new 100% bonus attainment so that more people can get a couple of dollars at Christmas time . There is a caveat to this because rumor is strong that what ever you come up short for 3rd qtr. will just be rolled over to the ridiculous 4th qtr goals, thereby wiping out any bonus payout in April. So rather than admitting they overshot the goals they are going to put a small carrot out for us. I hope I am completely wrong on this, we shall see on Monday morning!
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i don't think any of us were happy about the conference call. Sounds like we are not getting anything at Christmas for q3 and maybe a couple of bucks on our payout for q4 in March. I am not blaming CC for the mess as he is given the numbers from Israel and told to make them work. My guess is that he is under the gun for not hitting the numbers THEY gave him. Not quite sure how much latitude he has to push back on anything. Now that our stock is tanking there may be increased pressure to make things happen or heads will roll.
 






Anonymous said:
i don't think any of us were happy about the conference call. Sounds like we are not getting anything at Christmas for q3 and maybe a couple of bucks on our payout for q4 in March. I am not blaming CC for the mess as he is given the numbers from Israel and told to make them work. My guess is that he is under the gun for not hitting the numbers THEY gave him. Not quite sure how much latitude he has to push back on anything. Now that our stock is tanking there may be increased pressure to make things happen or heads will roll.
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CC seems like a straightshooter and a nice guy but isn't part of his job to make sure he has a competitive US salesforce that is duly compensated for the recent doubling of a 10 year old drug that works as good as any other drug in it's class??? Anyone can be a puppet to soften up the CRAZY expectations from Isreal but it takes more than suspenders to paint a REALISTIC picture to a homeoffice whose UNREALISTIC goals demotivate the salesforce. It's not the old Ivax reps who are producing these results. It's the reps from companies who were trained to sell and continued to sell because of competitive salaries and bonus. Isreal has seen INCREDIBLE recent growth in this old dog of a drug and is decreasing incentive to continue this trend. Is there any US leadership that is more than a mouthpiece? Bonuses will continue to decline and reps here will take it until the industry picks up again. Companies who reward growth reap success. Companies who refuse to acknowledge and fix their mistakes get reps who don't care and move on to companies who do.
 






Anonymous said:
CC seems like a straightshooter and a nice guy but isn't part of his job to make sure he has a competitive US salesforce that is duly compensated for the recent doubling of a 10 year old drug that works as good as any other drug in it's class??? Anyone can be a puppet to soften up the CRAZY expectations from Isreal but it takes more than suspenders to paint a REALISTIC picture to a homeoffice whose UNREALISTIC goals demotivate the salesforce. It's not the old Ivax reps who are producing these results. It's the reps from companies who were trained to sell and continued to sell because of competitive salaries and bonus. Isreal has seen INCREDIBLE recent growth in this old dog of a drug and is decreasing incentive to continue this trend. Is there any US leadership that is more than a mouthpiece? Bonuses will continue to decline and reps here will take it until the industry picks up again. Companies who reward growth reap success. Companies who refuse to acknowledge and fix their mistakes get reps who don't care and move on to companies who do.
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you make some good points. but i still wonder just how much power CC has to puch back when Isreal makes ridiculous requests of us. one thing we seem to totally agree on is the damage they to to the sales force for being "penny wise and dollar foolish". nobody wins!
 












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