Someone mentioned them on another thread, so I decided to start a new thread.
If there is any occupation that can be stereotyped, it is the sales reps that visit doctors’ offices. They are always:
Young
Female
Have killer bods
Wear very nice outfits
Have a very professional demeanor
I am just wondering… where do they find these women? What kind of degrees do they have? Are they coached? How much are they paid? Is there a correlation between hotness and gross sales? Do you know anyone who’s a pharmacy rep?
I’ve come to the conclusion from what I’ve seen and heard from friends who were in the business that they’re being recruited at job fairs and on college campuses, specifically targeted for body type and perhaps personality, and rigorously trained. It seems that most have very general degrees in business or marketing, occasionally communications. The pay varies and there is often a commission component, but at one point (it may not still be true) their cars (always something a step up or step diagonally from the flagship sedan of a company, like a Toyota Solara, not a Camry, or something smaller but with sporty add-ons or convertibles) were either leases provided by the company or they received generous allowances for monthly payments on their own vehicles plus the standard mileage deductions.
A friend of mine worked for several big big pharma companies and at two she also received a monthly clothing allowance and there was a very specific expected dress code, skirts only, pantyhose mandatory even in the highest summer, heels mandatory unless you had a medical reason not to wear them, and only certain fabrics were allowed, even for blouses, no cotton, no rayon, no poly blends. There was also a paid gym membership and the very strong “suggestion” that it be used, divergence from that sought-after body type was frowned upon quite severely.
I work in a medical center - I think you mostly notice the young cute female pharma reps because, well, think about it! There are male and older/not as cute female reps out there too., but it does seem like a larger-than-expected proportion are hot women. The other reps do tend to dress extremely well - especially with the men, if they’re in suits (not just shirt and tie), and didn’t have hospital nametags on, then they’re almost certainly pharma reps or otherwise associated with some kind of pharmaceutical company. If they did have a hospital name tag, then they’re administration.
But all very well groomed, I’d expect… I know my company requires its reps to be immaculate. They may be any ethinicty, gender, or age, but they all present well!
I was with my wife, eating in a restaurant across from a hospital, and we overheard a conversation between a hottie pharm rep and some doctor. The hottie was giving her pitch over lunch and was apparently horribly botching the whole thing.
We didn’t her the pitch, but our ears perked up when the doc stopped her and basically explained to her how to do her job for the rest of the lunch. The doc apparently felt so bad for her that instead of hearing her sales pitch out and just ending the conversation with a polite, “I’ll call you if I need anything,” he felt the need to give her career advice on the basic concepts of how to do her job.
“Look, if you want to be a pharm rep, you really need to do this and that and not such and such.”
I can’t remember the specific advice given, but it sounded like the doc was giving her advice on pretty basic stuff, as if she was thrown into the job with no clue whatsoever.
The tone of the whole conversation was the sympathetic doc very gingerly telling her that she’s blowing it big time and fundamentally doing her job wrong. The pharm rep was listening and sheepishly chiming in with “I see” and similar words of acknowledgment, occasionally throwing in little questions about how she can improve.
The conversation ended with her thanking the doc for all the advice. We felt so embarrassed for her. That’s gotta sting when your sales lunch is so fundamentally bad that it turns into a career counseling session by a prospective client.
In Peru, at least, male reps come in all sizes and shapes (although,on average getting younger). They are supposed to connect with the doctors on a “buddy” level, sharing jokes and everything.
Female reps are as per the OP. My doctor firneds tell me that the companies know theat after four hours of sick people a gorgeous woman is someone you’ll spend 10 minutes with at let her give you her speech.
The pharmacy reps I’ve seen, I wouldn’t say they were really “hot”. Then, I think I’ve seen mostly male reps, only a few women. They have all been nicely dressed though.
I will say, the last couple reps I’ve seen have been middle age men, or middle age women… But then, they were putting on a free dinner or lunch for going to a drug presentation, so the draw was the free food, not the attractiveness of the rep.
They were usually very attractive and perky, at least the ones that visited the pharmacy. The men were usually at least attractive, if not overly hot. The women I remember used to piss me off though, something about their unnatural level of excitement used to really annoy me. Just give me your shit and go, please. Voucher cards, pens, paper, goodies? Please and thank you. Goodbye!
I saw an article – wish I had a cite – that said many pharmacy reps were college football cheerleaders. Major doesn’t matter as long as they’re perky and flirtatious. Pay: $70K-$80K range. I’ll see if I can hunt down a cite.
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At my med school, a former pharm rep came to give a lunchtime talk about, well, basically the pharm reps. It was pretty enlightening, to say the least. He said that at his company, they were always paired, male and female, with mostly different interests. This way when they met a doctor for the first time, at least one of them would be able to make the connection. He said that they would always work as a team, so if the doctor seemed to have more of a connection with person A, then person B would do everything he/she could do to make that connection stronger, even at the expense of the relationship with person B (think “good rep/bad rep” scenarios).
The person giving the talk actually had a degree in a science field (biology maybe?), but he said when he was being recruited, 9 out of 10 of the people didn’t. The one unifying factor was that they were all very gregarious, likable people, who more often than not, were physically attractive. That’s not to say they were stupid at all; all of them had to know their product inside and out. But they were all taught ways to manipulate the doctors as much as possible. He said he would have a garage full of samples, but when he’d go to the doctor’s office and they’d ask for some, he would tell them that they had almost none left, but… he supposed he could give them just a few because they were old friends.
His major point was that their job was to make the doctor see them as friends, but from their side, they were anything but.
It was pretty incredible how well they do their job. He had stats showing that even after just 10-15 minutes with a rep, not even over some fancy lunch or anything, they would see an increase in the number of prescriptions written for their product. The reps would update databases with the doctor’s info, their likes/dislikes, even their kids’ birthdays so they could send a cake. Knowing the staff was a huge bonus for them too, because it was an easy in to the doctor if the doctor were particularly stubborn.
All in all, it basically made me want nothing to do with reps ever, because I’m well aware of how easily manipulated I am, and if you sent me a super hot rep who just wanted to be my friend… well, I wouldn’t trust me.
I’ve known a few older nurses (and an RD) who went into doing pharm rep work, but of a very specific type. These were all women who had gotten their Certified Diabetic Educator certification (CDE) and went to work as pharm reps for certain insulin types specifically.
One of the things that is part of the job is to get doctors to allow them to teach diabetic eduction classes for their patients on how to use their insulin. So they weren’t just pushing the product to the doctors - though that was certainly part of it - they were also expected to do some work teaching classes. And from what I was told, these classes were taught ‘straight’, not as sales opportunities. They could ‘sell’ to the doctors, but never ever to the patients.
These particular women were dedicated professional types with a lot of education who got into the work with the promise of nice bonuses and good money and the ability to manage their own time. Last I heard, it’s worked out well for some of them, to a point…apparently it’s a heck of a lot of work and a big time/travel committment.
The major does matter, to a degree - They have to be able to understand the material they’re presenting, and answer short but non-basic technical questions. Truly detailed questions are referred to specialists. They also need to undersand the regulatory framework underwhich they’re operating, and the particualr companies detailed marketing and promotion policies. The job is sales, and a particularly tough form or sales, at that. Not every Joe or Jane can handle it.
