Who is Pharmaceutical Representative?
Pharmaceutical representative is the pharmaceutical salesperson or
drug reps who provides information on drug and product samples to
physicians. Also it is the pharmaceutical representative who keeps an eye on
the physicians' prescribing pattern in a particular area and get back to his
or her company with the details. Pharmaceutical representative works for a
single or a group of drugs and meet the physicians practising in that
specific field only.
At present there are about 100,000 pharmaceutical sales reps in the United
States. A single representative meets or calls around 200 physician in the
period of 1-2 weeks.
What is Pharmaceutical Representative Job Description?
Pharmaceutical
representative job involves much of field work and less of office work. Most
of the time pharmaceutical reps have meetings with physicians of their
territory. If not physicians they also meet the physicians' practices. Apart
from these daily meeting with physicians, pharmaceutical representative job
also include the sales meeting, training sessions and other calls.
To get into the pharmaceutical representative job one must be a college
graduate with bachelor's degree. It would be an added advantage if you have
bachelors in science as you will have to know and memorize the names of
drugs and detailed info on different medicines. Apart from this he or she
must have excellent communication skills, marketing skills and very
professional attitude. Also the pharmaceutical representative must be very
organized and has the ability to work under pressure.
What are Pharmaceutical Representative Career Options?
As this
industry is growing very swiftly so there are many pharmaceutical
representative career options. Pharma companies need someone to promote and
do branding of their products and this is handled by the Marketing and the
Product Management team. This team has the pharmaceutical representatives
and medical representatives who meet physicians to promote the old and new
drugs. Also they take orders from the hospitals, private clinics and
medicine shops.
Moreover the career path is just great in this field. The pharmaceutical
representative can reach to the managerial level with shear hard-work and
right education. You can become the district or sales manager and then the
Director of sales, Senior Director and can reach upto the Vice President
position in the pharmaceutical companies.
Pharmaceutical representative have career options like in managed care,
hospital accounts and the one that is booming in today's industry is of
Scientific liaisons. This is also called medical science liaisons (MSLs).
These specialists play important role in the product's life cycle
management.
What is Pharmaceutical Representative Salary?
If you compare the
pharmaceutical representative salary then it is more as compare to other
sales jobs. This is the main reason why the pharmaceutical representative
job is in demand. The approximate salary of the pharmaceutical reps
Along with salary there are many perks like trips, bonuses, medical and
housing benefits, retirement benefits etc that allure the grads to move
toward this job. Along with this the pharmaceutical representative career is
very long and lucrative if you have the capability of reaching at the top.