That’s what Lilly USA president Deidre Connelly declared at an industry conference the other day. She took a swipe at online forums that attract disgruntled sales reps, describing sites such as CafePharma as “outlets for people who don’t have the courage to speak out with their ideas” for improving their role and the performance of their companies. We prefer to think of the site as an electronic bathroom wall, but as you know, the truth is sometimes learned in the most unexpected places.

But Connelly had bigger issues to tackle. She was addressing delegates at a Pharmaceutical Executive summit in Philadelphia on the reevaluation and restructuring of Lilly’s sales operation, according to Medical Marketing & Media. With the drugmaker in the second year of a five-year plan, Connelly emphasized that sales reps must make a transition from merely delivering messages in the doc’s office to actually solving problems for the physician.

“We need to have an expanded view of what sales training looks like, but without losing our focus. You need to be certain that what you do is relevant,” she says, adding that one approach is to build its specialty sales forces from within the organization. “On average, those reps promoted from primary care to specialty fields do better than those hired from the outside.”

But while Connelly leveled charges of cowardice to the outspoken Web community, she is not lacking in courage herself. Connelly, once a rep in the 1980s, likes to go undercover every so often as a Lilly rep, just to keep her finger on the pulse of detailing. On a recent secret mission in Indianapolis, she described how one particular doc walked past and ignored her three times before finally returning with pen, expecting to sign for samples.

When Connelly told the doc she didn’t have samples but just wanted to talk for a minute, he stepped back, seemingly offended, and asked her why she was there and where was his regular rep? Eventually, he asked to see Connelly’s business card. “President, Lilly USA,” he read. “President? President of what?”

Source: Medical Marketing & Media
Hat tip to PharmaGossip