Death Of A Sales Team? Wyeth Cuts 1,200 Reps
5 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // March 27th, 2008 // 9:00 pm
The positions are being eliminated as of Monday as part of a major companywide program announced two months ago to save money in the face of regulatory setbacks and generic competition. At the time, the drugmaker acknowledged plans to cut about 10 percent of its global workforce of 50,000 or so, and that sales reps were high on the list. Wyeth employs roughly 25,000 people in the US.
A Wyeth spokesman tells the Associated Press that reps will be cut from both the pharma and consumer products divisions from around the US. etkus said they will get severance pay and continuing benefits. He would not say how many US sales reps Wyeth employs, although one source say the primary care sales force numbers fewer than 2,000. The drugmaker has been whittling away at its sales teams since 2005, when it cut about 20 percent of its reps and began using more part-timers.
For now, the spokesman says the number of overall jobs to be shed as part of the ongoing reorganization may change. “We’re still evaluating the composition of our global work force,” he told the AP. “Our short-term objective is to achieve a reduction in force of 4 to 6 percent by the middle of the year. We are on track to achieve that.”
Last month, Wyeth won FDA approval to sell its Pristiq antidepressant, but the drugmaker has otherwise run into one setback after another in winning permission to market other drugs. Over the past year, the FDA has bounced a drug, demanded more data or a new patient study. Meanwhile, Wyeth expects generic competition for the Protonix heartburn med, one of its biggest sellers with sales of $1.9 billion.
Dan
While I wish this did not happen to this group, they will discover after termination that they will need to reacquire thier work ethic, if they had one. Comparatively speaking, the job of a drug rep, from a physical or time consuming paradigm, is quite easy.
Pharma Giles
The standard “10.0% percent must go”. Such original thinking. McKinseys again? Or just matching policies with Pfizer prior to the merger?
Pharma News 3_29 « Impactiviti blog
[...] Wyeth cutting 1,200 sales reps - The positions are being eliminated as of Monday as part of a major companywide program announced two months ago to save money in the face of regulatory setbacks and generic competition. At the time, the drugmaker acknowledged plans to cut about 10 percent of its global workforce of 50,000 or so, and that sales reps were high on the list. Wyeth employs roughly 25,000 people in the US…more [...]
Eelco
Slowly firms are dismantling their sales forces.
Can we see this as a next step in ending the marketing ‘arms race’?
They seem to get the point that if everyone decreases its sales force their impact will be the same (but with lower costs)…
Pharma News 5_2 « Impactiviti blog
[...] still more jobs are going, a Wyeth spokesman confirms. This follows an announcement last month that 1,240 sales positions would be eliminated as part of what Wyeth execs are calling ‘Project [...]