The drugmaker has ended a contract withInVentiv, one of the players in the Rent-A-Rep business, which was promoting its troubled Micardis, an angiotensin receptor blocker, otherwise known as a blood pressure med. Micardis, you may recall, failed to perform well in some key clinical trials (back stories here and here).
Ironically, about 400-plus InVentiv reps will be leaving Boehringer territories by the end of the year and - guess what? - many will soon work for a rival. That's right, InVentiv signed a deal to market Merck's Cozaar and Hyzaar, which puts Boehringer at an even greater disadvantage, since InVentiv reps will know a great deal about the competition and the docs who write the most prescriptions.
"It is typical for our business to wind down some sales teams while concurrently ramping up others. As a result of the nine new sales teams we are adding in the fourth quarter, we expect the vast majority of the representatives on the BI team will be redeployed by the beginning of 2009," InVentiv ceo Blane Walter says in a statement (link to follow shortly).
Meanwhile, Boehringer is about to proceed with previously disclosed plans to trim its neurology sales force of nearly 400 reps, who will either be reassigned to primary care sales or let go, depending upon the number of openings that exist. The shift starts early next month, sources say.
1 Comment
The contract pharma rep business is a very challenging one. If your contract reps are very successful, they end up getting hired by the pharma company as full-time employees, and the contract company loses the revenue stream, though they gain a great referral source. If the reps don't perform, or the product they sell, or the company they are contracted to suffers from problems that were not the province of the contract force, the contract company loses that revenue stream as well, though they can place many of the reps into another contract.