Medical sales jobs and the slow economy

The credit crunch is certainly having a bearing on the present numbers of medical sales jobs in the UK, although it has not been the major cause of recent staff cuts in the pharmaceutical industry.

In the early 1990s the number so medical sales jobs in the UK started to rise sharply, the reason being the introduction of the buddy rep strategy.  Once one company started to double up reps on a territory, others then had to match this to equal their noise in their respective market places.  This lead to unprecedented numbers of medical sales people in the UK with as many as 8 reps per territory being found in some companies.

This was a loss leading strategy aimed to maximise sales growth over a period making losses, but then make a profit years later after reducing the sales resources while patents still had a few years to run.  In many ways, it was a sound strategy to ensure optimum sales of a product, however, the failing was that it reached a point where numbers were added simply to match competitors for noise with apparently little attention to the maths.

Now, with the introduction of additional risk factors such as NICE, shareholders are now less comfortable with the long term prospect of profit and want a more profitable scenario in an annual basis, resulting cuts to the number of medical sales jobs.  Now in addition, the government is squeezing the NHS for all it can with knock on effects on the pharmaceutical industry. 

In this respect medical sales jobs don't, perhaps, offer the golden opportunity they once did.  However, when it all settles, people will still be sick!