What would a job in pharmaceutical sales be like?

What would your day be like if you landed a job as a pharmaceutical sales rep?

In your job as a pharmaceutical sales rep, you would be assigned a geographic territory to cover. Your sales territory would likely be a city and the surrounding metropolitan area. You would spend most of your time each day driving to the different accounts in your territory to call on doctors, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants.  You will likely be given a company car to use as well as being compensated for the gas you use to call on accounts in your territory.

You may start your pharmaceutical sales career calling on family practice and internal medicine physicians.  You may call on specialists such as cardiologists or oncologists. Another option would be for you to primarily call on hospitals working with managed health care to get your product offerings on the hospital's formulary plan. You would likely have 2-4 different products that you will be responsible for promoting in your sales territory.

You would have a group of 200 or more doctors in your territory. You would be responsible for meeting with a total of 8-10 doctors, nurse practitioners or physician assistants per day. In addition to these appointments, you would call on pharmacists in your sales territory.

Your time will be spent learning about your product line, traveling throughout your territory, educating doctors and health care personnel on new product offerings, and providing drug samples and clinical information on your products to physicians.  Your ultimate goal as a pharmaceutical sales rep is to influence physicians in your territory to write prescriptions for the products you represent.

You will manage your territory independently, operating much like the owner of your own small business.  Although your day-to-day work will be self-directed, you will need to exceed aggressive sales quotas set by your company to be successful.  Your compensation will be a combination of a base salary plus commission that you will earn for exceeding your sales goals.

To be successful in your job as a pharmaceutical sales rep, you need to be self-directed and goal-driven.  You will need perseverance since one of your biggest challenges will be obtaining appointments with physicians whose time is very limited.  You also need to have the ability to learn about scientific topics, the ability to educate others, and the ability to influence people.

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