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Executive Times |
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2005 Book Reviews |
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Hard Sell:
The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman by Jamie Reidy |
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Rating: • (Read only if your interest is strong) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Slacker I had great
expectations for Jamie Reidy’s new book, Hard
Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman. Expecting either a story as
funny as the title, or some insight into the world of drug reps, I came away
disappointed. Reidy describes how he became a drug
rep, then proceeded to cheat the company and not do
the job while getting paid for it. He describes how he enlisted others to
help him con his employer, and in a final show of his poor judgment, lets
readers know he left the company just as his territory was on the edge of
success. Since this ends up being Life of Jamie, I realized that reading
about someone else choosing not to live honorably is a colossal waste of time
unless there’s some insight to be gained. I found nothing of merit in his
book. Here’s
an excerpt, all of Chapter Seven,
“Perception is Reality,” pp. 98-108: It turns out that being a
team player wasn’t nearly as important as seeming to be a team
player. Obviously, everyone in pharmaceutical sales knew how easy it was to
blow off work, and people routinely gossiped as to which reps were “workers”
and which were slugs. So it was important for me to make sure my colleagues
did not suspect me of being the good-for-nothing slacker I had worked hard to
become. I had to create an image of Jamie Reidy:
Worker. Most people thought maintaining a good
appearance was a critical component of sales success, but I found that such
behavior was often detrimental to successfully maintaining the appearance of
being a hardworking sales guy. This probably seems counterintuitive, but it’s
important to remember that normal employees woke up before ten A.M. and
probably started their workday before lunch. Consequently, their shirts
wrinkled, bags under their eyes shrank, and hair gel wore off throughout the
morning. In order to blend in with these do-gooders, I had to alter my
appearance to mimic theirs. Preparation started prior to showering.
If I knew I’d be leaving the house shortly after waking up (as opposed to
catching the last SportsCenter first),
I’d grab two ice cubes from the freezer and lie down on the floor with a
towel under my head. Methodically, I’d rub the ice on my bags, hoping to
reduce the swelling so I’d look as if I had been up for a long while. Having iced sufficiently, I’d head to
the bathroom. The last thing I wanted at noon was to smell as though I had
just gotten out of the shower, which would have been a dead giveaway. When meeting with coworkers at lunch,
I’d choose a dress shirt in need of pressing. Then at an appropriate moment
in the conversation, I’d ask if anyone knew of a good dry cleaner. “I mean,
they call this ‘heavy starch’? I’ve had it on for only four hours, and it
looks like I slept in the damn thing!” If I knew that I would be seeing
colleagues after lunchtime, I’d grab a bottle of salsa or ketchup from the
fridge and splash a bit on the front of my shirt before leaving the house.
When inevitably asked what happened, I’d sheepishly shrug and say, “Had some
coordination problems at lunch.” Hopefully, this gave the impression that I
had, in fact, been out of the house before noon. Showing up late to such meetings was
another good way to plant the “worker” seeds. Rushing into the restaurant at
twelve-ten, I’d say with exasperation, “Sorry I’m late, guys, but Dr. Johnson
just would not shut up!” Using the name of a doc well known for
her chattiness was key, as everyone could relate and
there was no fear of a colleague mentioning to Dr. Johnson, “Oh, I heard you
had a great chat with Jamie last week.” If I had gotten greedy and referenced
a tough-to-see physician, he might respond to such a statement with, “Who’s Jamie?” On the other hand, when attending
district or national meetings I operated on the opposite end of the
spectrum, looking sharp and arriving early. Since Pfizer’s corporate culture
defined late as “not fifteen minutes early,” you had to show up really early
for anyone important to notice. Depending on the level of my hangover, I
tried to show up thirty minutes early. Sometimes I got there early enough to
help my boss carry stuff in from his car or hang motivational signs and sales
charts on the walls, simultaneously allowing me to score some brownie points
while cementing the impression that I was a hardworking employee who could be
trusted to get out of bed before eight every morning when no one was around
to monitor his behavior. Wow, Reidy sure is
dependable, but I wonder why he always has six Altoids
in his mouth first thing in the morning? Another neat little trick at big
meetings was to find out which of the Big Bosses worked out in the mornings.
I’d muster all my resolve ~ and wake up at six in order to stumble down to
the gym, where I’d hop on a
stationary bike or treadmill near the Big Boss. Once we had exchanged
greetings, I’d focus on my “workout,” as I didn’t want to seem like some
sneaky ass-kisser who was only working out to;, make
a good impression. Approximately two minutes after the Big Boss had completed
his workout, I’d complete mine and try to head back to bed for a few more
desperately needed z’s.
Without fail, the Big Boss commented to my boss that he saw me in the gym
bright; and early. Wow, that Reidy really has it together, but I don’t know how he can
run on a treadmill with a mouthful of Altoids. Receipts
Are Better Than a
Note from Your Mom While I was able to fool my boss and
coworkers with some fat-voice-mail and hairstyling tricks, I still had to
navigate the mine~ field of objective measures Pfizer had laid down to
safeguard against such abuses. Pfizer relied on a paper trail of
receipts for both business expenses and drug samples to keep tabs on its
flock. Fortunately for me, the limits of the system allowed the company to
get fleeced. Each rep received an American Express card, and we were expected
to use it whenever possible. AmEx provided the
company with a printed record of every transaction, meaning Big Brother knew
if I overtipped a hot waitress or bought a bottle
of water in addition to a tank of gas. Obviously, not all situations were
credit card friendly, and in these instances, Pfizer made us submit receipts
for every little thing, including a 25-cent toll or a 50-cent parking fee. In addition to
protecting against fraud, such stringent documentation helped verify that
people were working when they said they were. For the savvy slacker, however,
this requirement allowed us to verify we were working when we were not working. Dissatisfied with my measly ten days of
vacation, I developed a habit of tacking an extra day on the front or back
end of any trips I took. As long as I left Bruce a voice mail touting my
success or bemoaning my failure, I had nothing to worry about. Eventually,
though, one extra day became two. On my annual trip to visit friends down the
My prom date Maureen and I had remained
close friends despite the fact that she may (everyone else thinks so) or may
not (as she claims) have kissed another guy that memorable May evening in
1988. She and a large group of her pals from the This stirred a memory in Maureen’s
clouded brain. “Do you guys know that Jamie didn’t even take vacation to come
here? His boss never knows where he is. Does he have a great job or what?”
Unanimously, the group agreed with her assessment. The conversation shifted
to a more important topic when the winner of the previous night’s hook-up contest
(competitors kicked in $5 and the first person to kiss a member of the
opposite sex collected the purse) shuffled home in familiar clothes, eleven
hours after the rest of us. As the inquisition raged, I sat back to consider
the employment risk I had taken to enjoy this classy visit. Unauthorized
absence from the sales territory was grounds for immediate dismissal. I had
just tripled my odds of getting canned. On my second beer of the morning, it occurred to me that there would
be very little monetary activity on my next expense report. Specifically,
there would be no activity for Wednesday thru Friday, a surefire red flag. Reps routinely went
a day or two without incurring an expense—we didn’t bring lunch in every day,
and there were plenty of offices that didn’t charge for parking—but it was
rare go three straight days without spending cash someplace. The fact that I
had been in Eventually, our energy level revived
and we began multitasking, eating lunch and playing whiffle
ball while drinking. I left d obligatory success story voice mail, probably
sounding happier than ever, at two P.M., and before I could say “two-for-one
1 necks” it was four. Suddenly, I realized that I needed sornething
concrete to establish that I had, in fact, been in A friend from Notre Dame, Brian had
recently been cut as a linebacker by the Indianapolis Colts and moved back to
“Fucking Reidy.
Are you serious?” I assured him that I was and that several adult beverages
with his name on them would be served upon my return. “I only need to drive to “That’s it, man,” I said, accepting a
congratulatory beer from Maureen. “Thanks!” When I got home and checked my mailbox,
two scraps of white paper imprinted with That little journey cost me $20 in beer, but it was money well spent. From there, I began to refine
my skills. Computer experts will tell you that in order to build a successful
security system you must ask yourself, “If I were a hacker, how would I get
in?” Looking at it from that point of view, I asked myself a similar
question: “If I were Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane and it was my job to catch
lazy, sneaky guys like me, what would I look for to
clue me in?” Answer: easy-to-get,
impossible-to-dispute receipts, like those worth less than a dollar with time
stamps from parking lots or tollbooths. Yikes. I had to find ways to get receipts with
higher charges. This posed a problem, not in terms of the purchases
themselves, but the means of payment. For example, if I submitted a cash
receipt for $50 worth of whatever to my boss, his spider senses would’ve
begun tingling like crazy. “Why didn’t you use your credit card?” And if
Bruce approved such an expense, the watchdogs in HQ certainly would ask
questions. Clearly, the most airtight way to
document expenses incurred while I was not working was for someone else to use
my AmEx corporate card in Back at the drawing board, I wracked my
brain for a way of using the AmEx card to cover my
shady tracks without endangering the anal virginity of my friends. To do so,
I needed an establishment that was above reproach (someplace a sales rep
would normally make a purchase), that accepted American Express, and that
didn’t ask for an ID to compare to the name on the credit card. I came up with nothing. Shortly after returning from I asked all my buddies, but got no
takers. In this case, it wasn’t the fear of prison showers that limited their
interest, but the location of my apartment. I was the only member of my
crowd to live in Mishawaka, a town twenty minutes from central South Bend,
and no one wanted to “drive all the way out there, park my car, get into your
freaking company car, pump your gas, return your car, and then get
back into my car to drive all the freaking way back to South Bend.” I could
see their point. Additionally, since only spouses were insured while driving
company cars, I was liable for any damages incurred with a friend behind the
wheel, although I would have gladly rolled the dice on a $500 deductible for
the thrill of enjoying a cold beer après ski in Vail while supposedly working
in the Hoosier state. When offers of unlimited beer failed to
recruit any small-time crooks, though, I resigned myself to cutting back on
“days off.” Thankfully, a new world of opportunities presented itself. Dr.
Wacky, a young, single, female physician, gave me a hard time from the start.
While routinely ignoring my sales pitches, she’d roll her eyes and make
derogatory comments like, “Shush, everybody, so we can hear Jamie’s spiel.”
For drug reps, the word spiel ranks just below peddle—as in,
“What are you peddling today?”—on the DCSs, or
Doctor’s Condescension Scale. She made fun of my ties and picked on me
incessantly. If we had been in the fourth grade, she would have kicked me in
the shins. It became clear that she liked me liked me. Because she worked in one of my more
important practices, I saw her often. Over time, Dr. Wacky realized I wasn’t
a typical drug rep looking to push product; on the contrary, I rarely mentioned
Zithromax. Eventually, she started asking me
about my weekends and what bars I frequented, sharing her own tips for
nighttime fun. Phone calls at home became commonplace. Before I knew it, she
had invited me out for drinks a few times, but we couldn’t get our schedules
together. This behavior was not lost on my
colleagues, who worked under the assumption that my having sex with a doctor
would be good for our Zithromax sales and begged me
to date her. Sales success, however, was not the only driving force behind
these requests. Every male drug rep had at least one story about losing
business to a female competitor who dated a doctor, so it was every guy’s
fantasy to turn the tables on the lady competition. Thus, my dating Dr. Wacky
was a no-brainer. I disagreed. For starters, she was already using a
ton of Zithromax. Dr. Wacky had gone from
prescribing no Zithromax at all to using it in 45
percent of her patients who got antibiotic prescriptions (according to the
sales data Pfizer purchased from the third-party company that got it from the
pharmacy chains), making her our second-biggest writer in town. If we started
sleeping together, sure, sales would probably soar to 70 or 80 percent for a month or two, but when it ended—and it always ended—she would immediately return to her zero usage
days. To me, twelve months at 45 percent were better than two months of 8o
percent followed by ten months of nothing. I thought we could just be friends, get
drinks, maybe see movie once in a while. Friends. She had other plans. We finally went out for drinks on a
Wednesday night. I wore shorts and a golf shirt, while she had on a black
skirt and an expensive top and wore more makeup than I had ever seen on her.
Dr. Wacky ordered a gin and tonic, and I got a large draft beer. Before I was
quarter of the way done, she tilted her head back, milking the glass for the
last drops. She ordered another, and finished that one before] finished my
beer. “Nervous?” I asked. She laughed—nervously—and quickly looked for the
waitress. In short, she got loaded. I couldn’t let her drive home in that
condition, and since I lived much closer to the bar than she did, I brought
her back to my place. Unbeknownst to me, this was all part of her plan. I was hoping she’d sober up in an hour
or two, but she could not or would not. Dr. Wacky chased me in circles around
my apartment like the crazy, love-struck witch chased Bugs in the cartoons. I
hadn’t run that much in years. At one point, I sought refuge in the bathroom,
emerging only when I heard a male voice call, “Jamie?” Returning cautiously
to my living room—Can she morph into another human form and change her
voice to suit her evil needs like the Terminator?— I found my future
roommate, Steve, standing in the doorway and my inebriated physician sprawled
on the floor, skirt hiked up her legs. “Uh, I’ll, uh, call you tomorrow,”
Steve said, as he dashed out the door. I chased after him, yelling for him to
please hang out for a while, but my protests echoed off the stairwell
walls, unanswered. Trudging back inside, I slumped against the closed door.
Dr. Wacky was no longer lying on the floor, though. Thankfully, she was also
not a member of the Terminator class. Finally exhausted from chasing me
around my apartment, she had moved herself to my hand-me-down couch, where
she had passed out. After covering her with a blanket, I locked my bedroom
door and fell asleep. She was gone by the time I woke up in the morning. I
figured it’d be a while before I saw her again. The next evening I was
packing for my second trip of the summer to the “Please!” she said. “I’d
really like to.” Feeling uncomfortable, I rubbed my neck and looked around
the room to avoid her persistent eye contact. After spying my half-packed
bag, I turned back to her. “Seriously,” she said. “Let me make it
up to you.” Not wanting to be rude, I gave in. “Well, there is one little thing. . . .“ And that was how it came to be that at
five-thirty on a Friday night, while drinking beers at a poolside bar in Sea
Girt, After leaving her office, Dr. Wacky
drove to my apartment, where she got out of her car and into my unlocked
Lumina. She found the keys under the mat, then drove
to a gas station a few blocks away. Once there, she took my American Express
corporate card out of the glove box and, as if she were Jamie Reidy, Pfizer employee, inserted it into the machine and
filled up my tank with regular unleaded. After which she took the receipt,
placed it— along with the AmEx card—in the glove
box, drove back to my apartment, and parked my car. What do you mean I
wasn’t working? You have the gas receipt, don’t you? Unless your interest
in some aspect of the life of a slacker sales rep prompts you to read Hard Sell,
I advise you to spend your time doing anything else. Steve Hopkins,
September 25, 2005 |
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ã 2005 Hopkins and Company, LLC The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the October 2005
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Hard
Sell.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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