New age executive trends
Pharmaceutical firms are increasingly turning
their marketing force into teams of specialists, because a generalist medical
representative may find it tough to explain to a doctor the complex and
high-margin drugs they are pushing.
Pfizer, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries,
Abbott, Dr Reddy's Laboratories, Cipla, Lupin, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals,
Mankind Pharma, Torrent Pharmaceuticals, Ipca Laboratories and Hetero Drugs are
all hiring
management and pharmacy graduates as marketing executives and are paying hefty
salaries, say industry executives and analysts.
The top 20 companies control at least 40% of
the total market and they are in the forefront to recruit specialists. Lupin is
one of the pioneers in hiring management graduates and domain experts for
sales. More than 80% of its sales force of 4,700 are specialists.
While large pharma companies have hired
thousands of management graduates, who account for more than half their sales
force, specialist salesmen form less than a third of the teams at many medium
firms. Of
India's more than six lakh medical representatives, specialists with management
education qualifications account for a little over a sixth.
"There is tough competition among
domestic and multinational drug makers operating in the Indian market now,
which is forcing many to look at hiring specialists like management graduates
from top institutes to aggressively push the brands," said Hetero Drugs
marketing director M Srinivas Reddy. "Many pharma companies are
looking at creating specialist marketing arms with management graduates and
domain experts like post-graduates in pharmacy."
Kameshwar Rao of FMRA viewed that the trend of
hiring more specialists and management graduates to sell medicines could hurt
the financials of small and medium firms that cannot afford heavy overheads.
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