The Role of the Medical Representative

Excerpted from Smart guide to becoming a medical sales representative by Penny Dhanjal.
Date published: 01 December 2006. Copyright © 2006. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Medical representatives are the key contacts between the pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession. They have the responsibility of promoting their companies major products directly to GP's and hospital doctors. They do this via face to face meetings or medical presentations at various types of meetings. All representatives tend to work what is a called a 'territory'. A territory is your area, or you and your territory team area. As sometimes companies have double manned territories rather than single manned territories. The territory size, geography etc varies according to companies. The day to day work of the representative tends to be target based around, sales, call rates and other objectives set around individual personal development plans.

Personal development plans tend to be the way of reviewing employee performance in most companies. They are often set around key competencies that the company are hoping the representative displays, and also around the key sales objectives set for that particular year. They are the way most companies also decide upon your pay reviews.

The image of the product and the company that a doctor forms is directly related to the degree of professionalism exhibited by the

medical representative. This position therefore demands a high level of integrity and commitment to the company and its products. Two things to remember about the role are:

1. The more you put in to the job, the more you get out.
2. Two days are never the same, there is so much variety everyday, that makes the job even more appealing to people

Organisation and Planning

Most GP's /Hospital doctors have an appointment system for seeing medical representatives. As so many other companies are trying to see the same customers, it is essential for the medical representative to be well organised and planned in advance.

By careful planning, a medical representative, will see a mix of doctors, nurses and pharmacists every day. Those seen only by appointment and those seen without appointment but at an allocated time, this means very good record keeping of all customers is an essential skill.

A day in the life of a GP medical representative

8am+ Early morning appointments, spec calls, Card dropping. Get to as many surgeries as possible to either try and see customers then and there or arrange to try and come back later

10am + Interviews with GP's. In these two hours You will probably see between 3 and 5 GP's. Surgeries tend to be finishing, and all companies are bust trying to see the prescribers. Be warned it's a very busy few hours.

12.00 + Lunch/Meetings. The meeting will entail standing on your feet and giving a presentation to the GP's in the surgery/ or Dr's in the hospital. Normally these days this is by using a company prepared slide presentation on power point. Sometimes you may have a flip chart desk presenter.

2pm + Hospitals/ Pharmacist

4.30-5.30pm+ Home/ Admin. This will involve reporting all calls made responding to emails and requests. You may also have to speak to your manager, and most importantly plan your next day and rest of your week.

7.30pm+ Occasional evening meetings. This will be a meal and a promotional presentation either by you or by an invited speaker.

Be warned there is a lot of driving back and forward and around on your territory, good effective planning can minimise this, but your car is your office, so you best start getting to like being in it.

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