Basic information about Being a Medical Representative in the Philippines and how pharmaceutical Company works.

Medical Representative in the Philippines

Disclaimer:( I'm a beginner in blogging and this is a hard English. All the information you will get from here is based my own opinion, experience and gathered information throughout my career, I won't put any detail from my own company due to confidentiality of the information)

Defining Pharmaceutical

It is a mostly a distributing company where they get their products (Medicines,Drugs and Equipment) from manufacturing companies from local and international. It has a broad workforce from accounting, marketing to finance but this blog is about sales force. Pharmaceutical companies in the Philippines are many and the competition is though, for example in the Philippines one of the famous medicine is Biogesic.

Example:

Biogesic is a brand name

Paracetamol is the generic name

This where the competition occur, since biogesic held the most market shares in the market, companies will try to penetrate and take percentage of the market leader's shares and thus make sales. That is why they come up with their own brand name of paracetamol and this is one of major job description of a medical representative.

As a Medical Representative its main clients are doctors. They create demand in the market thru persuading doctors to use their own brand of medicine for their patients and that will provide their sales. The below image is the basic flowchart on how the business works. 

1. Medical Representative - Include his/her product to Drugstore like( Mercury Drug,Watson, St. Joseph Drug etc.) where the patients will buy.

2. Medical Representative- Persuade doctors to prescribe it in their patient of their own brand name of particular medicine.

Example: 

Generic Name: Paracetamol

Company  Brand Name 1: Biogesic

Company Brand Name  2: Fradol

As a Medical Representative of Company 2: They will persuade doctor to use their own brand name to doctor's patient.

3. Doctors- Prescribe the brand name of the medicine to the patients.

4. Patients are going to buy the medicine in the drugstore and that is how Medical Representative create sales.

Question 1: Is Pharmaceutical Company have the same length of training?

Answer: As gathered information, different companies have their own length of training whether it is field training or classroom training. The basic reason for this is because companies have different number of product lines, some companies have more than 50 products they are selling some are fewer, that means the less the product the less the employee or trainee to study the lesser the training days. It also defend on how the product works its technical and Pharmacology and Pharmaco-kinetics (Medical studies)

Question 2: Is Pharmaceutical Company in the Philippines only hires with Medical background study?

Answer: No, mostly these days company hires any four year course graduates. I am a B.S Business Management graduate, surely there is an advantage applying with a medical background like BS Nursing, but it is not guaranteed that you will excel in the field since as a Medical Representative your performance will always be based on how well you create sales. You can be great in medical term but you may be poor in persuading, building relationship with your client and creating a sales then you will still be a under performance PMR. On the other side as a non-medical background they usually have hard time in the training since mostly of the terms are from medical study but then that is why there is a training, they will train you to learn what are the important things you need to know in order for you to be able to discuss the basic in your client doctors.   

Question 3: Do Medical Representative has given their own Service Car?

Answer: It depends on how well the operation of pharmaceutical company and depends on how the medical representative performs.

Mostly of the Pharmaceutical company give their PMR their service car, some of them after 6 months of commute, other company has none at all, that means in your entire work you will work as a commuter.

Question 4: What is the most important thing you will learn as Medical Representative?

Answer: There are so many things you will learn picking this as career but  I think the most important think you learn is Building Network, since your clients are doctors, as you visit them for twice a month or 4 times a month you will surely build a friendship with them, and surely you would know how powerful a doctor to be a friend, they are one of respected professions in the field of work mainly because of their length of studies. 

Question 5: Is it really easy to be a Medical Representative?

Answer 1: Yes and No,

Yes it will become easy if you learn to love it, and No if you don't. 

There is a saying " If your Why is Clear, then your How is easy"

Here is my take away advice for those who wants to be a sales representative someday, this will also apply to any sales force: Get use to rejections

I am Medical Representative from January 2017 up to present, I will share my story and experience in my next blog about my career please watch out for my next blog.

Hope that this help for those who are planning to be a PMR someday.

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