Pharma Veterans

Dear Pharma Veterans! The purpose of ‘Pharma Veterans’ is to share your wealth of knowledge and wisdom with others. And to create a movement to recognize and celebrate the Pharma Industry Professionals. Presently, Pharma Veterans Blog is published on WordPress, a top blog site. More is due to come in near future. Your stories, ideas and thoughts are eagerly awaited. Please send to asrar@asrarqureshi.com . Your contributions will be published promptly. Please join the Community and the Movement. In the last blog (#37), I mentioned that “ Sales discussion just for the sake of sales was not done. It was done to assess the result of selling process.”. Selling process is the implementation and execution of strategy and its tactics. If the strategy is well-articulated and the tactical plan is robust, the entire focus would be on ‘execution’. This done, the result (sales) is bound to come. If results are not as per expectation, the reasons should be sought in the process, not in th

Dear Pharma Veterans! The purpose of ‘Pharma Veterans’ is to share your wealth of knowledge and wisdom with others. And to create a movement to recognize and celebrate the Pharma Industry Professionals. Presently, Pharma Veterans Blog is published on WordPress, a top blog site. More is due to come in near future. Your stories, ideas and thoughts are eagerly awaited. Please send to asrar@asrarqureshi.com . Your contributions will be published promptly. Please join the Community and the Movement. Tariq Umer worked with all teams but acute care, and particularly antibiotics (Claforan and later Tarivid) remained close to his heart forever. TU identified most important customers in a simpler way, not through complicated research. First step was getting whatever information the team had on it. The teams did not have much data at that time, but they had some idea which was not totally incorrect. Then he would ask the team to run a simple exercise to quantify the customers’ pote

Dear Pharma Veterans! The purpose of ‘Pharma Veterans’ is to share your wealth of knowledge and wisdom with others. And to create a movement to recognize and celebrate the Pharma Industry Professionals. Presently, Pharma Veterans Blog is published on WordPress, a top blog site. More is due to come in near future. Your stories, ideas and thoughts are eagerly awaited. Please send to asrar@asrarqureshi.com . Your contributions will be published promptly. Please join the Community and the Movement. Tariq Umer is a Pharmacist from Punjab University. He briefly taught at the university and worked as med rep in Wyeth before leaving Pakistan. He did MBA from University of Exeter in UK and later went to US and worked there for several years. This was his first job in Pakistan after working abroad for many years. TU had several advantages. He had firsthand information on the latest in the Medicine and Pharma. He knew the upcoming trends. Having worked as Hospital Pharmacist, he unders

Dear Pharma Veterans! The purpose of ‘Pharma Veterans’ is to share your wealth of knowledge and wisdom with others. And to create a movement to recognize and celebrate the Pharma Industry Professionals. Presently, Pharma Veterans Blog is published on WordPress, a top blog site. More is due to come in near future. Your stories, ideas and thoughts are eagerly awaited. Please send to asrar@asrarqureshi.com . Your contributions will be published promptly. Please join the Community and the Movement. Sometime in August 1985, Riaz Ahmed called me in Abbott office (life-before-cellphones) and asked me for Vidaylin syrup for someone. Vidaylin was Abbott brand of multivitamin syrup and was nothing life-saving. I said I would drop it whenever I passed by. In the afternoon, he again called and said it was urgent, and if I could deliver right away. I was surprised but agreed. I went to Hoechst office. He offered me a cup of tea and we sat for a while. Meanwhile, his boss, Regional Manager

Dear Pharma Veterans! The purpose of ‘Pharma Veterans’ is to share your wealth of knowledge and wisdom with others. And to create a movement to recognize and celebrate the Pharma Industry Professionals. Presently, Pharma Veterans Blog is published on WordPress, a top blog site. More is due to come in near future. Your stories, ideas and thoughts are eagerly awaited. Please send to asrar@asrarqureshi.com . Your contributions will be published promptly. Please join the Community and the Movement. The caller was Riaz Ahmed…… Abbott had a small office in Bank Square area in Lahore. Hoechst had its Pharma distribution and office on Napier road; quite near. The distribution officer was Riaz Ahmed, who became known to me through my colleague and friend in Abbott, Shabbir Shah. I joined Abbott in Bahawalpur. My DFM was based in Multan and was also responsible for Faisalabad and Sargodha. Shabbir Hussain Shah was based at Sargodha as med rep. SHS was of medium height and build but

Dear Pharma Veterans! The purpose of ‘Pharma Veterans’ is to share your wealth of knowledge and wisdom with others. And to create a movement to recognize and celebrate the Pharma Industry Professionals. Presently, Pharma Veterans Blog is published on WordPress, a top blog site. More is due to come in near future. Your stories, ideas and thoughts are eagerly awaited. Please send to asrar@asrarqureshi.com . Your contributions will be published promptly. Please join the Community and the Movement. The MNCs enjoyed major share of market. Local Pharma also had well-known names. The important thing was that the tradition of having a niche-for-own was followed by all. The MNCs had their research products but the local pharma also had their own formulations and brands to boast. The pattern of working was similar, and the customers were the same. The concept of customer services had not come in anywhere, not just in Pharma but in consumer industry too. The focus was the product, its

Dear Pharma Veterans! The purpose of ‘Pharma Veterans’ is to share your wealth of knowledge and wisdom with others. And to create a movement to recognize and celebrate the Pharma Industry Professionals. Presently, Pharma Veterans Blog is published on WordPress, a top blog site. More is due to come in near future. Your stories, ideas and thoughts are eagerly awaited. Please send to asrar@asrarqureshi.com . Your contributions will be published promptly. Please join the Community and the Movement. Some interesting experiences with my colleagues in Abbott. Abbott had two groups of staff. One, who absolutely believed in the system and in the leaders, who built and ran that system. They never questioned and always did as directed. Generally, they had started their career with Abbott and been there long time. Asadullah Rana was one of the old guard and Abbott veteran. He was Sales Manager of group A when I came to Lahore as DFM in group B. He was a tall, hefty person with a loud,

Dear Pharma Veterans! The purpose of ‘Pharma Veterans’ is to share your wealth of knowledge and wisdom with others. And to create a movement to recognize and celebrate the Pharma Industry Professionals. Presently, Pharma Veterans Blog is published on WordPress, one of the top blog sites. More is due to come in near future. Your stories, ideas and thoughts are eagerly awaited. Please send to asrar@asrarqureshi.com . Your contributions will be published promptly. Please join the Community and the Movement. Abbott description would be incomplete without Nasir Mahmood and Ali Shabbir. During my time in Abbott, Nasir Mahmood was Director Marketing while Ali Shabbir was Marketing Manager. As I got to know, NM had switched from SK&F to Abbott. NM was a legend in Pharmaceutical Industry. I was too junior then to grasp his professional caliber. I still would not comment on it. I shall mostly talk about my personal impressions and interactions. NM was sharp-minded, quick-witte

Dear Pharma Veterans! The purpose of ‘Pharma Veterans’ is to share your wealth of knowledge and wisdom with others. And to create a movement to recognize and celebrate the Pharma Industry Professionals. Presently, Pharma Veterans Blog is published on WordPress, one of the top blog sites. More is due to come in near future. Your stories, ideas and thoughts are eagerly awaited. Please send to asrar@asrarqureshi.com . Your contributions will be published promptly. Please join the Community and the Movement. Towards the end of 1983, it was finalized that I would go to Lahore as District Field Manager.  I was called to Karachi for DFM orientation. Later, I came to Lahore and took charge of the team on January 1, 1984. My team comprised of 5 med reps; 4 of them were new in Abbott and new in profession. They had just returned from training. One person had worked in Quetta for one year and had been transferred to Lahore. New Team and New Manager? Could work only in Abbott, thanks to

Dear Pharma Veterans! The purpose of ‘Pharma Veterans’ is to share your wealth of knowledge and wisdom with others. And to create a movement to recognize and celebrate the Pharma Industry Professionals. Presently, Pharma Veterans Blog is published on WordPress, one of the top blog sites. More is due to come in near future. Your stories, ideas and thoughts are eagerly awaited. Please send to asrar@asrarqureshi.com . Your contributions will be published promptly. Please join the Community and the Movement. After the Mega Quiz, Ali Shabbir came to training office and informally announced who would go where. It was customary in Abbott and other MNCs not to post med reps in their hometowns. He mentioned that I would be posted at Sukkur. I reminded him that during interview, he had indicated that I would be posted either at Lahore or at any of the places where I had worked previously; Sukkur was not one of those. He was not very pleased, but he went back. Later, he decided that I co

Dear Pharma Veterans! The purpose of ‘Pharma Veterans’ is to share your wealth of knowledge and wisdom with others. And to create a movement to recognize and celebrate the Pharma Industry Professionals. Presently, Pharma Veterans Blog is published on WordPress, one of the top blog sites. More is due to come in near future. Your stories, ideas and thoughts are eagerly awaited. Please send to asrar@asrarqureshi.com . Your contributions will be published promptly. Please join the Community and the Movement. Saleem Farooqi was a classic Sales Training Manager. He was MSc Microbiology and had joined Abbott as med rep in Karachi. He was quickly promoted as District Field Manager and sent to Multan. They spotted his great talent for training and brought him back to Karachi as STM. Saleem Farooqi was rather quiet, timid-looking person. But he was a tiger in training. He was the sole trainer. He spoke all day and never tired. From second day onward, a routine was fixed. First thing i

Dear Pharma Veterans! The purpose of ‘Pharma Veterans’ is to share your wealth of knowledge and wisdom with others. And to create a movement to recognize and celebrate the Pharma Industry Professionals. Presently, Pharma Veterans Blog is published on WordPress, one of the top blog sites. More is due to come in near future. Your stories, ideas and thoughts are eagerly awaited. Please send to asrar@asrarqureshi.com . Your contributions will be published promptly. Please join the Community and the Movement. Karachi stay was hard on me, but it did a world of good to me. I changed in many ways and I matured. It led to a new beginning and by Allah’s Grace, I never looked back again. From that fateful day in August 1981, started a new journey which nurtured me, enriched me, grew me and made me what I am today. Immediately after reaching Lahore, I called my friends and inquired about jobs. My friend Safdar (squibb) told me that Abbott was interviewing on that day. Their Marketing Ma