Pharma Veterans

Dear Pharma Colleagues! I and my longtime friend Javed Akhtar have started writing a book about Pharmaceutical Sales Profession. It reads like a story and will take up all aspects of Pharma Sales. We both started as Medical Rep in 1975 and went through various stages. Javed got assigned to training and left as Head of Training at GSK. I stayed in the line management and reached the top in various companies. This is not just our story; it is the story of all of us; the Pharma Salespeople. Kindly read and give your reviews and comments here or at  asrar@asrarqureshi.com   Working Independently Next day Jamil got ready to go to work independently. He had mixed feelings. He was excited to get into work and he was also somewhat scared. He looked at his plan. He had to work in the Samanabad area as per plan. He looked at the doctors list which showed fourteen doctors in various parts of the area. Jamil had never explored Samanabad before. He knew the location of area, b...

This ‘Guest Blog’ Post has been contributed by Mr. Hasan Jamal, a longtime veteran of Pharma Industry. The Guest Blog Posts are also published on   https://pharmaveterans.com  . You are welcome to contribute. You may write your own story or about some memorable events of your career or about Pharma Industry. Please send your posts to  asrar@asarqureshi.com A  Memorable Training Experience Sometimes a simple and casual discussion leads you to a big worth narrating story. Couple of days back, a friend asked me, “Have you ever been to India? How was the experience?” My simple answer was yes, I have visited India once, and it was a good experience. This simple question and answer sparked curiosity in me to pen down the experience of my Hoechst sponsored visit to Bombay (now Mumbai). I along with three other colleagues from Hoechst went to Bombay on ten days ‘Management Training Program’ The batch consisted of me and Mr. Iqbal Ahmed (pharma division), M...

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. Pharma Veterans Blog is published on WordPress, a top blog site on a dedicated URL https://pharmaveterans.com/ . Pharma Veterans Individual Profiles are also published here. So are Guest Blogs of your stories, ideas and thoughts. Please send these to asrar@asrarqureshi.com . Please join the Community and Share. Continued from last…… The last Key Success Factor I wish to highlight is ‘Innovation’. Hoechst in late 1980s and 1990s was an extremely innovative company. Being a multinational company, the company had limited opportunity to do innovation in products. However, it remained ahead of others in strategic marketing and organizational efficiency. 1.       Promotional Ideas. We always had abundance of promotional ideas. The discussi...

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. Pharma Veterans Blog is published on WordPress, a top blog site on a dedicated URL https://pharmaveterans.com/ . Pharma Veterans Individual Profiles are also published here. So are Guest Blogs of your stories, ideas and thoughts. Please send these to asrar@asrarqureshi.com . Please join the Community and Share. Continued from last…… Keeping focus on customers, product and strategy required ‘Team Effort’. The other key success factor for Hoechst was building, developing, nurturing and engaging the team. It started in small steps. When Tariq Umar joined Hoechst in 1985, he did inherit a team. The company had not been performing well for the last few years. Marketing had been consistently going down while dependence on ‘selling’ was consistently increa...

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. Pharma Veterans Blog is published on WordPress, a top blog site on a dedicated URL https://pharmaveterans.com/ . Pharma Veterans Individual Profiles are also published here. So are Guest Blogs of your stories, ideas and thoughts. Please send these to asrar@asrarqureshi.com . Please join the Community and Share. There is no doubt that from mid 1980s to late 1990s, Hoechst was exceptionally successful. Big volume brands were built and grown and sustained. Hoechst also stood firm against the wave of generic competitors and preserved its status. There are lessons to be learnt in this process. I have shared several things in various blogs and would like to summarize. It is a pity that the business schools in Pakistan rely on copies of foreign case studies only for teachi...