Pharma Veterans

Farewell 2020 – Blog Post #426 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #426. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. We take a break from the 'Story of a Pharma Salesperson’ and move on to other topics. We shall return to it again later. Year 2020 is finally going out with all the mixed feelings. It has been an unprecedented year in many respects.  When I try to write a farewell to 2020, I get stuck. What should I write really?  Is there anything other than COVID, we could talk about? Is it the only topic left in the world? Apparently, no. The year 2020 started on a usual, happy note in Pakistan. We had heard about virus in Wuhan, but we did not think it would come here. Or if at all it came, it would not be as bad here. We ha

14th Life Lesson – Blog Post #425 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #425. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. We take a break from the 'Story of a Pharma Salesperson’ and move on to other topics. We shall return to it again later. In these blogposts, I had introduced Maria Popova and her Brainpickings newsletter which is published twice a week. She calls it labor of love and very rightly so. I am a great admirer of her choice of topics, relevant literatures, great authors, literary figures, and her effort to connect with nature in many different ways. On December 4, 2019, in the #262 blogpost, I had picked up her 13 life lessons. You can read that post here ( https://wordpress.com/post/pharmaveterans.com/2232 ). It

Learnings from 2020 – Blog Post #424 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #424. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. We take a break from the 'Story of a Pharma Salesperson’ and move on to other topics. We shall return to it again later. How do we conclude a year so full of turmoil, anxiety and fear? What do we claim to have learnt from a year of chaos, uncertainty and sadness? We shall conclude all the same. The most important fact about COVID is that it has touched all tiers of society in all parts of the world. No disease, calamity or even war had ever done so. Every situation has the potential to teach something. 2020 is no exception. As I see, we can possibly list down the following learnings coming out of the exces

Shall We Close This Year Like We Used To Do? – Blog Post #423 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #423. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. We take a break from the 'Story of a Pharma Salesperson’ and move on to other topics. We shall return to it again later. 2020 is coming to end. It is a year which will be hard to forget. The entire year has been affected by COVID. And it is going into the next year with an alarming surge in the incidence. Just like COVID itself, the vaccine is also embroiled in the controversy. Year closing in some industries is more of an occasion than others. Bankers are quite busy in closing in the month of December, till the final closing on 31st. Pharmaceutical companies have different closing

Retiring at age 60 – Blog Post #422 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #422. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. We take a break from the 'Story of a Pharma Salesperson’ and move on to other topics. We shall return to it again later. Pakistan, like several other countries, has fixed 60 years of age for retirement of government employees, other than armed forces who have a rank-based mechanism. In some countries, women and men have different retirement ages. For example, Vietnam has 60 years for men and 55 years for women as the retirement age. Government employees are eligible for pension after retirement; private employees may also get EOBI pension. Government policies are also changing as we shall see later. The wor

Are Pharma Companies Adjusting to COVID Era? – Part III – Blog Post #421 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #421. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. We take a break from the 'Story of a Pharma Salesperson’ and move on to other topics. We shall return to it again later. Continued from Previous…… In this last part, we conclude our discussion on this topic. The other method of planning is to think in short-term, medium-term and long term. We can generate some basic ideas around these. It may be treated more like a blueprint.  SHORT TERM In the here and now, agility is the key.  • All marketing tactics should be short, rather immediate term. Investments, if any, should be done with the same view. Rather than making a d

Are Pharma Companies Adjusting to COVID Era? – Part II – Blog Post #420 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #420. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. We take a break from the 'Story of a Pharma Salesperson’ and move on to other topics. We shall return to it again later. Continued from Previous…… We discussed the COVID situation, the impact on Pharma industry and its response till now. We shall now see what possible strategies can be. One standard way of developing strategy is ‘scenario building’. Various scenarios are developed so that relevant strategies may be considered. The other way is to think in terms of short-term, medium-term and long-term. We shall do both but start from scenarios. SCENARIO 1 – COVID CASES IN

Are Pharma Companies Adjusting to COVID Era? – Part I – Blog Post #419 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #419. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. We take a break from the 'Story of a Pharma Salesperson’ and move on to other topics. We shall return to it again later. COVID is still here. In fact, COVID19 became COVID20 and is going into COVID21. The impact on businesses has been enormous. Some businesses reaped extraordinary benefits while many others suffered huge losses. Pharma companies are no exception. Since COVID took everyone by surprise, the responses were understandably ‘reactive’. Situation kept evolving rapidly and everyone had to keep thinking what to do next. The more business savvy companies took advant

Health Cover in Pakistan – Blog Post #418 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #418. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. We take a break from the 'Story of a Pharma Salesperson’ and move on to other topics. We shall return to it later. ‘ Health For All ’ slogan has been around since long, and repeated by successive governments. We don’t know what exactly was intended by this slogan but all along we have been assuming it would mean Health Cover for everyone. It never materialized though. Government does have a large network of medical facilities where patients are treated for illnesses ranging from small problems to serious ones. Four levels of medical care are organized by the government. The Basic Health Units (BHUs) p

Wellbeing of Employees – Blog Post #417 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #417. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. We take a break from the 'Story of a Pharma Salesperson’ and move on to other topics. We shall return to it later. Employees and Employers are tied in multi-level, multi-dimensional ties. The employer is looking for maximum output from staff and the staff is thinking about maximum benefits. Both parties are on the right.  Trust deficit is a serious issue in this relation where both parties view one another with suspicion. Employers feel that all employees are inherently lazy and unwilling to work while employees feel that all employers are inherently exploitative. This is also true by and large. The are

Is there a Return-on-Integrity ROI? – Blog Post #416 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #416. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. We take a break from the 'Story of a Pharma Salesperson’ and move on to other topics. We shall return to it later. Wikipedia defines Integrity as follows. “Integrity is the practice of being honest and showing a consistent and uncompromising adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values. The word integrity evolved from the Latin adjective integer, meaning whole or complete. In this context, integrity is the inner sense of "wholeness" deriving from qualities such as honesty and consistency of character. As such, one may judge that others "have integrity" to

Story of a Pharma Salesperson III – Blog Post #415 by Asrar Qureshi & Javed Akhtar Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #415. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… CHAPTER 3 - SEEKING INFORMATION Jamil and Anwar met over the weekend. Jamil told him about what he had been thinking since they met last. He said he wanted some more information to understand better. “Ask as much as you want. I think I can answer your questions”. Anwar encouraged him. “What is the work of medical rep? What do they do? More detail about work please”, Jamil pleaded. “Ok. Let me try. The job of medical rep is to build and increase the business of company. I give you my example so that you can know better. I have seven products in my group

Story of a Pharma Salesperson II – Blog Post #414 by Asrar Qureshi & Javed Akhtar Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #414. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… CHAPTER 2 - THINKING HARD Jamil had some hard thinking going on in his mind. He was trying to tackle many questions. “Should I drop the idea of becoming an accountant? What about my education? I did B.Com for this reason, if I do some other work my degree would go waste. Medical rep is unknown field to me; will I get a job as medical rep? I don’t know the ABC of this work; how will I work? Does this job suit me? Suit my personality? My thinking about life? If at all I get this job, will I be successful? Anwar talked about earning extra money by achievin