Pharma reps need not abandon hope. As Pharmalot reports, drugmakers may be cutting back big-time in primary care, but they're growing their specialty sales staffs and expanding hospital sales teams even more.
According to a Cutting Edge Research report, 30 percent of specialty sales groups expect to expand over the next year or two. Only 5 percent expect to shrink. Meanwhile, more than half of hospital sales forces expect to expand--by 14 percent on average--and 5 percent will contract.
The expansion expectations are a change. Over the past two years, the balance has tipped away from growth and toward contraction. Almost one-fifth of specialty sales teams shrank over the past 24 months, while one-third expanded. In hospital sales, 16 percent grew and 16 percent shrank.
So, the trend line seems to be going upward. "[The] long, grim trend of sales force contraction may be coming to a close," the research firm concludes.
- read the Pharmalot post