When you apply for jobs in Pharmaceutical Marketing and Medical Representative Jobs, nature is dynamic wherein there is no fixed theory or assumptions of what works and what doesn’t. Some professions require you on your toes always whereas at some places your proactiveness alone works.
I would like to bring to notice once such an incident when going out of the box helped me gain benefits as well as respect for myself.
Once I was on duty to visit a leading Cataract Surgeon whose daily OPD was around 50-60. Because of his expertise in eye surgeries, he would be operating almost 5-6 patients daily and therefore he was seldom available. On one such rare occasion, I visited him for including one of our products in his post-operative protocol but his answer was negative. I tried hard stating the benefits of the product but he was not ready to listen.
Heaving a sigh of relief and having lost all hope, I dragged myself out of his cabin. I noticed there were some patients the doctor was attending to. In those early times, using a computer was alien to many people. Therefore, the Doctor or his staff had to follow the age-old tradition of writing the Rx, taking up to 5-10 minutes of their time.
It had to be given to the patients especially post-operation for them to recover and avoid any risk after the surgery. They would then explain the Post Operative eye drops dosage schedule to them along with the instillation of steroids that required loading dose and then tapering.
Suddenly, an idea struck me. I knew someone who could operate a computer. I rushed to him and asked him to prepare a drops dosage schedule in the local language i.e. Gujarati. After I had the print in my hand, without wasting a second I approached the doctor again who just happened to finish his OPD.
I handed him the printed Dosage Scheduler and I could see surprise and shock evident in his eyes. He was slowly going through the document and reading it without missing a word. This would help you save you the trouble of explaining to every patient and also time to write a new Rx for every patient as it’s in our local language, I told him.
I saw a glint of respect in his eyes; he seemed to be impressed as a smile was slowly crawling upon his face. He took the print and happily recommended three products from my list and said to get it printed. He was eager and ecstatic to start with our product range and that made me touch the cloud nine.
Just one extra step of mine and he agreed not for one but three products of mine.
One single step!
One extra step out of my comfort zone!
Learnings:
Know about your product but also know how you can help someone solve their problems using your product. Find the need but also address it because the ships were always meant to sail in the rough oceans not just to lay in the harbors.