- A pharmaceutical rep is someone who works for a drug company and specializes in the sale of certain pharmaceutical drugs. A pharmaceutical rep's main duties entail distributing information about their company's drugs to doctors and other health care practitioners. They provide doctors with literature about different types of drugs manufactured by their employer and try to convince the doctor to prescribe these drugs to their patients. A rep does not take drug orders from the physician.
- On a given workday, a pharmaceutical rep is entrusted with spreading literature about newly manufactured drugs to different doctors at hospitals and private offices. Since doctors are extremely busy, so a pharmaceutical rep only has as little as 10 minutes to convince a physician why the rep's company's drugs are worth buying. The rep must describe his company's newest products, detailing what the new drug is designed to do, how it works and why it's better than the older drugs the doctor is accustomed to prescribing. At each meeting with a different doctor, the pharmaceutical rep must be able to answer the physician's questions about his company's drugs calmly and accurately while under pressure. A pharmaceutical rep is assigned certain zip codes within a city and makes his own itinerary based on which doctors in the area are known to write the most prescriptions. Finally, a rep will spend much of his workday dealing with rejection as about 40 percent of doctors refuse to hold a meeting because of their own busy schedules.
- A pharmaceutical rep must have at least a high school diploma, but most employer's prefer someone with a college education and a bachelor's degree in science or a related field. Many drug companies provide on-the-job training to worthy candidates, schooling them in specific details regarding effective sales pitches, setting up meetings with physicians, dealing with rejection, and describing new drugs thoroughly and effectively. Training also includes supervised field work in which the rep-in-training visits with physicians under the guidance of a seasoned professional.
