Ever wonder such question before applying for a sales position?
Or you have the mentality..."whatever come my way. It's better than nothing!"?
Pause.
When I first started out in pharmaceutical sales job, I was just graduated, and jobless for 3 months.
I wonder around with my neighbour's motorbike, climbing stairs of every pathology lab in my hometown, with no result.
No result!
And their reason for not taking me in was,"You have a degree. You'll leave soon."
How could they possibly knew?
Until one day, I got a call from a National Sales Manager from Roche Diagnostic to attend an interview at their Headquarters in Jalan Ampang (near KLCC, World tallest building currently).
There on, my career in pharmaceutical sales took off.
Roche has a distinct way of interview at that point of time.
(I was told they still practising them until today).
First interview, the National Sales Manager screen you through.
Next, 6 Managers will interview you including the General Manager and you will be given a brochure of a product.
You are required to sell the product to them!
You can guess how anxious I was, having no sales training whatsoever, with that kind of task.
And I guess I did 'not-that-bad'.
I remember, when asked by one of the managers,"Why do you want to do sales job?"
My answer was,"I want to be rich!"
Now, my question to you:
"Can you sell me this product...here's the brochure."
"Why do you want to do sales job?"
"Really...?"...just kidding! ;)
Seriously, that was a part of the preparation.
How are you doing so far?
Is pharmaceutical sales job, the job for you?
Is Pharmaceutical Sales Job For You?
If You're Interested In Pharmaceutical Sales Job, Then...
The FIRST step that you need to take is to excel during the interview.
Obviously! I heard you said.
Is it?
Is it obvious?
Let me illustrate...
I run an interview once to fill in the vacancy left by one of my team members who tranfer to her hometown.
'Unofficially' I've announced to my remaining team members that I want a guy, a Malay guy (for strategic reason of course...no pun intended).
So, there they are...the 5 candidates...4 Guys, Malay, and 1 Girl, Chinese.
I've got to tell you this...one of the candidates graduated from the States, with marketing background, and lectures on the subject of Professional Selling!
(How's that for a resume?)
The interview consume the whole day...my day and my Supervisor's day.
But in the end, guess who got the position?
Right...none of the Guys!
In other words, the Girl got it.
And the single most important reason why the Guys fail miserably is lack of preparation.
That translate to 'unsatisfactory' performance during the interview.
Obvious you say ey?
How to perform 'superbly' during the interview? What do you need to focus on? How to better prepare? Is pharmaceutical sales job for you?
Wait for my next blog...with the 'diamond-quality' pointers all over.
Starting Off Pointers
A few pointers before I start off:
Contrarian
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In finance, a contrarian takes the view that widespread pessimism tends to lead to market rallies and that widespread optimism tends to lead to market slumps. Contrarians are sometimes thought of as perma-bears—market participants who are permanently biased to a bear market view.
However, the contrarian is not biased specifically towards a negative view of the price trend in a market. Further, contrary to popular belief, the contrarian is not necessarily limited to taking a contrary position to the prevailing crowd's view.
Rather, the contrarian seeks opportunities to profit from situations when the crowd mentality leads to unreasonable valuations for assets, either on the upside or the downside. For example, selling companies that appear to be overvalued due to a flood of excessive hype is a time-honored contrarian strategy.
Similarly, investing in companies that have been unduly devalued due to temporary setbacks is a classic contrarian tactic. Value investing thus is often characterized as a subset of contrarian investing.
Note that neither of the above methods necessarily comprises betting against the overall market trend. A contrarian may seek to capitalize on a prevaling bull market by investing in an undervalued asset, for example.
Philosophically, a contrarian is a person who tends to take positions that openly challenge conventional wisdom.
In Sociology, the term can be understood as an attitude of going against the establishment in terms of the social mores of the time. A social contrarian attempts to show to others, like Socrates through Plato, that there is something inherently wrong with their limited world view.
The bold statements summarize what I intend to do with this blog so hold on tight!
