Posted By: RumorMail
Date: Friday, 19 September 2008, 8:58 p.m.
Former drug salesman Shahram Ahari, says that he likened his work schmoozing with doctors to training in spy agencies.
Hmmmm.... how would he know??? Did he also train in spy agencies???
The pill pushers
By Alex Roslin
When Shahram Ahari went to work at pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly straight out of college in New Jersey, he was hired to do a job that few people know exists. Even the job title would be a mystery to most people. Ahari was going to be a “detailer”.
His job was to schmooze with doctors in order to get them to prescribe Lilly’s drugs. He was really a salesman, but he was also much more. His tools included everything from free drugs to offers of lucrative speaking engagements, even trips. He’d bring medical residents pizza for lunch or invite a doctor to dinner at an exclusive restaurant. He’d do anything to improve sales in his New York City district, which meant a bigger bonus.
The first hint of the strange world Ahari had entered came when he was brought to Indianapolis for Lilly’s intensive, six-week boot camp for detailers. There, he met his fellow trainees. They were hundreds of fellow college grads, mostly in their mid-20s, perhaps two-thirds of them women, the vast majority beautiful.
“They were 200 or 300 of the most attractive people I had ever seen,” he said in a phone interview. “The physical appeal was only part of it. They were vivacious, well-coiffured, well-dressed, engaging people.”
Ahari soon learned that charisma was more important in his new job than, say, medical or scientific knowledge. He was the only one in his class of 22 trainees with a science degree, he said.
The training was part CIA, part Freud. He learned to immediately spot items in a doctor’s office that could be used to strike up a personal conversation and, ultimately, friendship: golf paraphernalia, photos of trips or kids, religious items. The information would later be entered into the company’s file on the doctor and analyzed for future approaches.
Long article... read it all at
http://www.straight.com/article-160083/pill-pushers
