5 good reason for Medical sales people to call on retail chemists

In my early days in medical sales, retail chemist calls were a bit of a mystery. On the training course they were presented as a quick way of gaining useful information regarding your local GPs prescribing patterns. As I visited pharmacies to ask what the local GPs were doing it was rather soul destroying to be frequently told to bog off!
What my training course had failed to teach me, is that although calls on retail pharmacy can be invaluable, as a general rule in both life and business, people rarely give you something for nothing!! Up to a point, all I was getting out of the 1 hour a day set aside for chemist calls was a little bit of exercise and a few free cups of tea. It was an experienced peer who suggested I needed to provide my pharmacists with a useful service to build a relationship with them. Once the emotional bank account is in credit, your chances of gaining something back are far higher.
From this point forward, I took a different approach to my calls. Patients are often a little daunted by their visit to the Doctors. As a result, it's only when they reach the chemist with their prescription they realise they actually no nothing about their new treatment, so they ask the pharmacist. At this point, a pharmacist who has recently been briefed regarding the treatment by a medical rep can look very good in front of his customer through being able to explain what it's all about. Every time we had an change in license, a new dosage or any developments, I would visit the pharmacies to keep them updated. The impact was excellent. All of a sudden I had pharmacists readily available to track local prescribing, happy to put stock on their shelves for me with new products, and supporting my cause in their capacity on local prescribing groups.