{"id":7128,"date":"2009-05-06T13:42:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-06T13:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pharma-mkting.com\/pharma-sales-rep-hamsters-waste-time-on\/"},"modified":"2019-02-21T01:23:15","modified_gmt":"2019-02-21T01:23:15","slug":"pharma-sales-rep-hamsters-waste-time-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ec2-54-175-84-28.compute-1.amazonaws.com\/pharma-mkting.com\/blog\/pharma-sales-rep-hamsters-waste-time-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Pharma Sales Rep &#8220;Hamsters&#8221; Waste Time on Email Treadmill"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_ZiPiXEv_Q_g\/SgGZP7iVnTI\/AAAAAAAACdA\/dJ28WDdT9kM\/s1600-h\/HamsterBookCover.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 208px; height: 320px;\" src=\"http:\/\/ec2-54-175-84-28.compute-1.amazonaws.com\/pharma-mkting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/HamsterBookCover.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5332711932742180146\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>According to Mike Song, former pharmaceutical sales rep and author of the book &#8220;The Hamster Revolution,&#8221; pharmaceutical companies can cut the time that sales reps spend receiving, reading, and responding to e-mail by 20%. Since sales reps may spend up to 88 eight-hour working days per year on e-mail tasks (21,120 msgs X 2 minutes per msg = 88 hours), that means 18 days per year per sales rep are wasted.<\/p>\n<p>Song made this claim at the eyeforpharma Sales Force Effectiveness USA 2009 conference, which I attended yesterday. He also gave out free copies of his book.<\/p>\n<p>Presenting along with Song was Schering-Plough&#8217;s Director of Learning and Development whose company benefited from Song&#8217;s tips that he summarized in a presentation entitled &#8220;Get Control of Email! Driving Sales Force Effectiveness with Email Productivity Training.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Here are some of Song&#8217;s tips:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Do not automatically click on &#8220;reply to all.&#8221; The list may grow exponentially as other people add to it. (Song cited a survey in which 91% of respondents say that their colleagues often overuse &#8220;reply to all.&#8221; Yeah, but I do not do that!)<\/li>\n<li>Use NRN (&#8220;No Reply Needed&#8221;) or NTN (&#8220;No Thanks Needed&#8221;) in subject line. (87% of respondents to that survey previously mentioned say they often receive unnecessary e-mail. And 25% actually resent being thanked!)<\/li>\n<li>Use action words in subject line. These include &#8220;Info,&#8221; &#8220;Request,&#8221; &#8220;Confirmed,&#8221; and &#8220;delivery.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>If the subject line IS the message, place &#8220;EOM&#8221; (End of Message) at the end so that the receiver doesn&#8217;t waste time by opening up the email.<\/li>\n<li>Apply the &#8220;newspaper test.&#8221; &#8220;E-mail is a public medium,&#8221; warned Song. You can be sure there is a copy stored somewhere that has not been erased. So, be careful what you say.<\/li>\n<li>Strengthen the subject line, sculpt the body. You&#8217;ll have to read the book or listen to my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.talk.pharma-mkting\">podcast<\/a> interview, which I plan for the near future, to learn more.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Best piece of advice: Use a phone. In that survey, 80% of respondents said they or their colleagues often use email when the phone would be better.<\/p>\n<p>Usually, all kinds of expensive and difficult to implement technology &#8220;solutions&#8221; to the &#8220;problem&#8221; of sales force effectiveness are promoted at SFE meetings. Song&#8217;s solution was refreshingly non-technical and a no-brainer. Despite that &#8212; or maybe because of it &#8212; Song had the most people surrounding his &#8220;non-booth&#8221; (a round-top table in the farthest corner of the exhibit area; no sign, no fancy brochures; just a few books) trying to talk to him.<\/p>\n<p>The next time-wasting technology sales reps may have to deal with is Twitter! Also social media sites like Cafe Pharma.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to Mike Song, former pharmaceutical sales rep and author of the book &#8220;The Hamster Revolution,&#8221; pharmaceutical companies can cut the time that sales reps spend receiving, reading, and responding to e-mail by 20%. Since sales reps may spend up to 88 eight-hour working days per year on e-mail tasks (21,120 msgs X 2 minutes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9347,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[74,110],"topic":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Pharma Sales Rep &quot;Hamsters&quot; Waste Time on Email Treadmill - Pharma Marketing Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/ec2-54-175-84-28.compute-1.amazonaws.com\/pharma-mkting.com\/blog\/pharma-sales-rep-hamsters-waste-time-on\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pharma Sales Rep &quot;Hamsters&quot; Waste Time on Email Treadmill - Pharma Marketing Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"According to Mike Song, former pharmaceutical sales rep and author of the book &#8220;The Hamster Revolution,&#8221; pharmaceutical companies can cut the time that sales reps spend receiving, reading, and responding to e-mail by 20%. 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