Sam,
On further reflection.... Can you help clarify some things for me?
You said they said "Doctors are using more of this product every week" - and I would expect that to be true. If one uses a high-tech product like IVUS and finds it valuable, you're going to ask your hospital to keep buying it, whether or not there's a new salesperson. You further noted that there is less selling expense at the moment "By getting rid of Cordis and getting their own sales force". So why is the transition so ugly? If sales are way down, does this mean the product is not so hot after all, and that doctors really aren't "using more... every week"? If expenses are way up, why is that - I can imagine that getting a new sales force transitioned would entail some costs, but a 2 year horizon??? And the JNJ situation doesn't quite ring true - if the Cordis salesforce is just trying to save their own product, but the two don't compete, wouldn't they want to continue selling the supposedly hot ESON product, too, at least until ESON transitions its own sales force? I can see them not taking any time to find new buyers, and ESON deciding to terminate the agreement as a result of that, but why wouldn't both of them find it beneficial to continue the arrangement until the ESON people were up to speed, leaving only a very transient transition period, maybe a quarter, or two at the most?
There could well be some very simple and reasonable explanations for these questions, I just don't know the sales business well enough to understand. What I do know is that when we have a product we really find valuable, if one company quits supplying it, we're all over our purchasing folks to get us a replacement ASAP. And if it's a really good product, pretty soon all our colleagues are asking for it, too, even before the rep calls on them. So this just makes me wonder whether the technology is quite as hot as we thought.
Bob |
