A recent analysis of top salespeople suggested salespeople who are driven by a strong sense of customer-related purpose outsell salespeople who are focused on sales and money goals. The insurance companies are using such purpose-related pitches in recruiting the pharmaceutical salespeople. What other characteristics should the insurance companies look for in their recruits?

One criticism of pharmaceutical sales is that it makes healthcare more expensive. Although pharmaceutical companies increasingly restrict entertainment gifts, meals, and other incentives that were once part of pharmaceutical salespeople’s sales pitches, the reps still buy lunches for medical staffs, take doctors out to eat, and pay for doctors to attend informational presentations at physician conferences, sometimes in exotic destinations, as part of their efforts to promote expensive medications. They also pitch their branded drugs rather than less expensive generics. But now, health insurers are recruiting existing pharmaceutical salespeople away from big pharmaceutical companies to use the same relationship-building and creative selling skills, but without the expense accounts, to raise health-care provider awareness of generic drugs, which cost less and work as well as the expensive brands. The premise is that doctors are often unaware of the costs of drugs they prescribe and may not realize when pharmaceutical companies increase their prices. The insurance companies’ pitch to the pharmaceutical salespeople is that they will get to use the skills they learned from pharmaceutical companies to do something meaningful: lower healthcare costs. The goal is to save the insurance companies and the insured millions of dollars.