Rebirth of the Industrial Tycoon

In a luxury western restaurant in the capital, a man in a suit and tie walked in.

In the early 1990s, although this kind of formal dress with a suit and tie was not obtrusive, it was still far from the life of ordinary people. At least the average working class had few opportunities to wear a suit and tie.

In big cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Dressing in a suit and tie often means working in a foreign-funded enterprise or a joint venture, or doing some foreign-related work.

The waiter in the western restaurant was also watching people place dishes. When he saw the man in a suit, he immediately greeted him enthusiastically.

"Sir, how many are you?" the waiter asked.

"I made an appointment, a boss surnamed Li." The man replied.

"Are you Mr. Lu? Mr. Li is already waiting for you." The waiter asked immediately.

The man nodded, and the waiter invited the man to a table, where Li Weidong was already waiting.

"Are you Mr. Lu Guangming?" Li Weidong pointed to the seat in front and asked him to sit down.

"Hello, Boss Li." After sitting down, Lu Guangming said, "Boss Li is really young and promising, much younger than I thought."

The two exchanged a few words, and then Li Weidong said: "Mr. Lu, to be honest, I invited you to meet this time because I hope you can come to work with our Puppy Electrical Appliances."

"Boss Li, I have also learned about your puppy electrical appliances before I came here. In addition to microwave ovens, you are mainly engaged in small household appliances, and I am in pharmaceutical sales. My profession seems to be different from Boss Li's business. Let's take a side?" Lu Guangming asked.

Li Weidong took out a brochure and handed it to Lu Guangming: "Mr. Lu, this is a new product that our Puppy Electric has just developed, called a massage seat, which can perform physical therapy on the cervical and lumbar spine. I plan to set up a new product. The sales department of massage chairs, so I would like to invite Mr. Lu to be the head of this sales department."

Lu Guangming took the brochure, read it hastily, and then said, "Boss Li, are you planning to sell this product to the hospital?"

"No." Li Weidong shook his head: "I plan to sell this product through the hospital."

"Is there a difference?" Lu Guangming asked subconsciously.

"Of course there is a difference. The hospital sells regular medical equipment, while my massage chair is a health care equipment that can be used for physical therapy and rehabilitation." Li Weidong explained.

Lu Guangming pondered a little and understood the difference between the two.

"It turned out to be selling health care products!" Lu Guangming frowned slightly, then shook his head: "Boss Li, I am a medical representative, and I only make regular medicines, so I have no interest in selling health care products."

"Don't worry, Mr. Lu, look at this contract first." Li Weidong said, and handed a contract to Lu Guangming.

Lu Guangming looked at the contract, his expression suddenly changed, the annual salary of 100,000 made Lu Guangming wonder if he was dazzled!

In 1993, the average annual income of enterprise employees was less than 3,000 yuan, but Li Weidong could give an annual salary of 100,000 yuan, which was more than 30 times that of ordinary workers. At that time, it was absolutely unimaginable. high salary.

At least the current Lu Guangming can't get so much salary.

"Boss Li, is this 100,000 annual salary true?" Lu Guangming asked incredulously.

Li Weidong said: "If Mr. Lu doesn't believe me, after we sign the contract, I can pay you a year's salary in advance. But the salary is not really important, the important thing is the latter, your sales team can get 10% sales commission.”

The annual salary of 100,000 is really tempting. With the consumption level at that time, the salary of 100,000 is enough for ordinary people to spend a lifetime. Even if Lu Guangming doesn't want to make health care products, he is still very excited when facing the salary of 100,000. .

"Boss Li, let me think about it and give you an answer." Lu Guangming was obviously shaken.

Li Weidong went on to say: "Mr. Lu, this massage chair of mine is different from the ordinary health care products on the market. This massage chair was developed by Professor Kang Guanghong of Capital Medical University. You are a medical representative. , you must have heard the name of Professor Kang Guanghong?"

"This was developed by Professor Kang?" Lu Guangming's attitude immediately corrected.

Those who do regular medicine naturally look down on those who sell health care products, so when he learned that Li Weidong was looking for him to sell health care products, Lu Guangming was full of disdain.

Now that he learned that the massage seat was actually developed by Professor Kang Guanghong, Lu Guangming's attitude suddenly made a 180-degree turn.

As an authoritative expert in cervical and lumbar diseases in China, Kang Guanghong has developed products, even if they are health products, they are definitely effective. There is no shame in selling products made by such authoritative experts.

So Lu Guangming asked, "Boss Li, how much do you plan to sell your massage chair?"

"The original price is 8888!" Li Weidong replied.

"It's so expensive!" Lu Guangming was taken aback.

"With a discount, the discounted price is only 3888! It's less than half of the original price!" Li Weidong then replied.

"That's expensive enough. Ordinary people can't make so much money in a year." Lu Guangming said.

"The main reason is that the cost of marketing is relatively high. In addition to the sales commission, I also plan to launch large-scale advertising."

Li Weidong paused, then said: "Speaking of the sales commission, Mr. Lu, your sales team can get 10%. If you can sell 10,000 units, it will be close to 4 million sales commission. This is still relatively objective."

The figure of four million once again surprised Lu Guangming, which was beyond his understanding of money.

In the early 1990s, the Chinese people's perception of money was not like a short video platform with a monthly income of one million per person. Although there were already many million-dollar households in the society at that time, "millionaires" still existed that ordinary people could not even imagine.

If you sell 10,000 massage seats, you will get a huge commission of 4 million. This temptation is too great!

Lu Guangming felt that it was really difficult for him to refuse such a good condition.

Getting rich depends on this wave!

...

This Lu Guangming, a pharmaceutical representative, is currently working in a joint venture pharmaceutical company in the special zone.

Li Weidong wanted to use the channel of doctors to sell massage chairs, but in the medical industry, Li Weidong was a layman, and he didn't know a few doctors at all.

Therefore, Li Weidong planned to directly find ready-made medical representatives, set up a sales team, and use the doctor resources in the hands of medical representatives to build a complete sales network in a short period of time.

And this Lu Guangming is the most suitable candidate.

Lu Guangming was originally a doctor, but later he joined a joint venture pharmaceutical company and became a medical representative. With his personal connections in the medical industry, he was quickly promoted and is now in charge of drug sales in the entire North China region.

In Li Weidong's memory, Lu Guangming was not willing to be a medical representative for a lifetime.

In the late 1990s, Lu Guangming left the pharmaceutical company and opened a factory for the production of medical equipment, starting from the simplest infusion equipment, and after more than ten years, he even managed to go public and even acquired it through acquisitions. A German company has acquired technology for the production of high-end medical equipment.

In this regard, Lu Guangming is much more powerful than Li Weidong in his previous life. Lu Guangming was able to get the company listed, while Li Weidong has been stumbling for decades, and has experienced many failed investments back and forth, and finally managed to reach a worth of hundreds of millions.

Now Lu Guangming is only the medical representative of the joint venture, but Li Weidong knows that this is the future domestic medical device tycoon.

Based on this alone, letting Lu Guangming sell massage chairs would definitely be a win.

...

When it comes to medical representatives, most people will think of words such as "black heart" and "rebate".

In fact, the profession of medical representative originated in Europe and the United States. The earliest use of medical representative was the American pharmaceutical giant Johnson \u0026 Johnson. Later, pharmaceutical giants such as Novartis and Bayer also began to use medical representatives.

The existence of medical representatives is naturally to sell drugs, and foreign pharmaceutical companies have also strictly classified medical representatives.

The first is a social activist, a medical representative who does not require very specialized medical knowledge, but must be a socialist.

They mainly establish contact with doctors through various social activities, and then provide doctors with some services, such as places in medical societies or seminars, or resources for medical research. At the same time, they will also meet the doctor's spare time needs in exchange for the doctor's prescription for the product.

Simply put, I provide you with services, and you help me prescribe and sell medicines. However, this service will not involve direct monetary transfers, which means that there will be no direct rebates to doctors. Of course, some disguised bribery must still exist.

The second is a drug instructor, a medical representative who has a good medical and pharmaceutical professional background and has been trained in many products. Their main responsibility is to inform the doctor about the product as much as possible, so that the doctor can have a comprehensive understanding of the product.

The third type is drug sales experts. This kind of medical representative is specially responsible for selling drugs. They have professional sales skills, and they will investigate the market and customers, as well as competitors, and then develop new markets. .

The fourth type is professional medical representatives. This kind of medical representative has a relatively small number of people and can be regarded as an upgraded version of "medical lecturers". Their job is to provide professional advice for a voice.

For example, when a doctor takes medicine, if he is not sure about the dosage of the medicine, he can call the medical representative. In many cases, the medical skills of this professional medical representative are even more exquisite than that of doctors.

In the mid-to-late 1980s, foreign pharmaceutical companies began to settle in China, established a number of joint ventures in the Pearl River Delta region, and then trained a group of pharmaceutical representatives in accordance with the model of European and American countries, which is the first batch of domestic pharmaceutical representatives.

The medical representatives at that time did the same job as the European and American medical representatives. They provided services for doctors and explained the efficacy and usage of medicines to doctors. They were the bridge between hospitals, doctors and pharmaceutical companies.

At that time, it was a very proud job to be a medical representative. They would never have imagined that the future medical representative would become synonymous with "gold sales", "medicine trust" and "bribes to doctors".

The reason for this is that in addition to the imperfect supervision system, there are many domestic pharmaceutical manufacturers, small, scattered and chaotic, and the homogenization of products is serious, resulting in extremely fierce competition among pharmaceutical companies. In order to be able to sell their products, eventually This has resulted in the "sale with gold" model.

If a slap fails, doctors are also responsible. Human greed for money and the mismatch between doctors' income and their labor are also the reasons why "selling with gold" can become popular.

Compared with ordinary people, the income of doctors is high, but for people who pay the same level, the income of doctors is not on the table.

For example, the chief surgeon of the top three hospitals in first-tier cities, the regular income of 500,000 yuan per year is not a problem, it seems to be a lot.

However, considering that you want to enter the top three hospitals in first-tier cities, you should at least graduate from 985 and 211, and study for five years as an undergraduate, three years for a master's degree, and three years for a doctorate.

China enrolls 8,000 medical postgraduates each year, less than a quarter of which are doctors, and if only 985 and 211 are counted, no more than 500 are enrolled each year. And some are not related to clinical medicine.

After entering the hospital, there are still three years of training, and if the ability is outstanding, it will take another four or five years to become the main surgeon. That is to say, the doctor who can become the chief surgeon is a doctor with more than ten years of formal clinical experience.

Comparing those popular industries, doctors with ten years of work experience in the financial industry are expected to be ridiculed by their peers with an annual income of one million? Doctors in popular technology industries have a starting salary of more than 500,000 yuan, and ten years is enough to become a shareholder.

Even if you stay in the university to do scientific research, and stay in 985 and 211 for ten years, you should have produced a lot of scientific research results. There is a project for the youth of senior officials and talents. If you want to go to a university in a third-tier city, the salary is about 1 million, and you can settle down. The low-end fee also starts at 2 million.

In contrast, doctors pay more, yet earn the least.

Even in comparison with the system, doctors are at a disadvantage. If you take a doctoral exam as a civil servant, you will be admitted as a chief staff member, a serious department level. Moreover, a doctoral degree in 985 or 211 also has advantages in promotion. It shouldn't be difficult to upgrade from the main department to the deputy county in ten years, right? It is also very possible to be promoted to the county level.

A county-level cadre is definitely not as good as the chief surgeon of a tertiary hospital in terms of legal income, but their power is not comparable to that of the chief surgeon of surgery.

In the so-called golden ophthalmology and silver surgery, the chief surgeon of the surgery is still the doctor with relatively high income. If it is replaced by a pediatric department, it is worthless. Not to mention the salary, the risk of being beaten is even greater.

Therefore, there is a saying that persuading people to study medicine will be struck by thunder. The profession of a doctor looks glamorous on the surface, but in fact it has high investment, slow returns, and hard work. The programmer has been 996 for ten years, and his hair is gone. Anyway, he can save a lot of money, but the doctor has been 996 for ten years, and he is not necessarily eligible to go out of the clinic.

People are all greedy, and their income is not proportional to what they don't do, which makes many doctors seek income other than their normal salary. Therefore, receiving red envelopes and withdrawing deductions has become a matter of repeated prohibition.

When everyone does this, bad things will become the unspoken rules of the industry, and it becomes extremely difficult to completely eradicate them.

In 1993, it was nothing new for doctors to receive red envelopes, but kickbacks from medical representatives still did not exist.

First, there were relatively few medical representatives at that time, and second, the medical representatives at that time had not yet explored the method of "selling with gold".

...

Lu Guangming signed the contract and officially joined Li Weidong's command.

Li Weidong also gave Lu Guangming the greatest autonomy, letting him recruit troops and set up a sales team.

Soon, Lu Guangming submitted a sales plan to Li Weidong.

This sales plan is basically the routine used by foreign medical representatives to sell medicines to the doctor, explain the situation of the medicine to the doctor, and then obtain the doctor's favor by providing services to the doctor, so that the doctor can write a prescription. This is a routine sales routine for foreign medical representatives.

After reading the sales plan, Li Weidong shook his head: "I said Lao Lu, this plan is not good, it's not enough!"

"Not enough?" Lu Guangming was slightly taken aback, he didn't understand what Li Weidong meant.

Li Weidong went on to say: "What you said above are all conventional sales methods. I think some unconventional sales methods should be added."

"What is an unconventional sales method?" Lu Guangming asked subconsciously.

"For example, if the doctor helps us sell a massage chair, he will be given a commission of 200 to 300 yuan." Li Weidong said directly.

Lu Guangming was stunned for a while, then said, "Isn't this a kickback for the doctor?"

"This is a rebate, it's called 'gold sales'! It's the most common method used by medical representatives." Li Weidong replied with a smile.

"Uh..." Lu Guangming was stunned for a moment. He thought about it carefully, but he couldn't remember. When the American medical representative teacher gave them training, he taught the course "Sales with Gold". .

So Lu Guangming asked, "Director Li, is it appropriate to give the doctor a rebate directly?"

"Old Lu, you can rest assured. The 300 yuan is considered as the production cost of the manufacturer, and the 10% commission from your sales department is not less than a penny."

Li Weidong continued: "As for the doctor, we didn't force the 300 yuan into them. If they don't want it, don't sell the massage chair for us! After all, making money is your own business, you have to rely on it. Volunteer!"

...

The fact that the pharmaceutical industry sells with gold will even become an unspoken rule of the entire pharmaceutical industry in the future, and this is not something that Li Weidong can stop.

Since you can't stop it, you can only go with the flow and get the best benefit for yourself.

So Li Weidong simply used the method of "selling with gold" by himself.

The cost of a massage chair is only more than 300 yuan, but it dares to sell 3888. This profit is comparable to some illegal industries.

Since the profit is so large, Li Weidong doesn't mind paying more sales costs, even if he gives the sales team a 10% commission, and pays 300 yuan for the "gold sales" cost, after deducting other costs, Li Weidong is still Can make a fortune.

The industry of health care products is such a huge profit!

...

Advertisements for massage seats have also been filmed.

Li Weidong has prepared a total of eight versions of the advertisement. The shortest is only fifteen seconds long, and the longest is five minutes, which is basically a promotional film.

After watching the commercial sample, Li Weidong couldn't help frowning.

From the perspective of future generations, this advertisement is definitely illegal.

For example, words such as "excellent curative effect" and "safety without side effects" are forbidden words in future generations. In addition, the introduction and photos of Professor Kang Guanghong appeared in the advertisement. The expert platform is also not allowed.

At least go to CCTV to advertise, similar content is absolutely not allowed to appear.

Fortunately, in 1993, the "Advertising Law" had not been promulgated and implemented, and the requirements for advertising were not so strict, so these terms and the expert platforms of scientific research institutes were not considered violations.

"Director Li, do you think these commercials were shot like this?" the director asked.

Li Weidong thought about it for a while, and felt that the advertisements of health care products in that era were more powerful, and of course he couldn't be different.

So Li Weidong said: "I think we can do some artistic processing and creation!"

"Artistic processing and creation?" The director was slightly taken aback.

This is a commercial, not Farewell My Concubine. The director heard this request when he was shooting a commercial.

Li Weidong explained: "Art comes from life, but it is higher than life. For example, this 'excellent curative effect' can be sublimated by art, called 'the best curative effect'! For example, in this 'effective cure', You can also carry out artistic sublimation, which is called 'total cure'. Director, do you know what I mean?"

"Just let me play it harder! What the sublimation of art is really an insult to art!" The director secretly thought, but of course he couldn't say that.

However, the requirements of the gold master's father must be met. For the sake of money, the director had no choice but to nod: "Director Li, don't worry, I will redo the ribbon cutting and dubbing of the advertisement immediately. Elevate!"