Last year, pharmaceutical manufacturers significantly increased the amount of money they spent promoting new drugs, which they do mainly by sending sales representatives to visit physicians in their offices. However, two years ago there was an average of 640 such visits per representative, whereas last year that figure fell to 501. So the additional promotion must have been counterproductive, making physicians less willing to receive visits by pharmaceutical sales representatives.
Most pharmaceutical manufacturers increased the size of their sales forces so that their sales representatives could devote more time to each physician, which most weakens the argument.