Marc Luber: Our guest today is someone who overseees national account management and
sales for a pharmacy benefit management company.
Bob Eisendrath: A pharmacy benefit management company is - we're the company that handles
the prescription drug card part of an employee's health benefits. So whether you got insurance
on your own or it's through your healthcare company and you have a prescription drug card,
you go to the local pharamacy and you pay $10, we're the company behind that. So people
hire us to provide that benefit and we have arrangements with pharmacies throughout the
country and we also own what we call our own mail order facilities. So we can dispense
drugs for 90 day supplies for people at low cost.
Marc Luber: OK. So I was recently a business development executive at Echo, which was a
digital marketing agency part of Ticketmaster Entertainment. And so I was given as part
of my benefits package a Blue Cross card that I had in my wallet and then I had a card that
said Medco on it that I was supposed to show at the pharmacy. Now I'd never had that before.
I'd always had just a Blue Cross card and you show it at your doctor's office AND the
pharmacy. So is Medco the same - are they a competitor of CVS Caremark?
Bob Eisendrath: Yeah, I would say that they're our biggest competitor. They do the exact
same thing and sometimes you can have separate cards and sometimes your health insurance
company will allow you to put it on that card.
Marc Luber: OK. So then who is it that you are making deals with? Is it the company - like
Echo/Ticketmaster? Or is it Blue Cross?
Bob Eisendrath: Well that's another great question. We actually have two different markets,
Marc. First one is with Echo. People on my team would go out to Echo and try to sell
them to say "get your health insurance through Blue Cross but get your prescription drugs
through us because we can provide you better pricing and better reporting and service".
Then we have a whole other division that goes to the health plan and says "for all of your
members let us be your drug benefit provider".
Marc Luber: Got it. And then how is it that you set yourself apart from your competitors?
Bob Eisendrath: Well that's a complicated answer but what we really focus on is improving
saving for the clients and for the members and having a good member experience. And what
we do is we provide solutions to our clients that will help the clients themselves save
money and their members get low-cost drug alternatives. So it's really from a member
standpoint, we're trying to educate them on that there's generics available, which are
basically the same as brands nowadays, there's other ways to save money so they can have
affordable healthcare. And from a client like Echo, for instance, we're giving them deep
discounts and we're giving them programs that will help encourage people to use mail order
pharmacies or to use generics, because that's the way they save the most money.
Marc Luber: OK, got it. And are PBMs all over America? I'm sorry, we should say that PBM
is short for pharmacy benefit management company or prescription benefit management company,
right?
Bob Eisendrath: Correct.
Marc Luber: OK. And are PBMs all over the country? Are there jobs and career paths in
PBMs all over America?
Bob Eisendrath: Yeah, there are a lot of PBMs. To my knowledge there are over 30 PBMs throughout
the coutry. Most of them have national offices and sales forces and account management forces.
I would say there's 3 big ones today, which is CVS/Caremark, Medco and Express Scripts.
But there are a lot of other companies that are I would say mid-range. But there's many
opportunities in this field.
Marc Luber: Tell us what it is that you do over there? What is your role as an Area VP?
What does that mean?
Bob Eisendrath: I am responsible for $2.5 billion in business and I manage 10 people
and our job is to keep our largest national accounts happy and keep them as Caremark clients
and try to make sure we renew them as well as provide them additional opportunities to
save money. So it's really focused on retention and keeping a high level of service.
Marc Luber: What is the type of background that you see on your team?
Bob Eisendrath: A lot of the people on my team started as young people within the company,
whether they were in customer service, billing or even as an account manager and then they
worked their way up into what we call a strategic account executive. The other people have maybe
come just from working at a hospital or some other part of the healthcare field and they
have transitioned into it. Sales is a great thing because you're always talking to people
and you get to meet people - different people - all the time. And, you know, you're trying
to get people to trust you to buy whatever you're selling - whether it's a product or
a service - they're buying from YOU - it's not actually what you're selling. It's about
trust, it's about having people believe in what you're saying. And it's a challenge.
And being competitive is a good thing and you've gotta maximize that to help you excel
within your sales role. So I think sales is a great field to be in and it gives you that
ability to have flexibility as well.
Marc Luber: You've been watching a short version of the interview with Bob Eisendrath. To learn
more about pharmacy benefit management companies and the sales and account management roles
there, go to Careers Out There dot com. Thanks again for watching. I'm Marc Luber and I look
forward to seeing you at the site.
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