How many of you make an effort to attract pharmaceutical reps to your climate-controlled facilities? I have heard that they make great long-term customers and always pay on time. Some will pay a premium to receive shipments directly into their units and disposal of the empty boxes. How do you deal with the extra liability when bailment issues arise?

As a self storage site planner I have designed conversions with thought given to the pharmaceutical representatives. This may include a "locker room" area with 24-hour access, a lounge area with vending machines, and Wi-Fi Internet access. This provides an opportunity for those with laptops or hand-helds to conduct some business as they pick up samples.

It would be interesting to hear from some of you with experience dealing with pharmaceutical reps. What is the typical size unit they rent and what amenities do they expect?


Steve Smith
Custom Site Plans
SteveSmith@ByteOne.com

I find they are a difficult group to "market to"......most of them don't pay for their own storage units, their company does....so they go for the convenience of whichever storage facility is closest to their home.

We have 5 or 6 here in our 661 unit facility, and we had 5 or 6 in our last 555 unit facility, but I don't see how you are ever going to get a sizeable number in one facility, but then again, I could be wrong.

We have wireless internet here, and also free faxing. We've been here 9 months and have great signs and tell everyone that we have those services. Not one person has ever asked to fax, and no one has ever set up their laptop in our private office for laptop use. I think they may be using their internet accessible phones for that purpose.

I'd be interested in finding out how your experiment goes though, because we would love to get more pharmaceutical reps in here...so if you come up with a successful formula, please let us know!

Find out who the market manager is for each pharmaceutical company and contact them. They are the ones who approve the storage expense for the reps. Sell your location to them with some sort of package deal. I have seen break points used as an incentive. Example....rate is $xxx for 1-5 reps and $yyy for 6-10 and $zzz for 11+.

Market to the decision maker not the end user.

__________________
Self Storage Management
Storage Career Center

Have you had a lot of success doing that? There are only so many reps for one company per square mile in any given area, and in our area for example, it can take an hour to drive 5 miles through town...so I don't think any one pharmaceutical company is going to put all their Orlando reps in one storage area no matter how how much $ you give them off. The reps could spend half their day just driving through traffic to get to the storage unit, or pay more in tolls in a week then they would save on a month of storage. The bigger cities have more reps, but also more traffic and more storage facilities to choose from.

Plus all the reps I've seen use 5x5's or 5x10's...so just how much of a discount can you give them off the small units? $10?

I would be interested in getting more reps in here, but all the ones I've talked to say they pick out their own storage, then submit the bill each month on their expense report. And if it's a decent storage facility with climate control, they pick the one closest to home.

Perhaps there is an opportunity to take advantage of the synergy between the pharmaceutical reps and their customers - the physician practices. The physicians are required by law to keep old records for specified periods of time and often don't have the space for them in their own facilities. You could create a brochure targeting both groups and offer incentives for cross-referrals.

Hi Lisa-

Sorry to take so long in replying. Yes, I have seen the market manager approach work. I am not sure about the present climate, at the time I saw it work most of the pharmaceutical companies specialized their reps into catagories by drug type groupings. No one rep had the entire product line at their disposal to sell. This meant a territory may have several reps in order to cover the product line. The market manager however oversaw the effort of all the reps in the territory. This is why that person was the logical 'go to' to pitch storage. And, as you mentioned, they approved the reps expenses so it makes sense to cut the deal with them.

Incentives are a tricky thing. Depending on where you are in occupancy a price reduction for what is usually a long term tenant may make sense. Some money vs. no money. Sometimes it can be as simple as providing a small dumpster for their use exclusively. Or, a meeting room the market manager can use to get all their folks together occassionaly. Sometimes just asking the potential client what it would take to earn their business gives you the foot in and let's you find out what is important to them.

Also, don't forget about the medical device reps. Orthopedic hardware reps have to keep inventory onhand to sell 'right now' when medical emergencies occur. The hospitals don't keep this stuff in inventory. They depend on the rep to get it to them post haste. An emergency call to the rep from a hospital for hardware to fix a shattered hip from a car accident is not unusual. Another source are the vendors for motorized chairs the elderly and disabled use. Most of them are abandoning their flex space warehousing and going to having the rep work out of their home and the inventory staged in self storage.

Good Luck!

__________________
Self Storage Management
Storage Career Center

This is an interesting topic. The last facility I managed had 12 to 16 reps at any one time (depending on cutbacks by the companies). I found it to be a very good client list to deal with. Every rep. that I have ever dealt with paid by credit card, usually an American Express, and was on auto pay. No muss, no fuss. They were always courteous and professional in their dealings with us. Not to mention the inexhaustible supply of pens and note pads.

We maintained keys for each unit to accept deliveries for these clients. We never entered their spaces. The keys were signed out to the delivering driver, usually UPS. As we were not the only people with a key, and due to the fact that we never took possesion of the delivered materials, the bailment, at worst, was only transitory. Additionally, we never were involved in deliveries of drugs or samples.

Just after I began in this business, the FDA placed by rigid requirements on the drug companies regarding access to the spaces. And this requirement drove the sales reps to us in droves.

In passing, I opened a facility in Tallahassee across from a plastice surgeons offices. His staff rented 2 12 x 30 a/c spaces and built shelves in them. They kept all of the closed files, and the ones not needed today or early tomorrow. They can pay for your storage spaces easily using the income from the office that they can rent to another doctor, instead of using it for records storage.

Astro