They challenge us to defend our preconceptions in a different way than colleagues, patients or students do, and, if they have some chutzpah, they may be able to penetrate a doc's narcissism in a way that approximates supervision. Capaldi also believes that reps often provide valuable information for doctors, but he laments that he frequently didn't get the opportunity to do just that. They didn't see we could add value to the way they practice medicine. In some cases we couldn't, but in some cases we really could Some are just there to sell their drugs, but a good many believe in their drug. No drug is good for everyone.
Every drug is good for somebody.
As long as you believe that, you can sell anything. When asked to comment on the often-reported contentiousness between doctors and sales reps, Crocker takes a psychodynamic approach. Our dependency on our prescribing privilege is what puts us in the same industry as the drug detail men. Of course all doctors do some valuable things beyond prescribing, but a lot of us would be out of a job or paid less if we didn't have that monopoly. Many psychiatrists are ambivalent about the ascribed power and would prefer to be therapists or consultants, which may be why projections of greed and commercial crassness are directed at the reps who make us focus on our monopoly meal ticket.