Veterinary Advantage…
Make it Your Advantage

We’re thrilled to welcome you to the first issue of Veterinary Advantage Magazine! Our mission is the same as our tagline: promoting excellence in animal health sales. We want to provide you with clear, concise information in an easy-to-read format that will help you perform at a higher level. Our primary target reader is you, the distributor sales rep, both inside and outside, who are closest to the customer and the true drivers of the animal health distribution business. We believe if we can help you gain a better understanding of the market and needs of your customer, you will gain a significant advantage – one that will differentiate you from your competitors and help you build stronger relationships with your customers. It’s those relationships that deliver, and will continue to deliver, the business.

While the animal health market continues to grow, today we face a changing and almost chaotic environment driven by a number of factors. Among them are the economy and its wild swings, new technologies, consolidation of both distributors and manufacturers, group purchasing, more advanced procedures and specialties, more corporate veterinary medicine, changing demographics and roles in the veterinary office, more pet insurance and an increasing reliance on electronic information. These changes clearly impact your business, as well as the business of your customers and manufacturer partners. The good news is the staff of Vet-Advantage has had a firsthand look at many of these issues on the human side of the healthcare business where we have extensive experience. And one of the most important things we learned is, while the scope of change may seem daunting and unsettling, it presents you with an incredible opportunity to learn, reposition yourself as a resource for your customers, and ultimately to grow your margins and business. And we want to be a part of that process!

This is a special marketplace, which is growing at a rapid pace and which has a number of resources for the distributor sales rep. We hope that Vet-Advantage, along with the electronic supplements (in months we don’t print) and our Web site (www.vet-advantage.com), will bring these resources together for you and help drive the industry forward while strengthening its sense of community. We believe that an important part of this mission is creating a more effective communication link between manufacturers and distributors so they can learn more about each other’s businesses. If we can accomplish that, we believe both parties will benefit, and more importantly, so will the end-using customer. Therefore, we would like to recognize and thank the manufacturers who have agreed to support our first issue of Vet-Advantage with their marketing dollars. We believe they are investing in your success.

Enjoy!