Welcome! If you're reading this you want to know to more about how to sell and market products to scientists. I created this blog to write about the things I've learned by watching you all try to sell me kits, reagents, equipment, animals, and services for the last 17 years and about the techniques I've learned running my websites Scientist Solutions.com and the soon to be laucnhed Gatcat.com.
Many of you, like me, spent some time in the lab either as an undergrad, a technician, a graduate student, and beyond. Then one day you woke up and said to yourself, "Lab work kinda sucks, I need to get a job and a life." Now you find yourself as a salesperson for Life Sciences Product Vendor, or something to that effect, and suddenly You are that person wandering through the labs "looking for the lab manager", trying to meet the PI, or just trying to bribe anyone to actually talk to you with some doughnuts and pizza.
Ask yourself (and be honest)
"Did that work on me?"
"Did I ever buy anything because of a pizza party?"
"Did I really talk to vendors at MegaConferences or just try to win the ipods and get T-shirts?"
I bet the answer is you bought the products that the post-doc next to you or your buddy in another lab was using or, you bought the product described in the methods section of your competitors' recent manuscript (the one that scooped you).
So now ask yourself as a salesperson, why would a scientist buy this kit, antibody, reagent, microscope? What would FORCE me to buy it if I was still in the lab?
Check back for more ideas regularly and of course comment all you like. I have thick skin after all those paper rejections and grant denials.
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I believe the best way to sell product to a lab is to give it to them for a free trial for sometime and then when the trial period is over sell the same instrument with a small discount. A sure win-win situation!!
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