How To Sell To Scientists

So long Blogger....

2010-04-09T09:56:00.001-07:00

Its been swell, but the contents of this blog have moved to www.howtoselltoscientists.com.

Hope to see you over there!

Rusty and Mark

A scientist's thoughts on lead generation - target identification

2010-04-01T07:16:00.000-07:00

This is the third article in a series on finding Key Influencers (KIs) to champion your products (Part 1 and Part 2).

If you read part two, you now are armed with the power to observe and identify the KIs in a lab on cold call (cold walk-through). The next step is to identify your target by name, email, phone number, and interests both scientific and personal. Your job is to get to know that KI personally and, you will do that by helping them with their research.

Back to the Role Playing.......You get home (late because you walked through after 5pm when KIs are working). On your walk through one lab you saw the name "Rusty" and initials "JRB" on a lot of products and notebooks in particular bay.

To identify this KI, you can go to the lab's website and look at the members. Here's an example on my labs webpage, the Esko Lab at UCSD.

You quickly know two things about the potential KI; he has PhD and his last name is Bishop. The fact he has a PhD tells you he has at least been in the lab for 6 or more years. The last name is your final clue in fingering this scientist as a KI.

Look at that handsome devil! Nice goatee

To do that, you need to discover his publication record in pubmed.
So surf over to Pubmed, enter the last name of the lab head and the last name of the potential KI (in this case 'esko and bishop'. You should get a reasonable list of publications 9-20 with their name it might look something like this. Remember his name was Rusty, the correct scientist has the intials JR thats him!

Here's my publication record in Pubmed, maybe if I had more papers I wouldn't be writing this blog.

Now you know, this guy is a KI - 4 papers in two years in reasonably respectable journals, lots of notebooks, lots of products around his bench, has a PhD. You also know his email address, which you got off the lab website, his mailing address available on the most recent publications, you know what he is researching from the publications, and most important you know where he lives.

Don't spam him with emails or drop off some literature, thats the best way to get ignored, you gotta get to know him first and thats an article for another day.....

The next step, ' Getting to Know the KI' will appear on our new website - howtoselltoscientists.com!

New site is so close....

2010-03-30T15:05:00.000-07:00

How to Sell to Scientists has outgrown Blogger and, it seems I have outgrown the lab too. Thank you for all the emails and tweets since I started. With your help the new site is going to be even better.

Yep, we're moving out and just now putting the finishing touches on our new website HowtoSelltoScientists.com.

Its my first attempt at coding with Wordpress and so far its amazingly versatile. I really wanted to have the ability to do some deep coding and design work, and I think its going to pay off in the near future.

Here's a screen shot of the homepage

Best

J Rusty

P.S. This is also the unofficial birth announcement of Red Funnel Consulting, a collaboration between one scientist (moi) and one business guy (Mark). I hope we can be of service to you all in the near future. Its been real lab.

Manuscript Accepted

2010-03-26T11:06:00.000-07:00

"Manuscript Accepted"- the two most joyful words a scientist can hear or read.

I just read them today. Here's the manuscript online at the Journal of Biological Chemistry

Insulin-deficient diabetes mellitus in mice does not alter liver heparan sulfate

Yes!

Rusty

P.S. I just noticed there is an ad for the Shimadzu Nano-Spec on my article at JBC! Oh the irony......

A scientist's thoughts on lead generation - power of observation

2010-03-26T07:18:00.000-07:00

In a previous post, I talked about the concept of Key Influencers (Part 1).

Key Influencers are the individual scientists that can and will push your products far beyond the original purchase to labmates, colleagues, and beyond. Over the next few weeks, we will show you some tricks to identify Key Influencers and provide some ways to warm them to your products.

The Cold Lab Visit

Walking into a random lab to push your products is intimidating. I know this because I get intimidated when I walk into an unfamiliar lab. Everyone either gives you the stink-eye or they refuse to look up or there's no one in sight or someone asks you brusquely, "Who are you looking for?" This happened to me this week when I went to borrow a reagent from a friend that knew I was coming. Freaked me out!

Through timing and observation, you can turn this uncomfortable cold call into a Key Influencer discovery mission.

Visiting Times

Key Influencers are the scientists that come in early (before 8am) or stay late (after 5pm). They are serious about their science and getting experiments done, so they work when there are fewer distractions and care little for work schedules. I’ve know scientists that literally had a cot in the lab. Furthermore, scientists have journal clubs, lab meetings, and talks to attend during the day (10-4pm) and, Key Influencers will be at these meetings (hint : these are the meetings where they will push your products). Time your visit for success.

‘Chance favors the prepared mind’ - Louis Pasteur

To find a Key Influencer observe the following as you pass through the lab.

Personal Bench Areas and Open Freezers - Look for a bench with tons of reagents, pipets, and equipment labeled in the same hand writing. Key Influencers will have products stuck in every nook and cranny. If you can see an actual name or initials on these products – REMEMBER IT!

Here's an example of what you are looking for!

Desk Area – Look for shelves or desktops with lots of hand-labeled binders. By lots, I mean 10-30 notebooks. If the writing looks old or the labels are peeling off, that’s not it. You want fresh labels and recent dates (past 3yrs). Again you are looking for a name.

Scientists - Key Influencers are typically in the 30's to 40's age range. Practice identifying people of this age group. Again observe and file it away.

RED FLAG WARNING - If a scientist is working at their bench (gloves on, pipet in hand) – WALK AWAY! Don’t leave some fliers. Don’t bother them. Just observe the above and leave with the knowledge that you have identified your target.

Let’s review; personal bench (products and bottles labeled), desk (10-30 binders names or initials), and scientists (30ish). You now have an idea who is using products and directing purchasing. Identify them, help them, and you will succeed.

A scientist's thoughts on lead generation

2010-03-23T07:49:00.000-07:00

I've really enjoyed Mark Walker's last two articles on sales and marketing working together. To be honest, I thought sales reps just wandered through labs passing out candy and, marketers bought ads and put ipod drawings in booths at conferences. As a focused bench scientist, I had never considered that side of the life science industry. Oh to be naive!

Please consider this is an open letter from a scientist to your company. Ask me anything you want about me for lead generation information gathering. Let's work together.

Im hoping this article will generate some dialogue between your world and mine. There are thousands of struggling scientists that need you to give us the best products for our research.

What do you want to know about a scientist?

I'm guessing the most important question is.....

"Do I have money to spend?"

Yes, I have an AHA grant that gives me $60K a year to spend on reagents and services.

Lets take it one step further though. As a long time researcher (17 years), what is my influence with other scientists? Consider the following...

1. In my immediate lab there are 12 scientists that ask me for help on experiments. Three of them have grants of their own. One is a career Research Scientist with "lots" of money (he just bought a new mass spectrometer and HPLC).

2. My PI (principle investigator) is a seasoned vet with multiple grants and is constantly invited to speak at meetings. He knows 100s of other PIs. However, I can definitively say he does not have time to talk to you about your products.

3. In my "area" there are two others labs totaling 3 PIs, 4 Research Scientists, 17 postdocs, 16 graduate students (weird), and 12 technicians. We are all friendly and regularly talk to one another about experiments.

4. I use and regularly interact with 3 large on-campus services that buy a ton of products (IHC, Microscopy, and Animal Facilities).

In my mind, that influence is a lot more important than my grant money. A scientist like myself can push your products to 100s of others. You just have to learn how to identify me.

Hint - Dont ask me if I have money to spend!

In my next article, I will write about some ways to train yourself or your sales staff to get this information from scientists and find Key Influencers = leads.

Lead Management (Part 2)– Sales and Marketing Playing Nice

2010-03-20T06:39:00.000-07:00

In a previous post (Part 1 here), I suggested ways Sales and Marketing can work together on a more effective way to score and prioritize incoming leads. Its a great place to start building trust between the two groups and it pays off in converting more leads. Continuing on those thoughts...

Who Qualifies Leads?

Make sure everyone know what they are expected to do and when. Having a highly scored lead fall through the cracks is like losing money. If the online lead needs to be further qualified, who does it? Will inside sales qualify the leads further and set up appointments for Field Sales or is the Field Representative expected to? In the life science marketplace, it is not as common to separate these activities. Researchers in the lab don’t respond well to phone interruptions. In other industries, its standard practice. Qualification is a different mindset than closing, and you will be more effective if separating the two, if your customers will accept it.

Is There any Value to Low Priority Leads?

Where do the low priority leads end up? First, are these really low priority leads or are they not being qualified effectively? If your lead form doesn’t ask the right qualification questions, it is probably harder to figure this out. If they truly are prospects that are not ready to purchase, start a conversation with them. Let them know how you can help them, not by focusing on products you can sell (they told you they aren’t ready) but by telling them about information resources you either have on your site or can link to. Start by becoming a trusted and valuable source of information and there is a better chance they will want to do business with you.

I’m a fan of letting field sales access all leads, including low priority, especially when you are still testing your process. However, make it clear what you want them to do with them. Some may want to contact these leads to avoid dealing with more tense selling situations. Many will want to follow up on any potential lead, especially if your qualification process is not trusted by the field or not effective. Let your sales team see the entire lead management process, where they fit, and why they will be more effective focusing on higher scored leads.

Feedback Loop

Set a timeline to review results with an eye toward revisions and sharing best practices. While it’s great to share stories about the sale won in a specific case, it’s critical to measure each step of the lead process and review what’s working and what is not. Facts are friendly and numbers should drive lead management decisions.

CRM systems are critical components to this process. There are many choices currently (way beyond the scope of this post) so that even small companies can use these tools. If your systems do not enable your organization to track leads and conversion easily and report results, you need to do some more work. If you have it but sales and marketing are not using it, well, you know you have some work to do.

Customer Expectations

I called my bank last week and gave my account number to the nice, automated voice prompt and endured a couple more menu options to talk to someone. Frustratingly, when I got to that live person, I had to repeat it the account information. Sure, maybe it’s an extra precaution, but if so, tell me that. I expected them to have my information at their fingertips, so we could immediately resolve the issue.

Few customers, especially in the B2B space, have time to chit-chat or even repeat themselves. They expect your company and its representatives to know about their account and interests when you contact them, especially when they have volunteered the information.

A successful lead management process will reinforce both sales and marketing buy-in to working together and will have an impact on sales. Even more importantly, it will help you shine in your customer’s eyes.

Scientists want to see what they are buying

2010-03-17T05:48:00.000-07:00

In lab meeting yesterday and we had a 10 min conversation about a kit that came in the blue and purple box (some thought it was yellow). A few hours later, my labmate Jon starts laughing and points to the old Promega Wizard Prep box on top of the freezer. Classic!

Science products have complicated names often with made-up words in them. For example, on one page of the Bio-rad website I found iProof High Fidelity DNA Polymerase and iTaq DNA Polymerase. What the heck is iProof? I've used Taq, but iTaq? Luckily for me, I knew I used the kit with one red and one green tube that came in the green box with a yellow sticker on it.

Notice how Bio-Rad uses large images of the kit with the components displayed clearly on their product display pages.

This same principle should be applied to all your marketing tactics including product webpages, front covers of product literature, and (gasp) the hated email blast.

I encourage you to take a look at your materials today and see if you can figure out what products you are selling without reading a word. Its a lot easier to sell something to someone that has already bought it!

Related articles in this series include ABCO and Your Website is Your Face.

Lead Management – Sales and Marketing Playing Nice

2010-03-16T07:26:00.000-07:00

by Mark Walker

My two young daughters frequently squabble. From what I hear, that is pretty normal stuff. When pressed, they admit they can generally tolerate each other and are glad they are in the same family.

Similarly, there is a “natural tension” in the Marketing and Sales relationship in most companies. Ideally, they have similar strategic goals but the tactics and day-to-day priorities can differ a bit. Toss in a little additional end-of-quarter pressure for good measure and you have the ingredients for some friction.

One area for head-butting is lead management. Sales complains that there are not enough leads or they are not qualified. Marketing complains that their hard-fought battle to attract leads is wasted or not followed up on effectively. Both groups have their points.

Marketing dollars are moving more and more to online activities, in no small part due to the fact that it is more easily measured. Marketing sweats blood to get more leads and higher quality leads. Sales loves more quality leads. So what’s the problem? Nothing that a little more alignment and communication won’t fix.

Over the next week, I’ll cover some high payoff areas to help manage incoming online leads and get sales and marketing talking the same language.

Scoreboard, baby

Unless you have unlimited resources, you need to make some decisions about leads. Not every lead is equally valuable. Score your leads by agreeing on what criteria and priority and then rank them. The criteria might be slightly varied for different products or target markets but try to keep it as straightforward as possible to gain agreement.

Use a simple, reproducible rating system (A,B,C,D) that takes into account key criteria (some ideas listed below). Agreement between sales and marketing is critical because it dictates what resources and efforts will be employed in the next steps.

Try this exercise today. Grab the last 100 leads you received and try to rank them yourself. If it is difficult or confusing to get the report or prioritize them, you have a good idea of how difficult this process might be.

Develop Rating System Content

Your rating system should be aligned with your market goals and objectives. Does everyone know what those are? Here are some common areas for discussion:

Target customer – You may be surprised that marketing and sales have different ideas about what the target customer looks like. Flush out the areas of disagreement and come to a consensus. There is a right answer to this.

Lead Source – This relates to where your key customers are online and how compelling your call to action is.

Product (s) – Short sales cycle or long sales cycle will impact the selling time frame. Understand what customers need for each to move the decision process toward a conclusion.

Buying influence – Is the requestor responsible for purchase or just collecting information? Researchers may not have final purchase authority but they can be the key influencer in the purchase decision.

Anticipated purchase timing – Match your effort with the customers anticipated needs. If they want to buy in the next 30 days, they will need time to review information and evaluate competitors, so plan ahead.

Current customer or new prospect – You are already ahead of the game with a current customer. They have purchased from you already and have a relationship with the company. However, their expectations for service and discounting may be higher.

Mind the Gaps

This process might identify some gaps in your information gathering. Are you missing information from your leads you need to make better decisions. That’s a pretty nice insight in itself. Don’t let these deficiencies delay the process of making decisions. You will never have perfect information but improve where possible.

Are all the questions you ask on your lead form necessary? If not, get rid of them, quickly. Unnecessary questions take time and reduce the chances for a completed lead. What questions would be helpful to sales? Ask the sales team and add it. Are the questions consistent across all sources so you can compare effectively? If you have differences, at least have a valid, measurable reason for it.

Part 2 …

In the second part, there are some additional ideas where marketing and sales can come together to improve the lead management process. Read Part 2 Here

ABCO - Always Be Closing Online

2010-03-15T07:44:00.000-07:00

ABCO: Always Be Closing Online. Its the age old advice you hear in sales your whole career. The same applies to your website design as well.

Your website is your store front. The individual product pages are your sales staff. I'm not suggesting you place a big ol' BUY NOW button on every product page, but it should be really damn obvious how to buy the product when a scientist is ready to buy. Nothing is more frustrating than having to search for the button.

Notice how Bio-Rad places the ordering call to action buttons directly next the two product sizes and how the green 'Add to Cart' button stands out.

I encourage you to take a look at your website today no matter your position in the company and think about how the product pages are closing sales for you. Tiny increases in online sales produce large increases in revenue due to the realized costs of sales staff both in person and call centers.

How to find scientists discussing specific products

2010-03-12T07:51:00.000-08:00

The internet provides an opportunity never before imagined to target scientists working on specific experiments and procedures that need your product.

Today, I will show you how to find those scientists online and how to target them for low cost/high ROI with laser-like focus.

Let's say you are the product manager for Shimadzu's new Biospec Nano that directly competes with the wildly popular Nanodrop, now owned by Mega-Corporation ThermoFisher. You are tasked with the job of taking market share from the Nanodrop.

Of course, you should do all the obvious things like advertise in Science, list it on Biocompare, and haul the machine around to ASCB and AACR with a team of trained sales professionals to talk to scientists. Thats great, but Nanodrop is right there with you with the full marketing might of a $10 billion dollar company behind them. In my opinion, you will lose that battle. Nanodrop was first to market and scientists love it making the BiospecNano a vitamin (nice to have) and not a pain pill (required).

How do I know scientists love the NanoDrop? I did a sentiment search (for more on this click here).

In this case, I searched for the Nanodrop on ScientistSolutions.com, an online discussion forum. Discussion forums are a very different Social Media Animal than quick conversation websites like Facebook or Twitter or opinion sites like ScienceBlogs and Nature Networks. You'll have take my word on it today, but look for a comparison article soon.

Here's what I found - The word Nanodrop is mentioned in 40 different discussion threads. One thread went on for 3 pages with at least 100 scientists from all over the world raving about the Nanodrop.

Actual Quotes -

"The Nanodrop works great, it saves a lot of time and reagents. " - Shareef, United States

"...At its price point (~$8,000) and ease of use (no consumables), there is nothing out there that compares." - Ivan, United States

If you think outside the box, this is a perfect place to begin a low cost/high ROI assault on Nanodrop if you are Shimadzu.

Your game plan is simple - Steal all this free press for the Biospec Nano.

How?

ScientistSolutions.com sells "keywords" (its in their media packet, which for some reason you have to call to get, thats dumb). So, every time the word Nanodrop appears on this site it could be a link to the Shimadzu version of the product and not the "real Nanodrop" owned by ThermoFisher.

Yesterday, I called them up and asked to "buy" the word Nanodrop. $100 a month. That's laughably cheap! They even agreed to tag the word for a month to show me how many clicks it gets. Even if I only get 10 clicks that result in one sale, that's still cheap. $100 to cockblock ThermoFisher AND make a sale of a $8000 instrument per month, that is low cost/high ROI!

Next, repeat the process described above on the other major life science discussion forums.

Here's a short list. There are thousands of scientists discussing untold numbers of products on these three sites alone.

MolecularStation.com
BioTechniques.com
Protocol-online.org

Of course if you work for Nanodrop, you may want to play defense by securing the word and advertising space for yourself.

Full Disclosure - The author of this blog is a former employee of ScientistSolutions.com and has financial interest in the company. He doesn't think this changes a single thing in the blog above since he gives three other scientific discussion boards to call as well. Yes, he had a blast calling his former company and acting like he wanted to buy something. No they didn't catch on!

Invitrogen Head of Sales on How to Sell to Scientists

2010-03-09T06:46:00.000-08:00

How To Sell To Scientists is happy to welcome Mark Walker former Director of Sales at Invitrogen and VP of G&S Discovery to our team.

Mark will be bringing you a lifetime of experience in selling to scientists in every facet of the business from academia to biotech to forensics specialists.

He has supervised large sales teams in the life science sales and helped Invitrogen along their meteoric rise. With G&S Discovery, Mark has incredible knowledge of marketing and selling to researchers and large research organizations. Most recently, he created and developed an online data service (NaviGRANT) that aggregated and presented life science grant information to help companies understand what their research customers are working on and employ more appropriate messaging.

For a first glimpse at what Mark brings to the table please read his recent article about training your sales force on your website.

Welcome to the team Mark!

How to find scientists discussing your company online

2010-03-08T06:58:00.000-08:00

Are you ready to engage scientists online, but need to know where to find them? Do you want to know what scientists are saying about your company/product/service/congress?

In short your livelihood depends on it!

So how to find it?

Besides the obvious Google Search (time-consuming & unproductive) you need to focus your search on websites and applications where scientists are actually communicating.

Lets quickly test two common social media/online outlets by searching for "Santa Cruz Biotechnology" a large antibody supplier for the life sciences.

Twitter - I searched Santa Cruz Biotechnology returned 0, Santa Cruz = 1000s unrelated, and Santa Cruz antibodies = 0. Not very telling, except that Santa Cruz needs a twitter page.

ScienceBlogs.com - I searched Santa Cruz Biotechnology got nothing.

I searched Santa Cruz = Motherload!

Actual quote from a user comments

Positive - "This antibody was from SantaCruz. It has served me well..."

Not so positive.

"Dude- Santa Cruz antibodies are enough to turn an entire f**king carebear teaparty into a republican national convention. "

"Reading this sh*t, I'm now even more frightened than before about what's in that Santa Cruz vial."

"...all antibodies have an element of crapshoot about them, but SC's are crappier, or shootier, than others."

and yikes! "Ah, SantaCrap"

Need I go on?

Dr. BrownDawg

Does Your Sales Team Know How to Use Your Website?

2010-03-07T19:37:00.001-08:00

Let’s see a show of hands for how many companies have trained their sales representatives how to use their own companies’ website recently. C’mon, keep them up. Ok, there are a few but not many. Marketers are focused on developing, testing and tweaking their online presence and performance to satisfy their customers and attract prospective customers. There is no argument there but there might be a missed opportunity.

Your sales force is dealing with customer issues every day in the field and on the phone, answering questions about purchased products and potential product solutions. If your site is your digital face to customers, then the sales force is your eyes and ears and mouths. They need to work together or you run the risk of reproducing a badly dubbed Godzilla movie where the mouth doesn’t match the words.

Sales representatives are valuable and expensive interpreters of customer needs and translators of company offerings. You want them utilizing any tool at their disposal to help make your customers successful and close sales. So why don’t they know how to easily find a product on your website? Do they know how to download a product manual? Can they get a customer to an ordering page?

In sales management, I witnessed the sales force struggling with each of these issues, while in front of the customer. As you can imagine, it does not enhance their competence or your company’s reputation in the customer’s eyes. Stumbling through page clicks with the customer watching over their shoulder can be frustrating and produce comments like, "Why did they change this. Now its confusing?", "I don’t know why they have it this way," or "It's so hard to find things on this site." Ouch.

Instead imagine responses being something like, "Here, let me show you how to find that product on our site, its super easy" or "You will love this new tool we just added that lets you do xxxx." When you solve one researcher’s issue, there is a good chance you have gained an advocate for your site in that lab.

More time for training usually means less field time so its critical to make sure it’s worth it. Can you speed up the sales cycle by helping researchers find your products faster, easily understand how they can solve their problem and how to order them? When your sales team knows how to appropriately utilize the web presence to help them build relationships and close sales, that is a payoff.

Here are some basic tasks your sales team should know.

How To:

Search for a product via partial product name, full name, and catalog number

Search for a list of products related to an area of research (PCR polymerase, RNAi)

Find and download a specific product manual.

Find a product and order it. Set up a test account and have them go through the process.

Use the site’s scientific resources and tools and they can help research customers.

Contact a live resource if they cant answer a customer question.

There are many ways to educate your sales force, whether face-to-face or digitally. The key is to create a way for them to practice these tasks and to monitor their performance. They not only will be more comfortable but you might be able to identify some site navigation issues, without paying for an expensive consultant.

Ideally, your site would be so intuitive that customers and sales force both would be able to find what they needed fast and easy. In the meantime, help your sales force figure out how to leverage your website. Your customers will thank you.

Mark Walker

Putting My Money Where My Mouth Is - Custom Site Search

2010-03-03T08:23:00.000-08:00

Two days ago I wrote about how your website is your face. In the article, I mentioned that you can create a Google Custom Search Engine for free to help your customers find products on your websites.

Today I'm putting my money where my mouth is. The company I called out was Roche, a company who's products I use and respect. So this morning I built them a Custom Search Engine (CSE) to find products on their website. The link is here - Roche Product Engine.

Here's the process

Log In to Google Account
Find and open CSE Creator
Fill out form
Find the product domain URL for Roche products in separate window
Paste URL into CSE window, read format tips, re-format URL to search entire domain roche-applied-science.com/*
Accept Terms and Decide on Standard vs Business Terms (we pay you vs you pay us)
Test Search Engine with product Im looking for this morning -

Search - "LightCycler FastStart DNA MasterPLUS SYBR Green I"

I get 35 or so hits only on Roche's site. Most of the results are in pdfs? That's frustrating! I want to order a product. Maybe that's why I can't find anything on Roche's website!
(Note: that in its exuberance Google will index anything on your site including handwritten Post-it notes on your desktop - kidding)

Ok how to fix that.... easy exclude pdf from the search by telling google to stop. You do this by adding a minus sign (-) infront of any term you want to exclude.

so... Search... LightCycler FastStart DNA MasterPLUS SYBR Green I -pdf

Bam! the first link is exactly the page for the product I want to buy

I encourage you to try it yourself. Click here to try my Roche Product Engine

I will try and make a video of this process later today. There are tons of options for customization, removing the ads, etc. That is another blog....

Bonus Cooking Tip of the Day - Wrap celery in aluminum foil in the fridge and it will keep for months! Who knew!

Your website is your face

2010-03-01T08:47:00.000-08:00

"Your website is terrible, I mean I spent 30 min trying to find a product I know you sell, but couldn't. I ended up buying it from Sigma instead. You guys need to do something about that, seriously!"

This is an exact quote that I overheard at vendor show at the University of California-San Diego last week (I immediately wrote it down.) The lady was visibly upset, but genuinely trying to help. The rep was apologetic and sympathetic and back peddling. He too thought their website sucked and even said he had complained about it repeatedly. Clearly it wasn't the first time he had heard this complaint.

Never forget - Your website is your face! People are more concerned about their face than any part of their body. Its the first thing you see of someone else. You can tell their mood, their hygienic habits, whether they are lying or not. We spend billions on products to make our faces better.

Your website is your company's face. Its the first thing scientists see.

The culprit in the above transction - Roche. I spent a few minutes navigating their site this weekend, and she is right, its a nightmare. Its hard for me to believe that a company as large as Roche can't figure out how to produce a decent website.

In all seriousness, $50-100K likely buys them the best website money can buy.

$25k and its functional.

Google Site Search is free (plus a $100 for a programmer to install it on their website).

Yes that was FREE! Never try to out google Google, why bother you have more important things to do like sell kits and antibodies and $500,000 Mass Spectrometers.

Sales staff - Its time to take action. Complaining will not get you heard in a company as large as Roche, but action will. If your company's website is getting complaints, take action yourself today. Remember money will always get the attention of the bean counters. If you aren't making your numbers point out that online sales and your crappy website are the cause.

Do one of these today -

1. Find a great programmer, find an AB tester, find a user interface expert, find an SEO expert. Solicit their ideas and send a memo to your superiors (with four bullet points). Email me or comment if you need some direction on this. Rehearse these bullet points and have them ready for the chance encounter with someone in your company that can make the change.

2. Solicit letters from your best customers (not PIs, they dont buy your product remember). Send them to your boss or post them by the water cooler late at night if you are scared to be seen. If your company won't read them, send them to me and I will post them here anonymously for you. The internet gets the word out faster than you can imagine.

Take action and become indispensable! Your job depends on it.

(yes, I know I took indispensable from Seth Godin)

My new motivator

2010-02-26T09:11:00.000-08:00

I have a new sign on the wall behind my computer that says

Am I inventing things to do to avoid the important?

Can't believe how much it helps. Print one for yourself!

All credit to 'The 4 hour Work Week' by Tim Ferris for the above quote and the important concept behind it.

Scientists are immune to advertising

2010-02-25T08:04:00.000-08:00

Question everything, trust no one is the rule scientists live by.

Scientists by nature are the most skeptical people on the planet. Its our job to be that way!

How does this affect you? Check this out.

I recently asked a group of academic scientists on simple question.

"What information do you rely on to make a purchasing decision on reagents, equipment, consumables, etc?"

Here is a summary of the results (I distilled the responses to these simple methods)

94% - Word of mouth (labmates, PIs, collaborators, blogs, forums, etc)

76% - Materials and Methods or publication data

53% - Free sample or in lab trial for equipment

29% - Information on company websites

05% - Advertising in magazines, email, online, and at conferences

These numbers pretty much mirror the results of a recent study for all advertising shown pictorially in Marta Kagan's brilliant two-part slideshow called What the F**K is Social Media? You can watch both slideshows by following this link. Summary - 78% trust peers 14% trust advertising

Of the top two results, the first one (Word of Mouth) you can do some thing about; the second takes good products (i.e., not marketing or selling)

So what can you do to spread your product information by word of mouth positively?

Pick a cause that Scientists Champion and loudly publicly support it.

Example - Lobby Congress to spend more on Research

Another possibility - Open Source Publication

Scientists will begin to associate your company with positive action in their best interest not some evil creature bent on bending them over for a buck.

Generating leads at a scientific conference

2010-02-24T08:30:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine recently complained that her company was upset with her because she didn't generate enough leads at a major scientific conference held here in San Diego. Her company had spent "10s of thousands of dollars" for a large booth display, print materials, and travel expenses. She's pretty outgoing and is an experienced saleswoman, so I don't believe it was she was shy or not good at her job.

So why the lack of leads?

Do scientists at the meeting not need her products?

Was her rival giving away more ipods? Better gift bags?

In short her answer was no, as far as she knew their house was in order.

So, I asked what she did at the conference. The displays were setup along side the scientific poster presentations as usual and she talked with scientists that walked by or into the booth just like all the other sales staff for hundreds of other companies. RED FLAG!

Scientists for the most part are extremely shy and guarded. Sure there are outgoing ones that stand out in your mind, who ask questions and engage salespeople. Those are the ones that know what they want! Its the shy ones, the scientists at their first conference, nervous about presenting their work, speaking in English, speaking intelligently, worried about finding a postdoc position, or THEIR BROKEN EXPERIMENTS that you want to engage.

The question is how? They are not the type to waltz into your booth or come to your cocktail hour (if so they are the one in corner sipping a coke).

My answer as always is HELP THEM! Seek them out, leave the friendly confines of your booth and you will start to see them all over the conference. Many of them came to the conference alone from all over the globe. They need you and you need them.

I'll save my actual suggestions for my friend for another day, she's trying them out at her next big conference.

Life Science Spam is Out of Control- Please Stop!

2010-02-23T07:26:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I returned to work from vacation and like everybody else in the world the first thing I did was check my email. 228 new emails! Man, I'm popular!

Here's the breakdown

3 "real" emails - the relevant stuff that drives my science

24 - University or Department emails (minor spam)

17 - ScientistSolutions.com posts/replies to answer

39 - random spam (Dear Sir. Im from insert African country...)

145 - Scientific Product Spam emails

That is absolutely out of control. There were six from one company all advertising different products. I felt like Tom Cruise in Minority Report when he's running through the mall, "Do you need a new Western blot apparatus John Anderton?"

Regardless, this cannot be the best way to reach scientists to tell them about your products. In fact it was infuriating!

I'm considering making a list of the rampant spammers and posting a daily count. You are wasting my time and taxpayers dollars as I spend time deleting them. I can only imagine every scientist at every university is getting the same spam.

Some of these companies make billions and have enormous marketing budgets, I know you smart enough to do better than random spam. The whole world of Social Media is out there for Science Companies to take advantage to spread the word about your products. If you are looking for a Life Science Social Media Primer, read Mary Canady's blog on BioMarketing at Comprendia.com.

Myth #2 - The PI buys your product

2010-02-05T09:29:00.000-08:00

Postdocs, grad students, and technicians use your products not the PI. This is true whether you sell $400 antibodies or $300,000 microscopes. The PI might pay for it and approve it, but the end users will ultimately get you the sale.

Earlier I wrote about the myth of the lab manager, today I will attempt to dispel the myth of the PI.

Let me give a you a real life example from my lab that happened recently. We have an extremely talented post-doc Ding Xu that realized we desperately needed a new HPLC to add some critical newly published techniques in our field. HPLCs are not cheap and would probably qualify as a capital purchase for most labs. At the very least they would garner their own line item in a RO1 grant. Ding talked about HPLCs incessantly at lab meeting and cornered our PI often to discuss. He researched HPLCs, contacted companies to bring in demos, and showed the lab and our PI how powerful these new techniques could be.

We ultimately purchased a new HPLC from Biorad, which our PI signed off on, but it was Ding that made the sale for the rep. The post-doc that actually used the product.

Thus the myth of the PI buying products. In very few incidences will the PI be the linchpin that gets you the sale even for capital products. Convince the postdocs, grad students, and technicians and you win.

Gaining the trust of scientists - Your Job Description is an Entry Point

2010-02-03T07:31:00.000-08:00

Do you like your job Mr. Antibody Sales Guy that just rolled by my bench with your 2 for 1 fliers and doughnuts? Did you know that just sharing that job information might be enough to get you a sale?

A constant theme of this blog is that you the salesperson needs to lend a helping hand to your customers the scientists. By doing so, you will become a trusted advisor and are much more likely to get sales.

Laboratory scientists are struggling with larger questions than why their PCR reaction isn't working such as "what am I doing this for?", "is research worth it?", and importantly "what am I going to do when I leave the hallowed halls of academia?"

For the person in life science sales this is an entry point to gain the trust of a scientist. On several occasions I have asked sales people passing through the lab how they got their jobs. I'm especially interested in those that were former bench scientists. On occasion I hear great stories from individuals that clearly love their job in sales. Most of the time though my question put them on the defensive and, they begin to back peddle and try to find the lab manager. (I believe this stems from the massive peer pressure that PIs put on their underlings to follow in their footsteps, which causes those that do leave academia to feel of less worth.)

What they didn't realize was that I was crying out for help! I am leaving academia. I don't know what I want to do. I want to know if selling antibodies to scientists is a good job.

Now you're asking, "Rusty, how in the world does describing my job to a scientist get me more sales?"

My answer is become the trusted advisor. That is your opportunity to get to know your potential client in an extremely intimate way. If you can do that, they will lead you to the decision makers, they will suggest your company's products to their peers when a need arises, and they will say good things about your brand to other scientists. All those things equal more sales.

Here's today's challenge - Come up with a 30 second elevator pitch to get a scientist talking to you about your job. Practice it in the mirror, run it by some scientists in your company, and then try it out on some random scientists. I bet it works like a charm.

Im going back to my Western blot for the third time this week. Wish I had some quality antibodies!

Why Life Technologies is Sponsoring the Olympics on San Diego Television

2010-02-01T17:51:00.000-08:00

A few days back I wrote about seeing a Life Technologies advertisement on television for sponsoring local coverage of the Olympics here in San Diego. After some digging today, I think I guessed the why of it.

Turns out that the Vancouver Winter Olympics will be aired while the AAAS Annual Meeting is held this year in San Diego! Wow that is some kinda marketing forethought! Thousands of scientists converging on this city from all over the world anxious to flip on the tele to catch the Olympics seeing Life Technologies Ads! Now that is branding to the max. Take that Thermo-Fisher.

And you thought you knew how to sell to scientists!

I wonder if they will roll out the models again.

Life Technologies commericals on television!

2010-01-29T17:52:00.000-08:00

I was flipping channels last night and stopped on an advertisement on NBC for the Olympics. I was shocked to see that Life Technologies, Inc was the local sponsor. Right there on television a science ad! Life Technologies Marketing machine is full swing these days with models at ASCB and television.

My guestimate is there are 3-8000 life scientists living here in San Diego. How in the world can television ads targeted to that few people in a city of 3 million, on one channel no less, be effective? I guess it could be a ploy to attract investment dollars since it is a publically traded company, but I cant see how this campaign is going to sell cDNA kits.

Love to hear what you think about science ads on t.v. Let me know if you see more in your town too please.

Competition in Life Science Sales

2010-01-25T07:29:00.000-08:00

There are 17 life science suppliers that manufacture Taq Polymerase with another 10 or so that wholesale it. The prices range from a few cents to dollars per reaction. My question to you is which company is getting my business?

At the moment my lab buys Taq from Qiagen. It is by far not the most economical (we could make our own for pennies), so why do we buy it. I asked around the lab last week as well as emailed a few old lab members. Turns out we have been buying Qiagen Taq for over 12 years in a row, because 12 years ago a post-doc tested against "several" other companies enzymes. Qiagen Taq worked the best in our genotyping assay, so we have used it unquestioningly for the last 12 years. Amazing, we call our selves scientists!

So I suspect that's what you are up against, when you are trying to make and sell a better taq or anything else that has been in use for decades. Faster Western blot? Wonder why that thing is so hard to sell?

Leads are walking by your booth by the hundreds - grab them!

2010-01-05T08:41:00.000-08:00

I went to a "vendor show" at my University recently put on by Scientists Solutions Events. This company puts on small 10-12 vendor lunch meetings at Universities and Pharmaceutical companies, where vendors show their wares to scientists right on campus. Since I am indirectly involved with this company, I wanted to see how the vendors themselves interact with scientists and see how this compared with my experience at the ASCB meeting a month back.

For the most part the sales staff of these vendors were friendly and responsive to my queries. Most were more than happy to give me the details of their newest product lines. I was surprised at how much prodding it took to get answers from some and, I got the feeling that others were more interested in getting my contact info for later. I was right there obviously engaged, the perfect time to get to know me and my story. And to be truthful some tried, but most seemed taken aback that I was interested in them and their story.

Admittedly, many of the "scientists" at these events are there looking for a meal and an ipod, but the decision makers are usually right back in the labs they are going back to later. Here's how you can plant a seed with the 'lower downs'.

Engage them with a joke or quick funny story. Then ask them, "Is anyone in your lab struggling with (techniques, kits, finding the right antibody)?". If they say yes, give them a card and WRITE your number on it, even if its already on there. Tell them to pass your contact info on to the right person, or better yet get the scientist's name, or better yet ask if they will introduce you later that day. That is a hot lead. That is a struggling scientist that will buy your product, because they need your help.

You see all labs have lab meetings every week, where scientists get up, present their experiments, and discuss all the problems they are having. Every scientists from technician to PI that walked by your booth knows 10 scientists that are struggling with an experiment, because of these lab meetings.

Use this knowledge to your advantage! Write down and practice 10 questions to ask scientists that will lead to you to the decision maker that is struggling with an experiment. Feel free to post your potential questions as comments below.

Learn More About a Scientist Today.

2010-01-04T09:36:00.000-08:00

Its a new year. We all made those resolutions we won't keep. We all got fat over the holidays. I'm challenging you to do something today that will make you better at your job selling to scientists.

Go take a bench scientist out for coffee. Don't say one word about your product. Just get to know how he or she operates in the lab.

Do it!

Update on crappy graphs

2009-12-29T07:54:00.001-08:00

Seth Godin, one of my favorite writers, essentially echoed my post from a few days back about crappy graphs in marketing material.

Check it out! Click Here

Its seems bad graphs are everywhere! Please dont use them, tell your marketing team they make you look bad too.

Holiday Short Blog

Search Engines on Life Science Websites

2009-12-23T09:03:00.000-08:00

For the past 6 months, I have been building my new website gatcat.com. During that process, I have surfed and analyzed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Life Science Vendors' websites looking for product information. Some are great, but the sad truth is most are ridiculously bad. As a part of this column, I plan to review some specific sites on a regular basis and to try and offer some suggestions for those looking to improve things.

For this article, I want to focus on your internal search engine. The internal search engine is a critical tool for your company and you as a sales person. Why? Because when you get a scientist to your website, you want them to easily find the right product for the right experiment. The one you just worked so hard to tell them a story about.

Its such a simple tool. You might get a minute or less of our attention span at a conference or in the lab. If you can say, "We have a great deal going on this kit, just go to our website and type this in the search box." Then you have a good chance that a week or month later, I might do so.

It must work though! It must return exactly the results needed to go to the product page or sale information.

So I challenge you, stop reading this article and go to your companies' website. Search for 5 products you sell, not the exact product name of course. Search like a customer, the way you do on Amazon.com or other product websites. Better still, ask a colleague or your significant other to perform the same search.

Are the returned results correct? Is it easy to figure out what is returned? Is there way to much clutter to easily see where to click through to the product?

If not, change it. You are losing business. The vast majority of sites have searched fail this test.

Happy Holidays

Holiday Offers from Life Science Companies

2009-12-22T06:33:00.000-08:00

Yesterday a rep came through the lab from a rather large antibody company. I was pretty surprised since campus was closed and, the lab was a ghost town (its Christmas Week after all). We chatted for a bit about this and that, which was good start. Friendly, good story about working through the holidays when he was in the lab. I'm engaged.

The deal his company is running is a 4 for the price of 3 on antibodies from now until the New Year. I almost laughed in his face. Seriously? What marketing person drew that idea up. As far as I know, I have never bought 4 antibodies at one time. I seriously doubt many life scientists have. In fact, after he left, I looked through our online ordering system and only once in our lab's history has anyone ordered 4 antibodies at one time. ONCE.

Opportunity lost. Know your customer. Sure there are some labs that do a lot of FACS and IFA that might buy multiple antibodies at once. The vast majority of us buy 3-4 a year.

Scientists believe they are changing the world. Are you listening?

2009-12-17T08:36:00.000-08:00

At one of my talks recently, the head of marketing for a major Life Science Company asked me in the most serious of tones, "What do scientists do for fun?" I've gotten similar questions in the past, so it is clear to me that you might not know.

Scientists are like everyone else. Despite what the movies tell you, we are normal people with normal lives. We play soccer, drink beer, take the kids on vacation, and play fantasy football. I play in rock band and my best lab mate is married to an actress. We are just like you.....

...the only difference is there is no one in our lives that can or wants to understand what we do for a living.

This includes for the most part our colleagues and co-workers and you Mr. Rep.

Neither my mom or my wife could tell you one thing I have researched and why it is important. It could be that they don't love me, but I doubt it. What we work on is really difficult to understand. Each scientist even the first year graduate student or technician is arguably the world expert in their tiny realm. The ideas we struggle with are too elusive to even make a textbook.

You can exploit this to sell me products. We want to believe you care. If you can show us you do, we will buy your products and tell our friends how great it is.

We are buying you, not your kit.

PRINT IS DEAD!

2009-12-16T09:16:00.000-08:00

No reason to belabor the point. Take a walk through any lab in world and find me 5 scientists that have read an article directly from the pages of a bound Scientific Journal in the last week, month, year, or ever for that matter.

There is now way your cost per lead from a print ad can justify what you spent, but the model you hired to be in it sure looks fine. It is your hard earned marketing dollars that are lining their pockets to print journals that sit on shelves in libraries unvisited by scientists.

Scientists do read a lot of journal articles, though. I can't argue that point. I read thousands of them myself after I downloaded the pdfs from Journal's websites.

I know you don't want to believe me... you just know I'm wrong... but admit it to yourself... you know I'm right.

Repeat after me - PRINT IS DEAD!

Female Models Selling Flow Cytometers - I Love America!

2009-12-14T08:33:00.001-08:00

Thanks Applied Biosyst... errr, Invitrog.....uhhhh.....Life Technologies! You provided the funniest moment of ASCB 2009.

For those that did attend this year's ASCB in San Diego and those that didn't make it into the exhibit all on Sunday, Applied Biosystems debuted its new acoustic flow cytometer, the Attune Acoustic Focusing Cytometer. I suppose this is a major break through in the world of flow cytometery. You can learn more about it here. Or you can read all the "press releases" about it on sites like Genome Web. I have no idea whether it is a break through or not. The best part about the whole thing was the "intrigue" in their booth on Sunday.

Let me paint the scene for you...... In the far back corner of the Exhibit Hall, there was a gigantic LED TV screen like you might see in Vegas or in Times Square with words like CHAOS and ORDER flowing across it. This thing is probably two stories tall and 20 yards wide. The booth is filled with exactly nothing except 5 white leather stools and long white satin drapes hanging from the ceiling. The real eye popper was the troop of absolutely BEAUTIFUL people in white shirts and pants. Now, I've been to a few science conferences in my day and, I'm here to tell you these were not the usual reps and scientists. Models in no uncertain terms were in the house.

Of course, they got me, along with every other guy in the building. When I entered the club... errr booth, I met two lovely blond women bearing name tags that listed To Be Determined as the company. Ok now Im hooked. So I asked one of the models what they were selling, she replied she couldn't tell me and then asked me if I wanted to join them for a reception with free cocktails and food to hear about their product. I heard, "Do you wanna have a drink with me?" Of course! Sign me up!

With that I got a R.S.V.P. to their party at the Hilton next door and they got my "email".

The party turned out to be a full on press release for the cytometer including a latin band, camera crews, Life Technologies logo flashing across the wall, sushi, liquor bar, and of course one lonely flow cytometer sitting on stage surrounded by Invitrog... Life Technologies folks all cooing to one another. I felt like Steve Jobs had just introduced the iphone. However, not one person even asked who I was or whether I was interested in a flow cytometer. At least the models were still around to look at. Oh yeah I did meet a few scientists that were completely baffled by the whole affair, yet appreciate of the free drinks none the less. One was a physicist that was extremely curious about what exactly flow even is!

Thank you Life Technologies for the booze, sushi, and models. Good luck with the flow cytometer!

Please no crappy graphs!

2009-12-11T06:52:00.000-08:00

Almost every piece of product literature I picked up at the American Society for Cell Biology Meeting this year has a graph on it. Inevitably, the graph shows how much better the product performed against "random competitor A and B's" product. Not one of them has error bars.

Hello, in case you didn't notice? I'm a scientist. Every graph in every science paper has error bars because that means the scientists performed the experiment enough times to achieve statistical significance.

Life Science Marketers - you are selling products to scientists, go down to the basement where they are building new products and ask them why they buy the product vs. your competition.

Answers may include

1. My buddy in another lab/company told me it works great.

2. I saw it in a manuscript that other scientists were successfully using the product for my...experiment, cell line, organism, technique, gene, etc.

3. I talked with a scientist at a meeting/seminar about the product and they said it worked.

I seriously doubt the graph with no error bars will make the list.

Myth #1 - The Lab Manager

2009-12-10T06:58:00.000-08:00

Note: this article is intended for those selling lab consumables to life scientists; I'll get to capital equipment another day

At many of my talks to Life Science Marketers, I have tried to dispel the myth of the lab manager. It goes something like this....

You (the rep) walk into the lab and ask, "What lab is this?" The scientists all look up and tell you the lab name, but few look you in the eye. You then ask for the "lab manager". Sometimes you were even clever enough to figure out the lab manager's name beforehand. Every scientist in the lab breathes a sigh of relief, points you to the lab manager, or the lab manager's desk/office, or sometimes an empty desk that last quarter's rotation student vacated for greener pastures. You then leave some fliers/literature/catalog/candy, or you talk with the lab manager and ask dumb questions (At the bottom, you can read my list of dumb questions to ask life scientists). Then you move on to the next lab glad to be out of there without getting radioactivity all over your shoes. Heck, perhaps even you make a sale or two.

Here's the opportunity you missed. Those scientists that tried so hard to ignore you, they are the ones that use your products as well as your competitors' products. They are struggling to isolate proteins, clone genes, create knockout mice, silence genes, get Western blots to work, etc. Many of them are quite desperate for a better kit, a better probe, or just some help. Here's the strange thing, most of them see your products as a necessary evil, not a shining light. That makes you an even less desirable person to talk with.

Most important - The postdocs, grad students, and technicians use your products therefore they buy your products either directly with a credit card or indirectly through the lab manager. Never forget that!

What should you do? Simple, talk to the scientists. Give them value, give them help, give them free kits, take them out for beer! Gain their trust and they will buy your products.

Furthermore, at least in the US, many of the scientists you see in the labs are not native English speakers. Imagine what it would feel like to be working in a foreign country and have someone you have never seen in different clothes (tie, business suit) walk into the lab and start asking you questions. Hint - Learn a little Chinese

Rusty's list of dumb questions to ask life scientists (and lab managers) and why they are dumb

1. Does your lab do...? (cell culture,cloning, pcr, mouse work, pipeting, western blotting)
Here's a clue modern life science laboratories do every conceivable type of experiment all the time. Just because, we are located in a Biochemistry Department doesn't mean we only do Biochemistry. Furthermore, the lab manager has no clue that Bob the Post-Doc is planning on isolating a new protein in a week or that Cindy the graduate student can't get her Western blots working.

2. Where do you buy your...? The answer tells you nothing. Either we buy it from your company or the competition. 85 percent of the time, we just use whatever someone else in the lab bought 3 years ago.

3. How much are you paying...? Since the lab manager or scientist you are talking with likely didn't purchase 85% of the consumables in the lab, they don't have a clue. Furthermore, no scientist except the PI cares about a 10% savings on a kit. They just want it to work, give consistent results, and for the guy in the bench next to them to stop taking the last widget and not order more.

Welcome to How to Sell to Scientists

2009-12-09T09:31:00.000-08:00

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.