Carlton Hoyt
I’ve heard our “sub-industry” called many things. So many, in fact, that it seems quite obvious that there isn’t a consensus. I think it’s time to end all that.
What should the industry that manufactures and sells products for use in life science research be called?
Carlton Hoyt
What was once “out-of-the-box” is no longer out of the box. As time goes on and progress is made, your company must continuously progress in order to remain competitive. In essence, those companies that can enact positive change faster than the rest will, over time, become more successful, and a key component of positive change is innovation. Knowing how to change and fostering innovation are complex and abstract challenges, and many biotechnology companies have difficulty dealing with them. The challenge of driving innovation, which I will discuss in this post, can be tackled with some creative thinking and by fostering a suitable environment.
Before I get into the “how”, I’d like to offer another important piece of advice. Innovation in many companies is something that is performed reactively. Most companies, especially those beyond the start-up phase, innovate in response to a pressing business need. Innovating in this manner will allow your company to adapt, but rarely will it allow you to excel. In order to start being a leader in your field, you need to innovate proactively. Make it a point to account for innovation in your company’s goals and strategy to help ensure innovation stays proactive.
Innovation more frequently occurs at interfaces where different ideas and perspectives come together, so encourage that within your company. Do your engineers and scientists not frequently talk? Make sure they have an opportunity to get together and talk about product development and your current products and technologies. Mix in personnel from marketing, sales, and support as well since these are the people who communicate most with customers and will be most in tune to their needs. It isn’t enough to just have them generate ideas, however – there needs to be an avenue for these ideas to be vetted and potentially obtain buy-in from the appropriate people in management. Make sure that avenue exists and is communicated to your employees so you can allow innovation to come from all areas within your company. It is also worth noting that a Gallup study found that the most engaged employees are the most likely to be driving innovation, so if you are thinking of creating focus groups or using other inclusive techniques to foster innovation, you may want to select the most engaged employees.
Innovation can come from outside your company as well. Another great benefit to having broad connections with customers (which can be fostered via customer relationship management, social media marketing, directly, etc.) is leveraging them for ideas on how to improve your products. While your customers will be unlikely to drop the next great technological breakthrough in your lap, they are often very happy to tell you what they need. If you have a particular problem that you need solved, you can use “challenges” with high-value prizes to get ideas. Such challenges themselves, however, require a solid marketing effort to ensure that they are well received and that your company gets a good enough response to make it likely that at least one submission will meet your needs. Alternatively, you can leverage existing platforms that post innovation challenges such as Nature and InnoCentive’s Open Innovation Pavilion.
All companies must change and innovate to grow and stay competitive, and the ability to successfully innovate is of immense value to life science corporations. While harnessing the power of something as abstract as innovation can be difficult, building goals, strategies and tasks with innovation in mind can being the process more within reach and under control. Once your company starts reliably driving innovation, you can proactively change to become a leader in your field.
Carlton Hoyt
A lot of small life science companies, including those manufacturing products or offering services but especially small distributors, are unsatisfied by their penetration of the pharma / biotech markets. While academic labs are often quite open and accessible, access to labs in industry is extremely restricted. Because of this, it is very important to have an engagement strategy and make good use of your “ins” if you plan on increasing your sales to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology research markets. The best plan for your company will differ based on your company’s positioning, but I’ll quickly go over a few general strategies including some which are useful for all companies.
If you manufacture a research tool and do not have an outside sales force, you will likely be selling to industry via a distributor, at least in part. The easiest way to obtain better market penetration in pharma / biotech is to work with a distributor who has strong sales in those sectors (of course, the same guidelines should apply for selecting any distributor). Trying to sell directly to pharma in this circumstance would effectively be akin to reinventing the wheel. Don’t know what distributors have good penetration in those segments? Ask them. If they are interested in distributing your product, they’ll want to make themselves look good and will likely offer a reasonable metric from which you can gauge their pharma / biotech market penetration.
If you are selling to pharma / biotech companies directly, you likely either offer a high-value, high-complexity product or service or you are a distribution company. The precise strategies for the two would be different, but on the more generalized level appropriate for this discussion they appear quite similar. In either situation, perhaps the best way to get an “in” is to hire a sales representative with contacts to researchers, lab managers, or purchasing managers in industry. In this manner, you can utilize (and perhaps internalize) the rolodex of your new reps who have more extensive industry contacts.
Regardless of your company’s positioning, your sales to industry can benefit from good CRM practices and fully leveraging high-quality lead generation techniques. Draw potential customers in pharma and biotech to your product through advertisements, search engine optimization, and / or face-to-face at conferences and capture their information through requests for more information about your products, demonstration requests, special offers, etc. Once you have the information, you have your “in”. When industry prospects are converted to customers, manage these high-value relationships to allow you to maintain your access to their research facilities.
Many pharma and biotech companies purchase through procurement agencies such as VWR or Fisher. Be sure to maintain a good relationship with these companies. While they have been known to ask for something in exchange for nothing, they also try to steer the purchasing decisions of scientists to products which offer profits for Fisher and value for the customer. It’s not always possible, but getting your products a preferred status within their purchasing departments can be a significant boon to sales.
Pharma and biotech companies are notoriously difficult for salespeople to gain access to and marketing and selling to their scientists can be difficult. If you would like to improve your access to these markets, be sure to execute a plan which allows you to both create and capitalize on opportunities to get an “in” within biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.
BioBM Consulting is pleased to announce the launch of its new “Inventor Services” division, offering commercialization services to life science inventors and others who wish to commercialize intellectual property with a life science research focus. Celebrating the latest in BioBM’s expanding and innovative service offerings, BioBM Principal Consultant Carlton Hoyt gave the following statement:
