I find myself talking with all manner of different customers these days, ranging from small early-revenue innovators, to mid-sized business acquirers working in their home markets and expanding overseas.  Irrespective of the context, the challenge is always the same: sales are low and inconsistent, and financial targets are being missed.  The root cause is also typically the same. They are suffering from undifferentiated claims because they are not heeding what we now know about effective B2B sales, marketing, and branding.

What do we now know about effective B2B commercialization?

• Ways in which prospective customers buy Life Science services or products

• The characteristics of high-performance sales representatives

• Marketing groups can develop much more effective in-bound traffic

• There are more new technologies, new combinations and new geographic markets

• Technology companies can show us how to execute a customer alignment strategy (see here)

Insight to buyer behavior, successful B2B sales, and in-bound marketing are described more thoroughly here.

What constitutes effective Life Sciences Commercialization?

I propose a platform with three parts:

1. Align your company with your best customers

The principle of customer alignment is based on the premise that success lies more in creating a service that a small number of users love, rather than a service that a large number merely approve of.  Success isn’t created out of thin air, it is developed and fine-tuned with input from our best customers.  From a base of loyal customers who love the service, we expand and scale-up into our chosen market.  In this regard, in order to inform and change minds, sales and marketing work alongside operations to shape and fine-tune operational output, objective marketing content, and sales conversations.  Customer alignment is an actively managed process that requires the most effort, but is the most rewarding once achieved.  An overview can be found here.

Finding and delivering on market fit may require that we reconsider our view of sales.  High-performance selling involves a rich two-way customer dialog that allows us initially to learn from valuable customers, and then scale to deliver a well-understood market-fit.  Sales, therefore, is not as simple as telling people what you already have and hoping that they’ll buy enough to meet your budget.  Progress can be followed in real-time, just as we do with operational KPIs, using indicators such as sales yield, repeat business rate, and production of objective marketing content.

Start-up companies are obvious beneficiaries of customer alignment.  Selling initially contains a large element of learning and progresses over time to scaling on the basis of what has been learned from important customers. .  The founder or an executive will initially explain to prospective customers what is on offer, use feedback to adjust operational output, and think about future sales and marketing efforts.  Thereafter, the founder/executive will be joined by a limited number of sales professionals who are equally adept at explaining the service in detail and working internally to make improvements.  With time and experience, the sales team will mature and work with both operations in order to fine-tune their output, and with marketing to deliver objective, content-rich information to prospective buyers.  Ultimately, the sales team will consist mostly of territory-based representatives promoting a tried-and-tested value proposition with optimized technical support and communications collateral in order to drive sales growth.  Properly executed, customer alignment avoids the classic and costly mistake of expanding a sales team too quickly.

Alignment with their best customers does not apply only to startups.  Finding market and customer fit is so important that the same process should be applied by larger companies to new product launches, geographic expansion, and promotion of new services post-acquisition.  Subsequent applications of the process are likely to be more efficient and take less time.

The role of marketing is changing too.  Traditionally dominated by out-bound content, successful contemporary marketing groups are now creating objective, content-rich information to engage prospective customers as they consider their options.  These materials may be web-based or used by highly knowledgeable sales representatives as they support the buying process. 

Proper alignment results in a Life Science company that deeply understands its customers and delivers on their needs.Such a company grows from repeat business and from rapid acquisition of new customers.This company is, therefore, by definition, differentiated in the market.

2. Branding

I struggled for many years with the concept of branding in Life Sciences.  In retrospect, I think I was confused because marketing and branding were often conflated, and because the concept was surrounded by so much gobbledygook that I found impenetrable.

A Life Science company brand is essentially an expression of who and what they are and what they represent.  That includes functional and emotional elements that can be expressed both visually and verbally in order to convey how the company feels about itself, and how it wants others to perceive it.

Brand creation can be easily understood and approached via a five-step process that is a mixture of logical exercises and creative expression.  The steps in the process are:

1. Understand – thorough research to understand the company, its customers and competitors

2. Define – establish what the brand will represent, its core idea, and write a creative brief

3. Create – interpret strategy, develop tone of voice and resonant look/feel with compelling design

4. Implement – design all customer touchpoints to express the new brand

5. Monitor – review and audit for relevance, consistency, and effectiveness

Steps one and two use methods that are familiar to most Life Science executives.  These steps benefit greatly from intelligence gathered during customer alignment (above and here), from internal company conversations, and from select customers, investors, etc.  Step three is arguably the most challenging; this is where creative professionals interpret the output from our research, and transform it into visual and spoken language that will resonate with customers.  Creative professionals will frequently go backwards and forwards with company Executives to get things right.  Stage four, implementation, gets easier again as creative output is applied to elements of the company’s outbound and inbound marketing efforts, as well as to the sales team.  Finally, the brand is monitored over time to ensure that it is well understood, effective and relevant.

3. Investor Communication

Investor communication is best viewed as an ongoing effort synchronized with customer alignment and branding.  To be clear, I am not referring only to creating a deck and pitch for start-up or scale-up funding, although they are important parts of the whole.  I am describing a way to confer a sense of excitement and commitment, and to communicate clearly and effectively as part of a unified approach with our investors in several situations.

At its most basic level, good investor communication recognizes the need for different subject-matter experts to communicate across a range of subjects in science, engineering, finance and marketing.  No-surprise management often comes down to aligning with investors around a common view of the company and its environment.  Specifically, these may include market fit, value proposition, differentiation in target markets, progress-to-plan, expansion opportunities, and future exit potential.  Finally, as opportunities present themselves, effective ongoing investor communication enables a fast reaction time to expansion, acquisition, and exit opportunities as they arise.

Finally – Commercialize your ideas as methodically as you do everything else

Customer alignment and market fit are the most important things that a company can achieve commercially.  Sales and marketing can build on a platform of customers who love what the company does and can help to scale into the chosen market.  Conversely, bolt-on sales and marketing will likely spend money you do not have, and fail to boost your top-line if you have skipped the essential early alignment.

I have tried to describe important principles as they apply to customer alignment, branding and investor communications.  Every company is different, and those principles need to be applied differently either between companies, or within as time progresses.  Companies can build long-term, proactive strategies based on the principles discussed above.  It’s best to avoid the temptation to chase the great-new-thing, and focus instead on understanding how important principles can be applied in their attempts to understand and communicate with their customers.

Mike Butler, Ph.D.
Founder and CEO, Unit Life Sciences.