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This week, we discuss "Sales Friction - Are You Making It Too Hard for Customers to Buy?"
Many biotech companies unwittingly through up obstacles that make it harder for new customers to buy from them.
Can a new customer clearly understand what you offer from the header of your homepage? Saying that you "Empower Researchers" is a poor substitute for simply saying that you sell antibodies and ELISA kits.
Can you be easily reached? Many websites have NO contact information on their homepage and the customer has to scrounge around the website looking for it.
Do you hide your prices? Or force new customers to answer endless "qualifying questions" before they're permitted to talk to a sales rep? ALL these practices (and many others) will drive away new customers and ultimately make it harder to grow your customer base and your revenue. -
Sales Pipeline Velocity is probably the most important business metric you're not using! Sales Velocity tracks the overall effectiveness of your entire sales and marketing effort in terms of the flow of recognized revenue per unit of time (per week, per month, per Quarter). It can be used to predict future revenue flows based on past performance and your current sales opportunities as well as track actual historical performance.
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Price discounting tends to be an overly used tactic with both salespeople and in marketing campaigns. In general, discounting doesn't draw in more regular customers and almost never increases profits. Discounting has its place but should be used carefully and strategically. In this episode, we talk about why discounting can be problematic when it should be used and how to deploy it best.
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Conferences and trade shows are among the most expensive sales and marketing activities a company can engage in, with many companies seeing a poor return on their efforts. We talk about the biggest do's and don'ts when doing a trade show, specifically focusing on optimizing your marketing efforts. How do you run pre-show campaigns? What are the key considerations in booth design? What about all that Swag? Previously, in Part I (Episode 2), we looked at how to optimize trade shows from a sales perspective.
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What separates successful biotech companies from those struggling to achieve predictable revenue traction? The key is shifting from a product-focused approach to a customer-focused approach.
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Conferences and trade shows are among the most expensive sales and marketing activities a company can engage in, with many companies seeing a poor return on their efforts. We talk about the biggest do's and don'ts when doing a trade show, specifically focusing on optimizing the sales efforts. In Part II, we look at how to optimize trade shows from a marketing perspective.
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This week, we discuss "Predicting Customer Orders" Last week, we talked about customer churn; this week's topic is closely related. Can you predict when a given customer should be ready to order? Conversely, can you predict if it's been too long and they've left and are buying from someone else? This is valuable for both forecasting revenue month by month and for directing sales reps to call on customers at risk of having churned.
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Customer churn is an issue for all companies in the biotech space, especially if you sell a product that is re-purchased at a high frequency. Customers always have other options, and often they switch suppliers. We will talk about how churn works and what, if anything, you can do about it.
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A crucial part of financial planning is establishing revenue targets and a sales bonus plan for the coming year. To attract good salespeople, you need a clear and understandable bonus and compensation plan. Companies tend to make a number of mistakes in designing sales compensation plans, including:
• Too complicated
• Targets that are not revenue-related
• The ratio of Bonus to Base salary is too high
• Unpredictable payouts
• Too many carve-outs
• Creating incentives for time-shifting deal closes -
A significant failure point for early-stage biotechs is not fully understanding their market and what motivates their customers to buy. A "Customer Panel" is a selected group (10-15 individuals) representing potential future customers for periodic one-on-one interviews. The process is simple and not expensive. If you have a MailChimp and SurveyMonkey account and know how to do a Zoom call, you have everything needed to get started. We'll discuss the step-by-step process for making this happen!
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Much of the success or failure of a new product is determined by what happens in the six months BEFORE the launch through the six months after launch. Far too often, we see products launched to crickets...and 1-2 years later, the company is still struggling to get traction and revenue acceleration. By following a few simple practices, a company can significantly reduce its risks around product launches.
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Having an outside Sales Rep represent your products offers many advantages. An independent rep will already have established relationships with labs and can rapidly introduce your product to new buyers. It can give you more rapid access to markets, expertise in local markets, and provide flexibility in future commercial plans.
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Most biotechs, especially earlier-stage startups, worry obsessively about how good their product is or what the competition is doing. But seldom are those the things holding you back! Your biggest issue is that almost all of your potential buyers have no idea that you even exist and no clear idea of what you're offering. With a new product launch, it typically takes 12-18 months of intensive marketing before most people will even recognize your name and even longer to fully educate the market on why they should care.
