Perception is Reality

Keep it Real - Really

We are far from the first or only ones to warn against marketing messaging packed with empty words drained of meaning (see Eric Karjaluoto).  The marketing promises for “better” this or “faster” that are becoming all but invisible to the customer because they are like so many grains of sand on the beach, too difficult to tell apart.  

It seems to come down to a problem of credibility – does your customer believe and trust your marketing message?   The answer depends on whether they know you (your product or company) well enough to believe they have a real relationship with you (your product or your company).  Seth Godin nails it here when asked about the related topic of the value of social media to companies.   If your customers believe they know you well enough, then it is likely they will see you (your product or company) as real and believe and trust your message - until you let them down one time too many.  

The best thing to do is treat your customers like real people that you know and interact with regularly and give them what they want.  Here are five basic rules of keeping it real that your mother would approve of.

1) People want an honest interaction and they want the truth.  Anything else is disrespectful and it’s fibbing. 

2) People don’t want empty promises.  If the product doesn’t deliver what is promised then why is it still on the website?  Would you recommend a product to you rmother that doesn’t really do what it says?

3) People want justice.  If you make a mistake, admit it and make it right if you can.

4) People want to feel loved. Once and a while, give them something real for free.  Tell them the proprietary buffer components if they ask for it.  Let them have free shipping one week out of the year.  It can do wonders for keeping it real – like a gift.

5) People want to talk to another person and NOT an automated answering system.  I’m not talking about voice mail – that is fine as long as you actually do call back like you promise.    Please invest in people that actually answer the phone and not in an electronic gadget with a voice recognition capability.  

We would love to know what you think – your comments are always welcome.

Bandwidth all tied up?

Posted by Scott Provost, Percepta

All of us at Percepta have cumulatively been involved in literally hundreds of biotools product launches in the course of our careers at various well known biotools companies.  Some of these products were fabulous successes and others were fantastic flops.  The flops failed for a variety of reasons but the successes all had one thing in common – they were fast out of the gate and delivered what they promised.

I remember one success particularly well.  I was responsible for introducing a new line of products for a major supplier.  The new portfolio  was a significant expansion of what was a minor product line for my employer at the time.  The launch was quite large with over 65 individual kits all focused on various aspects of a very common molecular biology application performed by more than 90% of life science labs.  There was a lot to worry about because we were late to market with this portfolio and we knew we were facing serious competition and an uphill battle to take share from them, yet we were confident that if we could get researchers to try the product we would be able to convert them.   Naturally, we had a sample program in place and the sales force had been trained and properly incentivized.  But there was one thing we did that I still believe made the difference between early post-launch success and trench warfare with the competition (and our sales force too).  We asked our existing customers a few simple questions.

I have always been a strong proponent of the bird-in-hand mentality, so for the sake of saving time and extending our thinly spread launch team we hired an outside marketing research consultant to poll our company customer list to identify researchers that were not all that happy with their current competing supplier for this common molecular biology application.  The goal was to prime the sales force pump, so to speak, with easy to reach customers that were predisposed to try our new products. 

It turned out that there were about 1,500 disgruntled researchers among those responding to our short survey that were receptive to  a new method/kit/supplier.  Best yet, we knew who and where they were and what they were unhappy about.

Putting this kind of information in the hands of a hungry sales force is a bit like throwing gasoline on a fire.  We decided to generate a one page profile on each of the receptive customers and divvy them up by sales territory to the respective sales rep.  The sales force really ate this up and to make a long story short the portfolio launch was the most successful revenue garneting product launch in the company’s (at the time 18 year) history!  It was fast out of the gate and just kept going.  It is still growing today.

It is a simple idea that any company can do with their own resources – but few if any try.  Why?  Because most marketing managers are too thinly spread already and have too much to do before any launch.  There is not enough bandwidth and so many internal hurdles to get over like  getting access to the customer mailing lists, writing and then setting up the survey, analyzing the data.  And who writes the one page reports and gets them sorted by sales territory?  In my experience it is almost always a matter of bandwidth and not” know how” that prevents companies from doing this at launch.

If this sounds familiar , take heart and remember that we hired a consultant to help -  and it was well worth it to do so.  Percepta’s Profile Program™ can do all the heavy lifting and help your next product launch with a minimum of your time.  We’re here when the time is right. 

As always, your comments are encouraged.  

Sustained Growth

Posted by Scott Provost, Percepta

As everyone knows, the Great Recession or 2008 and 2009 has taken its toll on most industries and the biotools supply industry is no exception.  However, there is real evidence that the light at the end of the tunnel is getting a bit brighter.  Stimulus dollars from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 have finally started to find their way to biotools companies’ revenue reporting.  Recently Bruker, a leading European supplier of analytical instruments with more than $1 billion in revenues, reported at an August Investor Presentation (give the PDF link a moment to load) that they have already realized greater than $10 million in stimulus funded revenues in US markets and anticipated as much of as 20% or more of their revenue could come from global stimulus efforts.  That bodes well for the biotools industry.  But the big question for all biotools companies is – will growth be sustainable or just a windfall? 

Percepta Associates recently reported that more than more than 80% of the roughly $9 billion to be distributed by the NIH as extramural grants will be hitting research budgets between now and February 2010. Ideally the stimulus will create new jobs and researchers report that new hiring is in the plans of many research laboratories.  Job creation stands a better chance to contribute to a sustained growth in the biotools industry because more researchers will presumably perform more research, which means they will use more equipment, consumables, materials and reagents.

It remains to be seen if the global stimulus efforts will promote sustainable growth, but smart biotools companies are preparing for all possibilities.  While sales departments are actively vying for the influx of funding with their current product portfolios, marketing managers should be planning for the next generation of products that will deliver true value.  Knowing what value is to the end-user is a critical part of delivering it. Has your company taken the time to understand what is important to your customers or are you assuming you know?  Trusting in assumptions is a very risky undertaking and if you have not recently polled your customers to understand their needs in detail you may be wasting valuable time and resources.   If you follow the current marketing thought leaders you will know how important it is to profile your customers and make sure you are tailoring the right message to the right end-users.  If you are not sure how to do this, Percepta can help.  Contact us any time with questions or add your comments, which are always welcome.