Background for developing AJB-Consult to target the smaller Life Science Businesses

The lack of focus on sales and marketing

It can probably be defined as a hard fact that sales and science are 99.9% of time operated with two completely different mindsets. It is like fire and water. A good scientist will be intelligent, be interested in very specific details, academic discussion, have taken long education and will maybe have tendency to be more introvert than your average sales guy. Having taken a long education does of course not by default have to make you into an introvert person. Moreover, many people would probably say that the classic “education” for going into sales would be via some kind of business school. In my experience you need to learn sales in real life. Some people are naturally extrovert, trustworthy and good at sales whereas a lot of people are either not trustworthy or simply introvert. That said if you want to improve your sales skills it is just a question on which step of the latter you start and how far up you can get. If I were to list three key elements to develop your sales skills it would be

Assuming that the above statements hold true in many cases then you have the some of the major reasons for lag of focus on sales. It is simply too far out of the comfort zone for the scientist and there is always a good excuse for something more important to do than grabbing the phone to set up a meeting and go out and see a customer. If so then what about using marketing as sales tool? Marketing is obviously a way to sell without being pushed out of comfort zone. Why is the marketing part also lagging then? The answer to this is a little more speculative than obvious. It is probably to do with lack of exposure to sales and business altogether. And on top of that a scientist selling a top tier service/product approaching his/her peers will probably have an aversion against vulgar supermarket style marketing fearing that it will devaluate trust and seriousness. In the same manner that the scientists hold skepticism towards sales people which they could employ to help them sell. They fear that the sales people lag of knowledge will devaluate their product.

Finally, there is another very big other reason for lag of focus on sales and marketing in these types of businesses. They are simply too busy on day to day activities and firefighting to take on more tasks which requires a lot of focus and energy. This is the good excuse.

So how to break the circle?