[Sales] Adjusting your sales strategy based on personalities with Jason Mayr

You know, I've said this so many times to my colleagues. As a sales rep, we don't have the luxury of picking how we communicate with our customers. Our customers have that luxury. We need to adapt to the way that our customer wants to learn how the customer wants to communicate and how the customer wants to make a decision. You know, we have to be that chameleon in the process. We need to be able to say, this person likes to talk on the phone. I'm going to give them a phone call. This person likes to me to improve person. This person likes asynchronous communication. So I'm only going to either text or email them. And once you understand that, you know you can work in that manner with them. But you have to learn and you have to give them multiple different options.

Before we get into today's show, I wanted to tell you a little bit about what we have going on over here at Succession. So Succession is a life science sales membership that includes on demand courses to uplevel your sales skills, resources to plan and execute your sales process, or a community for peer to peer networking and learning, and live workshops delivered by experts twice a month. You can get access to all of this as an individual for just $79 a month, or you can uplevel your entire sales team with courses and customized learning designed for each individual rep. Come and join us over at Succession Bio. Okay, let's dive back into the show. All right, we got another episode here for you on Sales DNA podcast. We've got Jason, who Nick and I both know from our time at Syntago, but now he is a key account manager at mabtech and we talk a lot in this episode around psychology. So learning about how do you talk about what other personality types, how do you figure out what different personality types are like? How do you sell to them differently, how to sell cutting edge tech versus more existing technology. So a lot of good takeaways in this one. I think we get pretty tactical. What stood out to you, Nick?

I think I just generally enjoyed the conversation because most of it focused around the psychology of either the customer or yourself and how you need to adapt and adjust. I also really, like, we spoke a bit about how you need to meet the customer where they want to communicate. That's a really good piece and I really enjoyed the fact that I had a wrong while I was doing the podcast.

So, you know, I had a nice little scotch, so it was great. Happy Thursday.

Let's do it.

All right, let's dive in. Hey, Jason, welcome to the podcast. We're excited to have you here.

Thank you for having me. It's really exciting to talk to you guys again.

Yeah, it's good to see you. It's been a bit. And to celebrate, each of us has a little. A little something here late here in the uk, so having a little drink to celebrate. Been a while since we've seen you, but with that in mind, you know how we kick off all these episodes. So give us a crazy or funny story that's happened in your career.

All right. Not sure this actually applies, but early in my career, I was given a customer and the challenge of working with them. This person was notoriously, really difficult to work with. And I figured out exactly what the process was and how to deal with it. So I would walk in and I would sit down, and for the first 15, 20 minutes, this customer would yell at me, literally yell at me about all the problems that we had. And this person had bought some software and a reader and some reagents from us, and they were a big customer, so he was really important to keep at it. And he would scream and yell. I scream was maybe a bit high, but he would just berate me. And it was always my fault. But after that 15 to 20 minutes, after I wrote down all the problems that he had, I would look at him and say, okay, we can deal with that, and I'll tell our people. And then at that point, he'd be like, so do you want to go to lunch? And he would sit there and talk about how he lived with his wife and seven daughters to deal with all the problems that they had. And this guy became my most, like, consistent and best customer, because I learned the key. This person would just derate me and all the problems he had. And I thought it probably was because when he went home, he had to deal with all of these people that would berate and cause him problems at home. And he just wanted to have that. That one outlet that he knew, like, he could just totally make, you know, make. Make his point made and always be right. But he, you know, he. He made my quarter every year.

That's hilarious. I mean, that kind of leads into one of the topics, though, that we did want to talk about, though, which is dealing with different personality types. You know, maybe starting from a customer's perspective. Right. I mean, we can't. Every customer is a little bit different. They all have different types of personalities. You get the ones that want to berate you. You get the people that are quiet, you get the people that are Loud and want to talk about, you know, everything. Right. So how do you, how do you sort of adapt your selling style to the different people you're working with or dealing with?

Yeah, the, the, the, the early training that I did in sales, we talked about four different personality types. There's the doer, the talker, the controller and the plotter.

Right.

And I forget which group this was in. And each of those had a way that you, you know, you effectively tried to communicate with them and understand what their needs are, but more importantly, how to present your, your, your, your product, your data, your information in a way that allowed them, you know, either the safety or the, you know, the green light to go ahead in their personal, you know, way that they looked at their own career. Right. I mean, we all want to make sure that our career is advancing properly and we're, we're doing things that are creating value and thus making us more valuable in the marketplace. So one, for instance, the plotter. And the plotter is someone that doesn't make decisions quickly. They want to see that everything is safe, that they are going to move forward in a way that, that doesn't cause any problems or ripples. So for that person, you typically want to present the safety of your solution. You know, how it's looked at in the industry, how your other customers have seen success with this, you know, understand the problems that they're having and that the solution to that, the change that they have to make is more valuable than staying the same. Yeah, you want to like de.

Risk the decision for them. Right. So they're going to be, I imagine they're also like the analytical type that's going to ask a lot of like really in depth kind of analytical type questions or I would say that, yeah.

Some of them could be like that. So, you know, obviously we're all that one single personality type. You know, it's major personality types that come up. So anybody that's like a plotter doer, that's a perfect way to get them to, you know, make a decision and show that, you know, that data is there. Because a doer definitely wants to see facts and figures. They want to know, you know, what was the scenario, what was the solution and what was the metrics afterwards.

Right.

So if you have that combination of a do or plotter or a plotter doer, you know, you have to understand the safety of it and the facts about it. And of course, you know, then you have someone like the controller, they need the credit, they need to, you know, they have to have all the knowledge and they're going to be the one that then gives the, gives the information in the solution to their internal folks. I found this great solution. I found, you know, so you feed them all the data and information so that they can be the zero in.

Store to basically enable them, give them the empowerment, the talking points, the tools to go sell on your behalf. Anything.

Absolutely. Because I think you've made comments before in some of your writings, Harrison. A lot of the sales are done when you're not in the room. And having a controller. Perfect. Almost everything.

Utilize.

Exactly, exactly. Having a controller as your champion or your person that's involved in this, that's the ideal scenario, you know, because, you know, hey, I'm going to give you every, every bit of information you need to be successful. I mean, I'm going to make sure you're the hero in the story and you can now, you know, go through it. I'm ultimately going to win because I, I'm going to get that sale and I'm going to move, you know, move on to the next phase in the sales process with them where I'm doing, instead of customer acquisition, I'm now doing customer maintenance.

So what is it that you can identify about people in the room that would allow you to assess who fits into what category?

There are a lot of traits, like when you're in the office of a talker that you can really tell that they're going to be a talker. They have a lot of pictures up of their family. They have pictures up of themselves and what they've done. You know, they're kind of showing off their personal life when they're, when they're in there. And they're also probably not very organized. Right. They probably have a really messy desk. They've got piles of stuff everywhere. You guys are noticing that by yourselves right now, aren't you?

Definitely.

Nick.

I got three cups bottleneck my from, I got a wooden robot, you know, just because it's there. So.

And you like to talk about the robots.

Yeah. And it's absolutely important to understand your own personality type so that you can help, you know, deal with others. Because, so when I did my assessment, I was a controller talker, which is kind of, you know, kind of. I, I, at first I was like, I'm not a controller, I'm not a controller. But with an understanding of controller.

Now you're the best controller, right?

Yeah, yeah, well, but what I, what I did is I, I, I grab that information and I hold on to it and I'm, I'm the typical lone wolf salesman out there, right? I'm the guy that does it his way. I, I don't ask for a lot of help. I just go out and I do what I'm supposed to do and I have to learn how to bring other people in. I mean, you know, we all have strengths and shortcomings. It's, what do you know about yourself? Are you true to actually, you know, taking criticism and understanding who you are and then adapting your processes as necessary. So a controller may not always be, you know, a great person, you think, in sales, because they hold that information. But, but I like to come in and be the hero of the story as well. I like to come in and show that solution that's going to be perfect for them. But I also have to understand if I'm dealing with a plotter, especially one that's not talkative at all. That's really challenging for me because I'm not a safe person. I'm a risk taker. I'm not the type of person that wants to move forward in a slow and methodical manner. You know, I'm, I'm different in that regard. So I have to adapt and I have to understand who that is that I'm working with and how I can help, you know, make them feel comfortable and want to get the solution that I'm presenting to them. Help them avoid the bad mistake of choosing a different product that's not going to solve the problems they have.

And so are you trying to uncover this like in the first couple of minutes of an interaction or does it evolve over time, you kind of change your opinion as it goes? Because I imagine one thing that I like to do is when I first get on a call is you ask a question that's somehow rapport building, related, right. Something. Whether you see in the background something that's going on, something that you found about them online, whatever it is. Right. Something. And then you get an idea of how they respond to it. And so based on how they respond, you know, does this person want to talk about that stuff or do they want to get down to business? Right. Because they give you a two word response and they're like, all right, let's, let's start talking about this stuff, you know, you know how you want to handle that conversation. Are there other sort of, you know, tips and tricks like that to identify this early on?

Yeah, I mean, obviously you have to understand the different personality types and you know, honestly you can develop your own, but as you understand you know, those sort of things, how they, how they, how they want to respond, how they want to work. You then can then develop your, your, your downstream, you know, strategies and tactics. But you're right, like with a talker, it's really easy, right? You, you come in, ask them how their weekend was and they tell you about their rafting trip or their skiing trip and how their kids did and know lacrosse or baseball or football. That person. All right, I understand, you know, they're a dominant talker and you can pretty much figure out their initial, like, dominant trait relatively quickly. It's that secondary, you know, personality type that may be a little bit more challenging. But, you know, like you say, like, I follow a process where I actually have an acronym that I follow for my sales and the. It's a I D I N C K or AID Inc. And it's Approach, Interview, Demonstrate, Validate, Negotiate. I'm sorry, Approach, Interview, Demonstrate, Validate, Negotiate, and Close. Obviously the validate didn't fit in there, so they used the, the, the I in Validate. That approach is so important. That's the part where you're talking about, you're developing rapport, you're understanding who they are. That's a short, you know, part of the process when you look at it. But with a talker, that becomes quite a bit larger. Right. With a, with a plotter that might become extremely small or with a doer because they're, they don't want to mess around.

Right?

So now you're getting that, that idea. It's like, okay, and if you get it wrong, it can be problematic, but it isn't the end of the world. No one's perfect.

People are still going to stop as you go. Right? Yeah, you can always. I think where it's interesting is if, like, you can try and identify if you know that a controller is going to be a good champion. Like, I think that's kind of an interesting approach to say, I'm going to go try and find a couple controllers or a controller within an organization where it's, you know, instead of having one conversation, one person, I need to have multiple conversations with different people, finding out who that controller is, go get them to be my champion, and then just like give them what they need to go get the deal done versus the hard route of sticking with the plotter and hoping for the best.

Right, right. Because, I mean, when you ask a controller, hey, who else needs to be involved in the decision? You know, I understand this isn't always just one person decision and they're like, oh, I got that taken care of. Like, okay, I got it. You're my thing. Yeah. Like, I don't need. I don't. Whereas the talker is going to be like, oh, yeah, let me bring in a bunch of people. You know, let's. Let's get this meeting. Let's talk, you know, let's talk about this more.

Yeah.

And then, of course, the doer, though, they're the ones that are like, like, you know, let's get the information, give us a presentation, show us the, the hard facts about this, you know, so if you do identify somebody potentially wrong, though, these sort of questions, you know, there's questions out there that can help you. It's like, you know, if you, if you identified someone as a doer and you're like, okay, do you want to see our data sheet? You want to see our white paper? And they go, no, that's not important. You. You start getting those clues. It's like, okay, I may have misidentified this personality type. You know, so what is important? How, how do you want to, you know, how do you want to evaluate this?

Well, that's interesting. That's an interesting question.

Like, how do you.

How do you want to make this decision? I kind of, kind of like that question. Like, how do you want. What kind of information is. Is best for you as an individual? And then that is going to give you a good idea of what kind of person they're like, too.

Well, yeah, And I mean, you know, we've all been sold to by people. You know, when someone goes off on a tangent, that's not like, I don't need to know that. I don't care about that. Yeah, well, you're losing me as you continue down that path.

Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Okay, this is good. I think there's a lot of good stuff in there for everybody to take away from that one. One thing I also wanted to talk about with you. So you have, I would say, unique background. Well, not completely unique, but, you know, having a marketing background as well as a sales background. Did you start marketing or did you start sales and then go marketing?

I started in sales and then I had my children in the dark side. Yeah, well, yeah, then I went to the. The mark side and the dark side. Exactly. Okay. I guess.

Yeah, you start in the lab, then you go to the dark side in sales. What is it when you go to marketing? Is that like the black hole? Like, how do you. That's a fun guy.

It's the end.

That's why that's the end. Then you went to the end, but you somehow found it like that.

Boomer into back into sales.

Yeah, there you go. But I imagine some of the.

Was that born again sales?

Yeah.

Unlike a phoenix rising from the ashes.

I imagine though, the time in marketing has somehow helped you in sales. Right. I mean, I'm sure there's things that you pick up from that perspective that you're able to apply. Probably also able to put yourselves in the marketing team's shoes every now and then. So yeah, I'd love to hear kind of your takeaways from those experiences.

Oh yeah. So when I was, you know, first having children and my life was changing drastically, you know, I wanted to be around for the more sales career. Obviously you travel a lot. So I applied for and actually got the job at a company called Promega. They might have heard of them. And I was brought in as a post launch marketing person. So I was a regional account manager and I had a couple of jobs. One of them was working with different channels to assure that, you know, they were able to, you know, sell and effectively present their products. So I worked with our distributor reps and I worked with our on site, on site stocking channel. The other thing that I did was lead development. So going out and finding leads for our sales reps to, to. To. To act on and, and go after. And one of the tools that we used was a tool called BioIntelly. And at the time BioIntelli was focused on NIH grants. So anybody that received a new grant, there's a big long code. It starts with something like R21 or R01. And many people in academia understand these codes really well. So I had to learn all those. I didn't have a PhD, I didn't have a master's. I never applied for these. So I had to learn all about these codes. So I was able to then find these people that were doing certain types of work based on keywords and their things. So I would go through and I would distill all this down based on our products that we were selling, who would be a great target. And I would send out this list and nobody acted on a single one of the leads that I sent after hours and hours of work that I did on them every month.

That sounds familiar.

Yeah.

And you know, part of the reason that was frustrating to me is because I'm like, these aren't good leads. Like these are at least people to reach out to. And one of the people came to me and said but they're still cold. They're still a cold lean. And it bothered my mind because I'm looking at this and I had been in their shoes, and I'm like, someone's giving me a list of people to talk to. I mean, I can do a little bit. You know, I can take the five minutes and do a quick search and what they're doing and who they are and everything. But these folks were telling me they were so busy that even that five minutes was too much for them to do. Let me tell you, it was, it was frustrating from the marketing side, but I also look at it from the sales side because, you know, even today I receive leads from our marketing group that, you know, they're, they're. I hate to say it, I'm sorry to my, my marketing colleagues. They're garbage, you know. You know, when we were, when we were working together at Symptico, we would get these leads from, you know, these web deals and these web things around these LinkedIn plus where they'd give a $50 gift card for whatever, you know, so all we got were grad students or undergrad students that wanted that $50 or that $20 coffee cart. They didn't really have a need. You know, we invented a need. We invented a lead, and it ultimately just wasted the time of the sales.

On the flip side to that, you know, sales team were too busy to do these. Unless all of them are 150% of plan, they're not too busy. They need to go after those leads.

Right, right, right, Maybe. But I mean, they're, they're, you know, they're going after their, their value. Right. They have this value idea in their head, and I haven't established myself as creating a lot of value that point. I mean, I hadn't shown them that there was a successful path that they could follow with these leads. And I understand that much better nowadays. At the time, I just sat there, like, banging my head against my computer screen saying, I'm handing you people to reach out to.

Like, reps don't want to prospect. I think is the, like, that's the simple truth. Most reps do not want to prospect.

Right.

And so you gave them a, you gave them a good prospecting list, but in reality, they didn't want to prospect. I think if you had gave them that same person who said, yeah, I want to talk to you, then they would have taken it.

Right.

They had their credit card out in their hand. Of course they're going to go talk to them then. But you Know, most reps don't want to prospect.

Well, I mean, yeah, prospecting is that, that, that potentially low success. Right?

I mean, it's 100% low success rate. They're cold. Yeah, it's low successful because they're cold. But, like, you got to do it. It's like part of the job.

Yeah, well, and you can improve it. I mean, you know, that's one of the things I Learned working with YouTube, you know, in the role that I started out when I was working with you guys. The process of prospecting can be good, but there's things you have to understand about the process. There's touch points you have to make. You can't use a single way to communicate with people. You know, I've said this so many times to my colleagues. As a sales rep, we don't have the luxury of picking how we communicate with our customers. Our customers have that luxury. Right. We need to adapt. We need to adapt to the way that our customer wants to learn how the customer wants to communicate and how the customer wants to make a decision. You know, we have to be that chameleon in the process. We need to be able to say, this person likes to talk on the phone. I'm going to give them a phone call. This person likes to meet in person. This person likes asynchronous communication. So I'm only going to either text or email them. And once you understand that, you know, you can, you can work in that, in that manner with them, but you have to learn and you have to give them multiple different options.

You have to try all those channels to find out which one is going to work. Right. Like, there are people that have a thousand unread emails, which means your email is not going to get read. And so you have to find alternative channels to get in front of them. And contrary to popular belief and what every salesperson will tell you, people still pick up the phone. And so it's okay to call people. I remember I had a sales manager when I was starting out. Anytime he'd walk through the sales floor and it was quiet, he'd be like, what, are the phones broken? Were there spiders on the phones? Right. He'd always have, like, a different one, like, each time just to basically say, like, pick up the phone, make it loud, and you just get used to it. And, you know, people do still pick up the phone. Now, that being said, you have to have good data and you have to get, like, mobile numbers for people. And that's a whole nother thing. But people still get the phone.

Yeah, try calling someone an app V sometime or Lily.

Yeah, you don't call the, you don't call the mainline. That's not going to work. Don't quote that. Yes, I think a mainline.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, if you call me, I'm going to answer. But again, you know, and actually, you know, there was a, there was a time where I actually taught business classes in, at a college because, you know, I do have my mba, so I was qualified to teach. Why they thought I was qualified to.

Teach, I don't know. That doesn't make any sense to me.

I'm done. None. But the main thing I tried to do because I taught a business communication class is I tried to explain all the different ways that people can communicate with each other. And the one thing I knew is that everyone hated presenting. Everyone hates getting up in front of people and talking. So of course, as a good professor, I made them present every week a five minute presentation. You know, I made them get out of their comfort zone. And you know, a lot of the people that I, you know, I, I taught that were really there to learn and a lot of these were adults that were trying to get more business education or knowledge. They were extremely grateful for being forced out of their comfort zone to do it. And I think a lot of people will find when they're forced out of their comfort zone or in sales, when you don't, you know, you're communicating in a way that you're not, you're not necessarily the most comfortable. You're going to find the greatest growth at that point.

Yep, a hundred percent. I will say I used to not like to present, but now I love presenting. So it's like, put me in front of people, I'm down. Let's do it, let's make it happen. Nick just likes to talk. Nick just likes to talk. So for him a presentation is an excuse to talk for X number of minutes. No, like how long do I have? Can I talk for two hours? Is that, is that enough time?

Not only that, they have to be, I'm the center of attention. They have to focus on me. This is great. Like this is what I want every day. But I actually hated presenting and didn't have the confidence to do it. When I first, when I worked in the lab, I got sent on a presentation course and it was the worst experience ever. I, I almost canceled because I felt sick. Today I knew I was going to present to a room of four people all along the same course as me. But I was just hated It. And then once you get over that, kind of know how to control those feelings, you can learn to enjoy it. And now like, yeah, give me a podium and either dance or talk. That's all I want.

Yeah, that's good.

Yeah.

So that, that is, that is kind of funny that, you know, we're like, we want to talk, we want to, you know, engage with people. I'm, I'm an extrovert, I gain energy by having these type of interactions with people. But now put me in front of 50 people and like, I get nervous, my mouth gets dry. You know, I want to be able to know, am I going to look, am I going to look like an, a somewhat intelligent person talking about the subject? Because you trip over your words, you, you stumble. I mean, we're seeing this in, in the political landscape right now. Every time the opponent, you know, has, you know, a mistake in what they're saying, the opposition and jumps on it, like this person is not capable. Right. And we're seeing this in the media, we're seeing this out there and you know, you see all these other people that are so polished and perfect, but you know, the truth is we're all fallible, we're all making mistakes, we're all going to stumble, but, you know, we see how that's just not accepted.

You know, I dislike though, and I would advise people against these, no matter how, how much you feel like you're not the expert in the room because don't like over position yourself, but go with confidence because you know what you're about to present better than anybody else because they've not even seen it yet.

Right.

There may be another expert in the room in the technical area, but you.

Know what you're doing.

But often people will be fearful of that. So they'll start up and they discredit themselves straight away with hey, this isn't my data, or I know I'm not the, the reigning expert in this and they just instantly they put themselves lower and then why should people listen to you?

Right.

So you need to go in with confidence of what you're about to present. And then when it comes to questions, if you don't know the answer, it's fine to not know the answer, but you shouldn't diminish your level of credibility in that presentation. I think that's something people do when they feel like what you just said.

I agree.

Yep, absolutely.

So one other topic I think would be good to talk about is so you've, you. We all work together at Synthego, which You know, when we were there was crispr, was Hot Topic, everybody was all on it, right? So it's sort of this cutting edge technology, you know, now you're working at more of an established technology company. What have you seen be some of the biggest differences, challenges between the two.

So when we were at, you know, Syno and we were talking about this cutting edge technology that had recently just won the Nobel Prize for chemistry, we were talking with all these people that were excited to get into using this and applying it to their research. And this kind of goes back a little bit to our, our discussion about different personality types. Right. There's people out there that are the, you know, the leaders in, you know, using this new technology.

Right.

They were the ones that were the first to go from the BlackBerry to the Apple. And if I'm dating myself a little bit there, I apologize. I still remember life before the cell phone. And the intro.

I remember it too. I remember it too.

So, yeah, I was an adult.

I can't say that.

Yeah, I mean, you can't tell anymore since I shaved my beard, which I think is really great. The fact that when we were working together, Harrison, you were clean shaven and I had this big long beard. And now it's completely, you know, different where I have no facial hair now you have that amazing mustache.

I got a little caterpillar on my.

We have the levels of manliness here. We have me, four bed manly person who's comfortable with not having a full bed, manly Jason. And in someone who's not sure how to grow one and has got a bit confused and just done their top lip, Harrison.

Hey, mustaches are in now.

They are. I mean, you know, it in full, you know, transparency. Harrison, looks good on you, man. Just going to say I like it.

Thank you.

Of course, I didn't grow up in the 70s.

They call this cutting edge. Or is this established technology? I don't know.

That's totally retro. That's established technology. We're just bringing established. But that also brings us to a really good point. So when we were talking about cutting edge technology with our customers, the plotters, they didn't really want to jump into this. They had to be convinced that it was safe, that it was the next way to do this. There were so many things that we had available to show people that this was the way that people are going to be doing so much more. But they needed those other people first. So we went to those doers, we went to those technological, you know, leaders. We went to those people that Wanted to make the mark. That's really ambitious scientists and, and, and you know, we saw a lot of success with, in my current role, I'm selling ELISA kits and I'm selling Elispot and Fluorospot which is essentially, you know, a cell based assay and that counts the number of T cells or B cells or you know, any type of, you know, cytokine releasing cell or antibody releasing cell to understand how many of those cells in the population are secreted. So I find myself now instead of educating people about technology that they've heard about that's in the news that they've, you know, they've become aware of and they understand this really exciting nature of to now going to people and re educating them about a technology that's older that can still be extremely valuable in their research to understand, you know, that, you know, this is something that, you know, is well established. There's lots of publications on it from our company specifically and the kits that we sold. But it's, it's still an education process, you know, trying to educate them about how this can fit. Because flow cytometry is this great and amazing technology that can give you information about the number of cells that are doing this, that or the other thing. Uh, they can even sort the cells and do all these wonderful things. But Elispot and Fluorospot, now we're able to tell you these secreted, you know, cytokines or these secreted antibodies without having to manipulate the cells in an unnatural way to make sure that we get that depth and it's, you know, it can be faster.

So you're basically competing against some of this more cutting edge tech where they have like these other options. But you have to then remind them like, hey, you know, don't forget about the basics. Is that kind of where it's at? Or.

Yeah, or, or more along the lines of, you know, you're using this. I see the value, everyone sees the value. But the compliment is you can do certain things much better. Right?

Yeah.

So a lot of the times I talk with my customers, I'm like, flow cytometry is going to take you, you know, on the flow cell and everything else. It's going to take you about three times as long as it's going to take you to do the know, one, you know, one plate of, of the assay that I'm talking about.

Right.

You're not going to get as much data, but now you can screen. It's a great compliment to what you're going to do downstream. But you can do this a lot faster. You can get an initial understanding. You know, when you're making AB decisions. Is, you know, peptide one a better, you know, vaccine candidate than peptide two or, you know, the grumpopeptide one versus the grupopeptide two? You know, I want to move forward with two because I can quickly see that it's a, it's a better responder. In my hand, you just find different.

Value props that you're aligning to. Right. I remember the value prop at one point with Synthego was like, you could be one of the first people to publish using synthetic single guide rna. Right. It's like we were going after those people that, you know, wanted to get it, you know, get those publications, get the recognition. So, yeah, it's interesting.

One thing about having a cutting edge technology you won't get with that is that you accidentally got a lot of people almost time wasters.

Right?

And they weren't intentionally time wasters. They were just very interested. This is new technology. Tell me about it. I want to learn no way of using it, no intention of using it, but really want to hear about it because it's so exciting.

That's a good point.

So the flip side was with you, I guess, if somebody offers to talk, they generally are interested because you can Google most of that and get the information, right?

Yeah, well, I mean, most of our customers can anyway, right? There's so much information out on the Internet. You know, talking with people, sometimes you're, you're working against bad information that's out there, you know? You know, because, you know, how many times, you know, we, we talk to people when we were at Ciptago, like, no, we're not, we're not changing real people. Like, there's, there's a couple of things out in the news that made a storm. It's like, no, no, no, this is not approved for, you know, working on, on fetuses or babies or, you know, like what we're doing is all research. It's all in a petri dish. You know, we're, we're, we're creating these cells that are, are changing so that people can, you know, hopefully in the future get to the point where we can safely and effectively, you know, treat these type of genetic diseases. But you know, truth be told, you know, that's, that's decades down the line potentially. We have to figure out how to deliver it first.

Didn't, didn't gene therapy patient for, for sickle cell just get released in, in a Study, like, basically they're. They're healthy, they're released from the hospital, everything's good. Something like that. Am I. Am I making up a story?

I haven't seen it, but there was a. There's been. Sickle cell was one of the first gene therapy.

Yeah, right. I thought I read one or heard about one the other day that was related as a gene therapy for. For sickle cell.

I haven't. I haven't heard of that. I know, like, we've got a couple of instances, I know, where sickle cell and beta thalassemia have been cured. They've even, I think in HIV patients. I think, though, everything right now is blood related. Right. They're taking the stem cells, the metabolic stem cells out and doing it that way. But, you know, the holy grail is for that cystic fibrosis patient.

Right.

That child that's born cystic fibrosis. These are lung cells that are causing problems. How do you effectively deliver to the lung cells specifically so that you're not affecting other cells and you're correcting that gene in the place that it's going to be active?

So, yeah, I did have. When I was working at a stem cell company once a email came into the company and somebody had lost their dog that they really loved. It was their favorite dog, and they were asking if we could remake it.

From a tissue sample.

But they genuinely wanted us to try and rebuild their dog. I think they thought that you just like reprogram a stem cell and it does all the work. Not that I now have to create hundreds of different individual cell products, work out and mix them together, thousands of cells. But.

Yes.

Can you remake our dog?

Yeah, that's. That's that. That education piece where people don't understand the difference between a stem cell and a pluripotent stem cell.

Right.

We're able to make pluripotent stem cells. We weren't able to make a true stem cell. Oh, that's interesting. I mean, I think you remember we've had patients reach out to, you know, people that have genetic diseases that were. That were lethal reach out to us at Cyptico. It's heartbreaking having to talk to those people, you know?

Yeah, well, unfortunately, we're right up on time. A little bit of. A little bit of a downer there at the end. I don't know. You got one. You got one more? Maybe give us one more like sales tip for everybo and put us on a high note.

Sales and psychology. Right. Understanding what drives people to make decisions what, what people think about what. What is important to them. Understand that value, and you're going to see a ton more success than if you just go into it with the same rote script every time.

100% agree. Awesome. Well, Jason, thank you for coming on the show. It's been a pleasure.

Absolutely. Guys, I. We should do this every week.

There you go. Love it.

See, Sam?