[Sales] Frameworks for telling stories with data with Ben McLeod

If you want to be successful inside of science, it's got to be about relationships and providing unique value and caring about your customers. And so if you enjoy going and talking to other people about science and figuring out together how you can fix their problems or talk about pain that they're experiencing and how you've got a solution that could be the Tylenol or Advil that they need, then it's a very fulfilling career. It's not this. It's not this smarmy. Oh, I'm just trying to sell this used car and I know that it's full of garbage. It's very much a very powerful, essential role to ensure that science can go forward faster.

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, 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 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 great episode for everybody here today. We've got Ben McLeod on the show and you've probably seen him on LinkedIn, talks all about cell therapy all the time. He's got a lot of great content that he's always putting out there. And so on this episode, he's willing to share a lot of his insights into how he uses storytelling to actually help sell the science. So he's got a couple different frameworks the problem but therefore framework that he uses to frame up stories and actually be able to share talk about data in a compelling way. So I think there's a lot of great insights that Ben shares throughout this whole episode. And so you definitely want to stick around till the end. But let's put out to you, Nick.

There was a lot of good stuff in there and sadly we stopped recording and there was some even more good stuff when we chatted afterwards. So you guys should definitely reach out to him. One of the things I really liked what he was saying, he sort of identified a problem around scientific people being ingrained in positioning data and not being able to tell a story. But the bit I really like is he actually gave you a tip on how to get better and get Paid while learning how to be better at telling stories.

That's true.

And I thought I was. That was smart. So if you want to get paid to be better at telling stories, you need to listen to the rest.

Yeah, it was great. Awesome. Well, let's dive into the episode. Hey, Ben, welcome to the show. We're pumped to have you here.

Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Nice to have you.

Yeah. So, you know, we asked everybody the exact same question. You said you got a good story for us, so give us a crazy or funny story that's happening in your career.

Well, I hope it's good. It was crazy at the time. So my first job out of university was working in a viral vector core. I started as a research associate doing viral vector production and then moved into a manager role. It was kind of associated with a small biotech company, but it was mostly spun out of an academic lab. So the work that I was doing was funded by grants, and so was doing quite well in the role, was really getting along well with everybody. And the professor that I was working for had applied to the same grant worth a couple hundred thousand dollars every single year for the last. For the last, like, 10 years or something. And she applies for the grant again this year. And it would be responsible for, you know, keeping my physician alive and allowing me to continue to work at the lab. They quietly changed the font rules for the grant application.

Like the font that you're allowed to use.

The font rules? Yeah. And so her grant application got denied.

And I was Ariel instead of Times New Roman or something.

It was.

It was, it was.

It was.

It was less the. It was. It was a combination of. Yeah, the Arial versus Times New Roman, but then also, like, the size. The font as well. Like, it had to be size 12 or size 11 or something.

I forget now, without size 12, the science in a grant is awful. Right.

That.

That depicts exactly what quality of science was within a grant.

Yes. 11. 11 is a prime number.

This ability to follow directions. Right. You have to be able to follow directions. You know, it's like a simple protocol. All we did was said 12. Size 12.

Yeah. I've been fighting.

And my guess is. I mean, my guess for that is what? That they were. I mean, that's strange. Why would you even need that unless you were having, like, bureaucracy.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's. That's what it was. So. So anyway, I was working at the university, and I just finished up my master's, so myself and my wife, we were staying in, like, the family housing area and you're allowed to stay there as long as you were employed by the university. So this is back in. This is back in 2021. And so I've lost my job. But then also since I've lost my job by no fault of my own, we're also technically homeless. So fortunately my, my. The professor that I was working for, you know, she. She's a lovely lady. Her name is Dr. Sarah Wooten. Shout out to her. She set me up with my first biotech industry role, which was with a company called Vierka Biotech based in Canada. And so that kind of changed the trajectory of my career where I was in the lab doing science and I shifted into more the lab guy who understands the science, who helps out the business people and the. And the marketing people.

And.

Yeah, so the, the trajectory of my career since then has ultimately come down to a change in font requirements for grant application.

Wow. Blessing in disguise. Maybe.

What do you think it was for sure? Absolutely. Someone upstairs is looking out for me.

Homeless in the same scenario. Harrison was nearly made an illegal immigrant once due to.

Yes, due to a banking incident. Yes, a large scale banking incident. I was almost not able to continue living here in the United Kingdom. But yeah, all's worked out since then, so that's great.

I prefer a legal immigrant.

Yeah, I mean, that was. It's close. You guys are a lot nicer here than we are in the States about that though. So.

Yeah, you get like three days to leave the country in the States if anything like that happens, right?

Yeah, basically. So, yeah, so it's tough, but yeah, So I guess coming back to your sort of transition that you made into the industry role or even then, you know, from doing sort of like lab work to now you being maybe a little bit more commercially focused, thinking about, hey, how can we help the sales and marketing teams communicate our science? How's that sort of transition been? What have we kind of seen as some of the, you know, the key things that have stood out to you?

Yeah. So in, in my perspective, my personality, I, I enjoy the science. I love talking about the science. I love, you know, I love learning about the science and discussing where the science can go. I'm less enchanted at this point with the, with the lab work. It's not something I'm cut out for as much. I enjoy being around people and communicating with people and talking with the science all day. And so in terms of my personality, I would say the, the commercial slash marketing business development side is. It's much more in line with my Personality. And I enjoy it a lot more. Not that I didn't enjoy my, enjoy my, my time in the lab, but in terms of the extent of my career and the breadth of my career, I'm thankful that it's a bit more focused on talking with other people and discussing the science as opposed to doing the science in one niche area of biotech.

Yeah. And I guess that's an interesting point to make. Right. It's like when you're in the lab, you're really focused on the one thing that you're doing. Whereas now I imagine in your role, you get to see what hundreds of different people are doing and what they're working on. So you get these broader access to all of the different science that people are focused.

Absolutely, yeah. Which, which I love. I, I, I love being able to sample everything as opposed to, you know, refining a pancake recipe endlessly throughout, throughout a couple years. Right. Might be a rough analogy, but pancakes are delicious. But, you know, I, I enjoy, I enjoy sampling a bunch of different things.

Yeah, that's, that makes a lot of sense. It's funny, we talked to a lot of people on the podcast, specifically, like how they got into sales or how they got into a commercial world. Every single person has, like fallen into it somehow. Right. So it's like, for you, it's like you literally fell into it because of font. But like, there's all these different reasons that people have ended up in sort of more of a commercial role out of the lab. I don't think we've talked to anybody who was like, oh, yeah, I got into science because I really wanted to get into sales in the sciences. So it's just kind of interesting because.

It'S got, like, we've got a highly technical job as scientists, and we think that moving to a sales world, I can speak for myself, and people are going to, is a step down in, like, quality, a step down in credibility.

Right.

Where actually you still have to be a good scientist to be able to be in this world and do marketing messaging cells. And I think if it was pitched more like how much we can support people. If it was pitched more like that, you'd find them wanting to go directly into it. But it's basically an accident. All of us are an accident. Even my mom says I was an accident, but that's a different story.

Yeah, I would, I would agree. Often what's kind of in mind is that smarmy salesman who goes door to door. Right. Who's just trying to get some commission check and doesn't really care about you. And the reality is, if you want to be successful inside of science, it's got to be about relationships and providing unique value and caring about your customers. And so if you enjoy going and talking to other people about science and figuring out together how you can fix their problems or talk about pain that they're experiencing and how you've got a solution that could be the Tylenol or Advil that they need, then it's, it's a very fulfilling career. It's not this, it's not this smarmy. Oh, I'm just trying to sell this used car, and I know that it's full of garbage. It's very much a very powerful, essential role to ensure that science can go forward faster.

And I think you, you hit on something really subtly there, which is sort of like the belief in the product or service or solution that you're selling. Because if you don't believe in it, you're gonna, you know, it's gonna become that used car to you, or it's gonna feel like it's that used car. Where is. If you have, like, belief in the product or service that you're delivering, you're gonna, you're not gonna have that same sort of like, mentality around it. And so I think it'll come through in your selling abilities and the way you interact with customers. And so I kind of urge people, when they think about, hey, I want to get sales, look at the different companies that you're gonna be passionate about of, like working with their product or service that you're going to be passionate about selling. Because that's, you know. Yes. Come through in how you speak and work with people.

Absolutely. Yeah. If, if you're, if, if you're selling a product that you don't believe in. Pick up. Yeah, Scientists are going to pick that up. If you're not passionate about the problems that you're solving. They're, they're the most, they're the most. You, you're dealing with the, with a group of people that are some of the smartest and most skeptical people in the world. And they could, they, they are, they are, they are very, very good at smelling out something that's rotten or something that isn't. Doesn't really make sense. So you've gotta, you've got.

I regularly go into rooms with people and I'm like, hey, so here's all of the data of your exact experiment. And they're like, wow, that's amazing. It's probably too good to Be true. Let me just check it first. So seriously, we've done all of the work for you and you still want to check it? I might as well have done none of the work and just let you check it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Or you get the most of it's too. It's like, it's like, oh, here's all of these other ways in which that this product or service has worked really well and here's all of the data to back it up. So like, we're pretty confident it'll work for you. But then they go, yeah, no, I don't believe you. Like, I need you to do. Exactly. I need you to do my exact experiment. I need to see the exact data on this before I decide if I want to buy this or not.

You've been to Germany too?

Yes.

German scientists are the most critical I've ever been, like skeptical.

Right. So I know the main, one of the main things we wanted to talk about is I guess somewhat parallel to all of this, which is sort of the storytelling of science as you kind of, if you're trying to get your product or service out there. I think the most common way that we see a lot of companies do this is they go and they collect a whole bunch of data. They go out and they start trying to like talk data to people. They're like, hey, I'm going to show people data, they're going to believe it and they're going to buy it. Right. It's like that is sort of this, I think, very scientific science to scientist focused sort of mentality where it's like, if you haven't actually had experience selling, you think that you can just walk in, show data and then because this data is so amazing, they're just going to like throw money at you. It's just like not how it works. And so the storytelling component is super important. I know that's something that you're really passionate about as well.

Yeah.

Probably one of the biggest lies inside of science is that the data speaks for itself. No, it literally does not. You have to speak for it. It is nothing but. It's nothing but numbers in an Excel table. And if that's all it is, no one's going to go look for it. No one is actively seeking out the best data. They're trying to live their, their life and, you know, do their 9 to 5 and deal with what they're working on. Very few people have the bandwidth to go out and comb the most recent literature or read through the 40 white papers a month. That are released inside of your specific niche of biotech. You've got to have a story, you've got to have a means of showcasing the main conclusions in a compelling way. And if you're just, if all you're doing is just making a white paper and, you know, sticking it on your company's LinkedIn page and expecting everyone to magically find it and the leads to start pouring in.

I'm sorry, yeah, nobody's going to come to your website and the two, nobody's going to click on that link to give you email and then 90 something other personal information.

I, I, I, yeah, that's something that really frustrates me too. It's like, if you really want people to read it, like, you can't be, you can't be, like, give me your email and your phone number and your address and your mother's maiden name and your Social Security number and. Yeah, yeah. And also, could you create a free account? Why are you putting so many barriers to access in front of something that a lot of people aren't finding already and you're scaring away the people that do?

Yeah, I mean, that's a whole other conversation we can have, right? I mean, I think that just comes down to, like, how marketing teams are incentivized around like the number of leads, not necessarily like quality or anything like that. We don't need to get down that rabbit hole because that's a whole other story that we can do. But yeah, so I guess coming back to sort of the story framework, if you will, or like how you kind of start to think about, you build these stories. You know, let's say, hey, I've got this product, I got the service and I want to, I got, I got this great data. How can I start to think about telling that as a story?

Let me just prefix that with something we chatted a little bit earlier about that. You normally have two people, right? This is my view. And when we were chatting earlier, I think you at least slightly agreed me that you've got somebody who has only story where they want to tell you the story about their product with no data, no information, nothing about it. Or you've got the guy who's a pure scientist and wants to do a thesis on the product and no story at all. And very few people find that line. So I'm guessing that what Harrison's asking for will help find that line.

I was at a storytelling session at ASGCT last year, and this, and this was, this was one of the defining ways that I've, I've structured a lot of my communication since, which is the problem. But therefore framework, that's ultimately what it comes down to. You've got to talk about the problem first. The problem that the other scientists might be able to relate to. Obviously there's other frameworks, but I found this one to be, to be so effective.

Problem.

Yeah, yeah. Problem talk. Like what? Why should I care if you're just telling me about what, how you can optimize my, my bioreactor run. And that's, that's the extent of your story. There's not a whole lot there. But if I can say your costs are too high, here's a way to reduce costs. Or like something like that. You're starting to. You have to identify pain that your audience is going to resonate with. Because ultimately people aren't proactively necessarily looking for enhancements. They're trying to eliminate pain. Yes, the pain comes in terms of cost or timelines or, or what have you. Yeah, exactly. And so you've got to identify that pain. You've got to identify that pain that resonates with your audience. And based off of that, that hook of but, I've got something, I've found something. We've identified something that fixes this, this pain. Therefore, we are presenting this data set that showcases that statement that I've made after. After that but the, the turn of the sentence. Right. That button, therefore is such a powerful word in the English language because you can start with one statement that everyone's agreeing with and then it's that turn where everyone's just like, where's the turn going? That everyone falls into that everyone is interested, people are interested in finding out what the follow up is. What's different, the combination of those three attributes of identifying pain, giving that turn, that but therefore statement, or the but and then therefore. Because of that, we have. Here's, here's the data that we have that fixes this problem that I've been talking about.

Often you see TED Talk, I think there's a TED Talk, actually, maybe it's not a TED Talk, but some talk by founders of south park, the people who made the cartoon specifically about this. But therefore is essentially how they're able to write all of these episodes in like a tenth of the time as every other new sort of animation studio out there. It's by simply using this like but therefore framework. So it's interesting that you mentioned that.

As well when you said about the problem as well is that I think a lot of people get stuck in that because they think, well, it's time consuming, I've got to identify this person's problem. So I need to work everything out about them and identify their problem. But I think people don't always realize that you can identify a problem that is common in the community. So we see that scientists in your field struggle with X. Yeah. And then you can go to the therefore but statements.

Right. So when I worked for a company called Verica Biotech a couple years ago, they were the first big boy job I had. They gave me my first shot in the industry. Forever thankful to them. Great company. They specifically talk about antiviral defenses that are inside of cells and how those antiviral defenses really hamper the ability to make viruses in them. Because, you know, all of us have antiviral defenses inside of our cells. That's a good thing. We don't want viruses to just willy nilly be able to replicate inside of our, inside of our cells. That's a problem when you take the same type of cells and stick them into a bioreactor and be like, hey, makes, makes some virus for me, will you please? And so they had developed these small molecule enhancers that like help turn off these antiviral defenses and increase yields. But anyway, there's the, the, the, the story there is, you know, your yields aren't where they need to be. Here's why. That's because, or you know, but the reason is there's the, there's this, there's this problem that you haven't considered of antiviral defenses inside of your cell line. Therefore, we have developed these small molecule enhancers that put these antiviral defenses to sleep. And as a result you can see an increase in yield. And, and so that's, that's a way that you could take something that could be presented pretty blandly and really make a compelling story around it. Because if you just like we have a small molecule enhancer that boosts yield, everyone's like, sure, great, everybody's got one of those, why should I care about yours? But when you can identify the specific pain and the unique reason why, you have insight that no one else has as to why their yields are low. Now you've got a story.

Yeah, I think the interesting element that you're, that you've pulled out there is it's this unique insight, right. Sort of this, this thing that they haven't thought about, right. It's like this unconsidered, you know, thing that's going on in their world that they don't know about it has an effect on their yield. And by identifying that and mentioning it, you're now like separating your solution, which is like the small molecule enhancer that helps yield. Right. That could be very similar for every other company out there, but you're shining a new light on it that now you're having a different conversation with that person. You're talking about how you can solve for the antiviral mechanisms of a cell, right? So it's like you're not talking about that as the specific problem or another competitor is basically like, yeah, throw a small molecule at it and your cells will grow faster, right. Or your virus will grow faster. Right. So it's like, you know, you're separating yourself in that conversation with that particular customer prospect or even the market. Right. If that's your message that you're sending out there.

From a marketing perspective, especially as people, as scientists get more and more skeptical of, you know, we just even see the world around us where so much can be faked anymore. If you're able to make a compelling story and then have that backed up with data, to your point, right, not just having a story, but having the data to back it, it's really going to resonate. And if you're able to do that through multiple channels so that they, they have multiple ways of assessing the truthfulness, it's not just one post that they see, but multiple different areas, multiple different ways of talking about it. If it's a video clip and then you've got a white paper and you're doing a webinar with someone and there's a conference presentation and you're. And people are able to assess these different combinations of truth that are around your, your story, then it really adds to the, to the benefit of it.

And I think one of the key elements that a lot of people mess up as well is sort of the problem and pain component you mentioned earlier, because there's actually a theory. Are you familiar with prospect theory or like loss aversion? It's like the general cause of this guy, Daniel Kahneman, he actually was awarded the Nobel Prize for it around decision making. Essentially, he found that people feel the pain of losing twice as much as they feel the joy of gaining. So like, if you were to lose $100, it's going to hurt you two times more than if you actually felt the gain of winning $100. What's your analogy for that one, Nick? I think you got a good one there.

I like, I tell you often that if I said to you I would give you 20 bucks, right? $20. But I want you to spend three hours on a phone, right, talking to somebody for three hours, and I would give you $20. There's very few people that would take that. Right. But when your cell slash mobile phone bill comes in and you are missing $20, you will phone everybody on that team. You get transferred to a manager to get your $20 back because they've taken this away from me. But would you pay $20 for the same length of time to be paid?

No way.

People, people react to pain far more than they do to the pleasure. To your, to your point. Right. And so if you are able to eliminate pain versus providing some sort of benefit is just so much more effective. Don't position, don't. Don't position your product or your offering as a vitamin supplement. Position. It, it's Tylenol for that massive migraine that's creeping up the back of your.

Neck or Bloody Mary, depending on what you did the night before. Right? Yeah, yeah. I think you really want to be the, you know, like, where you're, you're both. You have to like identify the sort of like root cause of the problem too, right? So it's like you have to identify the pain and the problem and the root cause of it, which you call that in your story very clearly, right? So the pain that somebody's having, the problem that they're having is they're not getting the yields that they need. Well, what is the cause of that? Well, it's these antiviral, you know, mechanisms in our cells. And so that's now like the root cause that they need to be taking enough. And then now you've got the solution to then fix that root cause problem. Because I like this analogy. It's like if your car broke down on the side of the road, what part would you buy first to fix it? You don't know. Because you don't know. You don't know why did it break down? You have to understand the root cause of why that pain or problem is occurring. And then by doing that, then you can determine what are the right things and actions to take. And I think a lot of people.

A couple of calls as well.

What's that?

The last couple of quarters are good. I just buy a new car, leave that one there. But if it's been a bad few quarters, I need to find out which part.

Yeah, I think a lot of people just miss out on that, right? They don't talk one. They're not really talking about the problem. They're not talking about the pain point. They don't address really that root cause. And so when they're only talking about the features and benefits of what they provide, it's falling on deaf ears.

Yeah, we do this, we do that.

I think another interesting way that you can leverage stories I'd be curious to get your thoughts on this is like when you're sharing a piece of data is then this is maybe more conversationally, but it's like you put up the data set or you're showing the data set, you have some sort of insight around why that data is relevant and then you follow it up with a like open ended question or some sort of like targeted question to them about it. Right. So the example might be, hey, I'm going to show you like this data set around how we can help generate yield for you in a better way. And then the insight is, hey, we're able to achieve this because we can actually, I don't know, reduce the level of these antiviral mechanisms in the cells. I'm curious, is this something that you've thought about addressing in your current workflows? So it's like you can almost call a data insight question or something, but it's like you have this flow of creating a story in the form of a question that then you can generate that conversation off of.

I haven't, I haven't looked into that as much. Right. But yeah, questions are very much something that are more likely to prompt a response from someone as opposed to saying, hey, this is why I think you should listen to this. If you can, if you can. If, if there's, if there's something left, not so much to the imagination but something left incomplete or there's a requirement of a response from you, it sticks more than just saying, this is our data, look at this. But if you can formulate the reason for the data around a question, it can be powerful. The risk there is. You just want to make sure that the question that you're making is something that someone actually cares about. Because I could just, you can very easily fall into the trap of just being like, well, don't you care about this? And, and, and then someone's like, well, no, I don't.

So.

Toodaloo. Yeah, you, you have to make sure you're, you're making a question that captivates the audience as opposed to kind of like they can imperceptibly know you're kind of just setting them up for, for something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then they just check out yeah.

You don't want to feel like a trap question or something.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah. Makes a lot of sense.

Because, like, if. So, for example, I. Look, again, I'm not a, I'm not a strictly a sales guy. But, and, and, but, you know, there's, there's kind of. You kind of see the post floating around LinkedIn every once in a while of, of, you know, the person who gets, you know, a very, a very persistent sales rep who. They're like, hey, we're not really interested in your solution right now. They're like, don't you want more leads in your, in your outbound or something like that? Right? And it's like, well, yes, but you're, you're just leading the question or you're like, I'm, I, you're like, the. It doesn't work.

Do you not want better yields? Like, what do you mean you don't want better yields?

Like, come on, buy this.

Yeah.

So you just gotta make sure that you, you, you use questions effectively. And there's lots of ways to screw that up.

What other I, I guess, sort of maybe tips or challenges have you seen when it comes to scientists trying to tell stories?

I think, again, it comes back to structuring it around a narrative format. Just presenting data isn't sufficient enough. It might be. And, and I will, I'll, I'll stand on this soapbox. One of the problems is that the way scientists get trained prevents them from really being able to have some creativity and put themselves out there. So, for example, you go, you go and do a master's, and then you do a PhD and you do a postdoc. And the only people that you ever present to are others who are also key, like peers in the field with you. And every, and every time you do a presentation, your presentation gets ripped to shreds. It's like, oh, did you do that t test correctly? Oh, like, I have questions about this piece of data over here. Oh, like how? Like, why'd you screw up that experiment? Like, like, why, why are you even presenting this data? And so you become terrified of ever putting yourself out there unless you've got flawless data. So what you get taught over years and years of training is that the only thing that really matters is having good data. And so creativity isn't really something you need to be considering at all. It's all about just having good data. And so when it comes back to this storyline, when it comes back to making stories, you're never taught it. Because the only thing that's Ever valued throughout all of your academic training is data. And so in terms of making compelling stories, it's something that needs to be learned. And, and you do need the help of people who haven't been down the academic path and have kind of had it beaten out of them any, any type of creativity beaten out of them in their storytelling. Right. So I think there's, there's probably this is, this is where if you, if you can start to make it. So a really great place I think to start is to just start using analogies that can help you explain some sort of scientific concept in terms of objects that people understand. So instead of talking about, you know, the innate antiviral defense mechanisms that are endogenous within producer cell lines, you can make it somewhat analogous to, you know, a castle and how there's a bunch of angry men inside of the castle that if you try to break into the castle and, you know, cook in the kitchen, they're going to beat you up. And, and everybody understands that because everyone can now visualize that and see it. And one of the really powerful ways that I think scientists could start to hone that skill, that was really useful for me in the past when I was still in academia. Go tutor second year or first year biology students because your, your only job is to help them understand the material. And one of the most effective ways that you can do that is to relate the material to other things that they can grasp in the real world and that. And because if you just give your spiel, they're going to look at you blankly and be like, I don't understand it. Do it again. Because you work for them. And so you're, you're kind of forced to find analogies and stories that work to help explain the data. And going to do that and going back to those first and second year students cannot just be something you get paid for, but it can really force you to refine your storytelling and science communication abilities.

I say the funny thing is you're saying that about creativity and like constrained thinking. I've heard this a few times recently from people that they say it's hard for people who have been through study and to come up with novel ideas and that normally a lot of these sort of out there crazy ideas in science or in any industry come from the people that have gone into it and not actually got a formal background in training. Because you don't try and build your idea based upon something else because you don't know something else. And I think this is similar to what you Say you just have to come up with creativity and you're not constrained. And I think that's really important. But I love the idea about training people. I think that if you can distill an idea or a piece of information down and make someone else who's got no experience understand it, then you can actually, you truly understand and can tell a story. I often have to do this. I have three children. I'm always trying to explain to them what I want to do, what I do. My daughter's convinced I'm going to take her to a lab to do crispy Jean engineering to build a bird slash goat slash guinea pig or something. It was, I can't remember. But she understood the concept so she could do that.

Oh, that's great.

I wish her all the best in making that hybrid.

Exactly. She's powerful. Like she's only about 10. She's going to make me go there. I'm going to be on some weird like crime watch program where I've created the mutant animal I shouldn't have.

Nice.

Oh, that's great. Well, Ben, this has been awesome. I think we talked about a lot of great stuff that I think, you know, not only scientists, but sales reps, anybody kind of making the move and needs to communicate more effectively. Whether it's through communicated data, communicating your stories around their product or service. Right. It's just how important power and powerful stories can be. But before we go, got one last question for you. If, if there was like one thing that you think, you know, sales reps in the industry should stop doing, what do you think it would be?

You've got to stop being quiet on LinkedIn. You've got to, if, if all you're using it for is to cold DM people and you know, connect and then pitch slap. I'm, I'm, I'm sorry, it's. You're missing out on a extremely powerful tool where, if you make valuable content inside of your niche and the key is to provide value without a sell, most of the time that content can be in the feed of a lab technician or a CEO. The, the algorithm doesn't care. And so there is a way for your face to be memorable to people high ranking in, in, in the company or even people who are in your own peer group. When you are willing to take the time, provide value and then every once in a while ask for something. But, but it's hard and it, and it takes time and yet. And yeah, my career is kind of. Yeah, but, but, but, but my, but my career Like I could, I can attribute a large percentage of my success to being active on LinkedIn and providing value to other people inside of cell and gene therapy. It's such a powerful platform and most people are sleeping on it and using it wrong.

I mean, this, our, this conversation happened because of LinkedIn. Right? You put stuff out on LinkedIn. I was putting stuff out on LinkedIn. We're like, hey, we should talk about stuff on the podcast. And so, you know, that's how it happens. Right. And so, yeah, I think it really is underutilized by a lot of people. You know, I know the content that you put out gets a lot of great feedback and I think it's another feedback mechanism too. It's like, hey, if I put out this contact content, you can see how it's resonating, how it's being engaged with and it can inform how you might want to interact with your other types of messaging that you're using. So.

Exactly. It's a great place to just kind of figure out what kind of messaging works.

Yeah.

Okay. If this post pops off, awesome. I'm going to go back and look at, see what makes it compelling. If a post doesn't do well, I've learned something about how not to make a light bulb kind of thing with my thumbs up. But the, the other thing that's very important as well in using LinkedIn. We were talking about this earlier. Being able to give, especially scientists who are very, very skeptical people, multiple ways of learning about a data. So it's not just one source that they're learning from. LinkedIn is a great way to do that, specifically in building trust around you as a person. Because it's one thing for me to go to a random company and say, hey, I'm working for this company called nanomosaic. We have this full empty partial ratio for AV machine that allows you to get those results from crude sample in just a couple hours. They're like, okay, that's great, I'm not interested right now. But if you're connected with that person or you're making content that's around that ecosystem that from time to time is showcasing that you know what you're talking about, that this is a problem that a lot of other people are experiencing as well, other people are talking about it. It starts to build multiple proof points around both trust in you, but also trust that the problem is appreciated by other people inside of the industry.

Oh, that's an interesting angle.

Yeah.

That'S a, I think that's, yeah, that's a good interesting angle. I hadn't thought about that one. Right. It's like you're creating the belief in the problem and that it's worth solving. I like that.

Yeah. Scientists are some of the most skeptical smart people in the world. You're not going to be able to convince them once but if you, if you build trust over 17 different pieces of content there's, there's a higher likelihood of conversion in the maxi trusting you when you say that you they have a problem.

Yeah. That's great. Awesome. Well, Ben, this has been packed full of great information for everybody out there so you'll probably want to go back and rewind back to the beginning. Listen to this again because there's a lot of nuggets in here that you want to take away. So Ben, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been a pleasure.

Thanks for having me guys. This was great.

Cheers. Ben.

Sam.