[Sales] Small actions create big results with Jessica Rietbrock

I didn't set out at the beginning, when I started on my LinkedIn journey, to have any kind of sales revenue coming through that. I know I shouldn't say that as a salesperson, but it was purely just so people might know me and that I would build up that network and that I would show that I'm genuine and demonstrate who I am as a person and that salespeople are just decent humans most of the time who just want to help you out. Having those multiple touch points, having that recognition or anything. Oh, I'm sure I've seen her before. That helps. And that's, that's been part of the process. And I think that part of the reason I've been successful and that creativity, you have to be, you just have to be, because you don't have that brand recognition to fall back on. You know, in the reagent space, at least in Antibody, they know it's that way that people will look for the most cited antibody. Right. And if you're not there with the most citation, which a lot of the time we might not be, which isn't because we don't have great products, but that's just the nature of this, the point in the business that we're at. Yeah, you just have to, you have to do different things. You have to get creative.

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 up level 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. Hey, welcome to another episode of the Sales DNA podcast. We have a great one for you here today. We've got Jessica Reebrock. She is an account manager at Protein Tech and you may have seen her on LinkedIn because she posts a lot. She has a lot of great stories. But one of the main reasons we wanted to have her on is that she just came off an incredible Q2 in an environment where, from a LinkedIn poll I ran the other day, 80% of reps struggled in Q2. And so we wanted to pick her brain to figure out what some of the tips and tricks and strategies are that she's using to be so successful in a time like this. What stood out to you, Nick?

Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I think a lot of what she talked about, LinkedIn, about being yourself and actually telling your own story. I really enjoyed that and how that will gain more interest. I enjoyed that we had to call her out for being so modest and make her kind of the real reason she had a good Q2. Yeah, it was really good episode.

Yeah, Lots of good stuff. I won't give away all of the secrets, so you'll just have to listen to it and hear them directly from Jessica. So with that, what do I always say, Nick?

Dive right in.

All right, let's do it. Hey, Jessica, welcome to the show. We're excited to have you here.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Hey, nice to meet you too.

So, as you know, we like to ask everybody the same question. Give us a crazy or funny story that's happened in your career.

Yeah. So I had a long and hard think about this to make something that was funny and appropriate. But there was a. There was a couple of things that came to mind. Weirdly enough, they're all from the same period of my life, which is I did an industrial placement during my undergrad at Roche in Switzerland in Basel. And I remember I was very keen, as you are in a new job to kind of impress the boss. So he used to come into our lab. It was a lab placement I was doing. He used to come into the lab about once or twice a day for catch ups, to talk about the science, to look at my animals and, you know, talk about the project. And anyway, the first time he came into the lab, he said, oh, do you like coffee? And I, as a early 20 year old, thought I must be in like a frothy coffee with milk or whatever. So I was like, yeah, of course I like coffees. What I didn't realize at the time was that he meant espresso and I did not like espresso. So I sat down to a little cup of espresso. It's like, okay, how do I do this? Can I grill and bear it? So I drank drunk, that one. I managed to put some sugar in it. That was accepted. Drunk, that. And then for an entire year, at least once, if not twice a day, I drank espresso for the entire place. And I never told my boss that I didn't like espresso. By the end of it, by the way, I did. Well, I could just about tolerate it. But that was, yeah, one of the many occasions I tried to. Tried to impress and got stuck. So.

Yeah, yeah, that's a lot. That's a lot of espresso for.

There's a lot of espresso. Yeah. But it meant I was able to join in on the loud discussion, so it's worth it. Sure.

Nice. Nick drinks like 15 cups of coffee a day, so.

Oh, really? Okay.

He's on the opposite side of the. He loves that. He loves it.

Stop mainlining it.

I think that's great. Awesome. Well, yeah, no, thanks for joining us. And so we're excited to hear maybe a little bit around your journey into sales, kind of where you're at today. Give us a little background there and then I think we've got some other great topics to dig into that everybody's going to want to listen to to get some secret sauce into what's working with sales nowadays.

Sounds good. Thank you.

Yeah. So maybe give us a little background. So how did you decide you wanted to get into sales? Maybe go from your journey from the, you know, undergrad to the lab? And you mentioned you didn't have a PhD, so kind of. How's that all come together?

Yeah, that's a good question. It was never. I get asked this a lot and thinking back, it was never the plan. So I didn't think when I was doing my undergrad, oh, I really want to be in sales. I mean, I had actually, interestingly enough, my first job was in sales. I worked for a company called Carphone Warehouse selling phones, which was not particularly exciting.

Selling phones. You're on the phone calling people, selling them a phone.

Well, they, they came into the store, so it was a little bit easier.

Got it. Yeah.

At least. But it didn't, you know, it had never occurred to me that I wanted to go into sales. So I just did my undergrad in medicinal chemistry because I love science. I love chemistry. Like I said, I did that placement in Switzerland. And I realized quite quickly when I came back to do my masters, I did a integrated masters. I didn't want to be in the lab anymore. Right. So. And you hear this story a lot. This probably isn't the first time you both heard this from a salesperson. But I didn't want to be in the lab. I love science. I love talking about it. But I was done. And I think I had a bit of a panic really, when it came to coming close to graduation because I thought, what am I going to do with my degree? I had kind of ummed an art about the PhD, but again, I decided I couldn't hack another 3, 4, 5, however many years in the lab. So I kind of fell, and I hate that phrase, but it's true. Fell into recruitment, actually. I can't remember how I came across this position, but it was a recruitment role. Executive search in the life sciences and diagnostics space. And I thought, okay, I'll give that a whirlwind. So that's what I did first when I graduated. And I think I was just happy at the time to have a job and to be going into something that kind of used my degree was a bit of a baptism of fire, let's call it. It wasn't. It wasn't for me, let's say, as an industry. And I know there's many brilliant recruiters that I've met since then who, you know, kind of are brilliant at their jobs and show that it can be a fulfilling career. But that particular role wasn't for me. But I picked up a lot of, I would say, very applicable skills for sales position. So I always joke that recruitment is basically sales, but your product is people. Sounds a bit messed up, but it's the best, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. Describe it so, you know, in terms of understanding what a client needed, active listening and understanding the business and negotiation and all of the great skills you need to be a good salesperson. I picked those up in a very. Yeah. In a good way. In that position. So thought, right, okay, this isn't the role for me, but what have I learned? What can I do? And that's where sales just seemed like an obvious choice. Right. So started looking and found a position down in Cambridge, working for a small company there. And I think originally my first position there was actually looking after the DAP region. So I was brought into that position because I have the. The German. So. And then it just went from there. And I think I just enjoyed that and then have never really looked back since that.

Nice. Yeah. It's a un. It's not a uncommon story of people, like, falling into sales. I think everybody says it the exact same way. It's like I fell into it. So it's definitely not uncommon.

We wind up loving sales. Right. So we should change it back to. I felt. And sales caught me. Right.

Yeah, that's good. Cells caught me. I like that.

I knew.

Yeah. So then. Okay, so then you. But then you also were at what most recently before your current company, you were at abcam. Right. So. And then you kind of made that transition into now protein tech, much smaller company. Maybe talk about. About, like, you know, the differences that you've noticed in those roles.

Yeah. So I think if just to go one step back, that first traditional sales position that I took up after the recruitment role, that was in quite a small company, so we were only about a hundred people, I think, at the time. And I think I'd got quite used to being in a small environment where everybody knew everybody. You know, I'd go down to logistics and say, hey, can you pop this in this parcel for my customer? You know, the. The order management team would come over and say, hey, can you call this customer and chase them for this? And, you know, it's very. Everybody knew everybody. And you really got that. Again, I hate the phrase, it's a cliche, but wearing many hats. And you learned a lot. Right. So there was some challenges that I came across that taught me a lot, and I got the opportunity to learn so much about the business that I don't think I would have if I'd gone into one of the giants in the industry. Right. So I really enjoyed that. And then that company was acquired by abcam. So I guess I joined ABCAM through acquisition. It wasn't necessarily a career choice, although obviously there was a lot of great things that came out of that transition. Although at the time when it was announced, I was obviously terrified. But then I was suddenly in a company that was, say, I can't remember now, but about 1500-1800 people. So suddenly that felt like a giant compared to what I was used to.

Right.

Wasn't helped by the fact that we were acquired during the pandemic. Literally. I think my first day of official day at ABCAM was as the lockdown was happening. So that didn't help in terms of integrating into a huge company or huge for my life. So. And there, you know, you lose touch with different departments, how they operate. You don't know everybody the way that you do before. It's much less. For me, it felt much less familiar. And, you know, there's real great benefits, obviously, on the flip side of that, being in a bigger organization will process it a lot, lot of the time or resource. The brand recognition was wildly different. The small company I'd been in was called Expedian, which if you've ever tried to call cold call from a company called Expedian, you get what? Expedia? No, they call it Company Experian. Not fun. Right. So whereas that did not happen in abcam, everybody knows abcap. So that was already quite a big difference for me, quite a shift. And then, you know, I Did. I was there for quite some time and I think I realized the. That's the size of the company. I think I just operate better in a smaller company where I can be a bit more creative and have a bit more input and maybe be a bit more. Don't want to say influential, but have, well, have more influence over things and a bit more that. Yeah, exactly.

Creativity. When you're in a big system, you have to play your part in that cog and you've got more freedom. You can show some creativity to solve the problem. And I think that's what I like.

Yeah, exactly. And that's. That's been the main difference for me. And I think I realized that, you know, I was. I'd come for a few years and it was great. But I think I realized that towards the end that for me. And they've now since been acquired by Danaho, so obviously that going to become much more pronounced, I presume. So, yeah, for me I think it was the right time to move back in the sense of the size of the company, back to a smaller company. And for me, yeah, creativity is the main thing. Right. I have, you'll see from my LinkedIn, I do a lot of stuff there and I have daft ideas. I bring alpacas all around evio with me and I just, you know, have fun with it. So that's the main difference, I would say.

Yeah. I mean, it's interesting you bring up creativity because we just had another conversation with a sales leader from Takarabaya and he was talking about how he's built a culture around creativity. So he wants to basically he sets the expectations and the goals for the team, but he doesn't like dictate how to get there, so he allows them to be creative. And then what he does is he gets everybody into like these team meetings and says like, what's working? And they all learn from each other. And so they're like fostering this like, culture of creativity, which I think is really cool. And so it's interesting that you're bringing up creativity here and also tying it back to, you know, you just came off a really awesome Q2. Right. So it's like, well, maybe there's a correlation here between being creative, coming up with interesting ideas and then also like sales success.

Yeah, I think so. I think if you have. It depends. Right. So if you have. I know that for some people the creativity doesn't come naturally and it may be not as comfortable for them. So I think for some individuals it probably is easier and you get the best out of them if you kind of. I don't say spoon feed, but if you give them the ideas and you make suggestions. But to somebody like me, I think it. I almost feel shackled if I'm, you know, given a. If I'm given a certain way of working and can only work in that way. And I think that isn't the best way to get the best out for me. So I think, yeah, you know, you've alluded to the fact I had a great Q2, which I'm very happy about. But part of that, I think part of that also comes from being in a smaller company. Right. We're not as well known as a lot of the other big names in the antibody market. And you do have to be creative. You have to think about how, how am I going to get that brand recognition, how am I going to stand out, how am I going to be different? A lot of the stuff I do on LinkedIn is for that reason. And, you know, I'm, I've never, I didn't set out at the beginning, when I started on my LinkedIn journey, to have any kind of sales revenue come in through that. I know I shouldn't say that as a salesperson, but it was purely just so people might know me and that I would build up that network and then I would, you know, show that I'm genuine and demonstrate who I am as a person and that salespeople are just decent humans most of the time who just want to help you out.

Right.

They're not, you know, the old age cocktails.

Most people aren't. I don't know why this still exists, because most salespeople I've ever talked to aren't like sleazy sales.

Yeah, no.

I just don't know why I'm keeping it alive.

Give me your money.

I don't want anything else.

You know that, Nick. Yeah, but I think, I think that's where it came from. I just, you know, wanted to show that, show who I am, my true self. And I think that's part of the reason. I think people who. And I think Amber mentioned this when you had here, you know, having those multiple touch points, having somebody already recognize your name. And it helps that my name's a bit, you know, funky, at least in the uk. Um, having that recognition or anything. Oh, I'm sure I've seen her before. That's. It helps. And that's, that's been part of the process and I think that part of the reason I've been successful. And you know, that creativity, you have to be, you just have to be, because you don't have that brand recognition to fall back on. And in our, you know, in the reagent space, at least in antibodies, I know it's that way that people will look for the most sighted antibody. Right. And if you're not there with the most citation, which a lot of the time we might not be, which isn't because we don't have great products, but, you know, that's just the nature of this, the point in the business that we're at. Yeah. You just have to. You have to do different things. You have to get creative. So I definitely think part of the.

Reason, yeah, I think there are a lot. But what people don't realize is that LinkedIn is your personal brand. Right. But it reflects on your company. So if you're doing well with your personal branding, it carries across into your credibility, into your touch point, into your scientific acumen, all of these things. And I think that's underestimated on its importance. And like you say, your branding could be taking an alpaca everywhere with you, and it sort of gives you that image alongside your credibility. I've often been referred to in the past when my beard was being up bigger. I'll go to the guy with a lip pierce and a big beard.

Right.

It's just a recognition point, but goes along with that credibility.

I think you're right as well. I think it is under utilized still. And it's something I talk about all of the time. I always say, you know, I started a series of kind of sales Nuggets, or no LinkedIn Nuggets for salespeople. And then it just became basically how to small tips and tricks of how to use LinkedIn efficiently. And one of them, I really called out leadership and I said, look, you need to be helping your teams. You need to be advising them to use LinkedIn in whichever way they feel comfortable. Right. Not everybody's as happy as I am to share my life and, you know, be a super person, you know, share personal stories and be very vulnerable. But this copy and paste of product regurgitated content that I see all of the time, it drives me absolutely crazy. And I think a lot of people still haven't seen the benefits of LinkedIn or haven't learned to properly use it, which I think is a shame. And I will continue to bang that drum as long as I'm around because it's. It's crazy to me.

I honestly wish I was more consistent that Sounds like an easy thing to fix, but I wish I was more consistent in my posting because I love it and see the benefit. Yeah, but yeah, you're right. Too many people use it as, oh, this is my catalog from, rather than this is my personality that I'm sharing.

I think one thing that you do really well is you pro post personal stories, and I think that is why you've gotten the following that you've gotten now. Not everybody has to do that. Right. There's. I've also seen other people be really successful because they post like, industry insights or they post like, interesting takes on content that exists. And so like, one of the things that we do when we work with people to try and help them through LinkedIn more from like, how do you generate, like, leads? And actually from like a revenue perspective, we talk about like, curating content more so than creating content because sometimes it's a big hurdle for the average person to create fresh ideas and fresh content. To your point about creativity earlier. Right. It's not everybody's strongs you. And, and so if you can curate content, you could take other content that people have put out there. That's interesting, but you have to have your take and you have to have your, like, point of view around it. And then you can distribute it through your posts, through comments, and through, you know, messages and connection requests to your target audience. I think that makes it a little bit more approachable for people. So. Yeah, that's kind of.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I think part of the reason that I have, I don't want to say fallen back on, but I think part of the reason I've adapted my style or of the content that I create more than curate is because I think we mentioned earlier before this call, I don't have a PhD, right. So I would say my understanding of science is good. And it clearly I can, you know, have the conversations I have and get to the level I need to, to be able to do my job. But when it comes to, you know, reading really, really technical papers and having my own opinions on things, would I say I'm up my strength? Probably not. So I've kind of played to my own strengths, which is, you know, being vulnerable and coming up with daft ideas and sometimes I write poems and do stupid things. But that's, that's, that's my way of showing up on LinkedIn and actually I found. Which has been quite nice and heartwarming. A lot of people have kind of reached out to me and said, oh, that made Me feel really good today, and that's how I'm feeling. And that's. That's been, for me, I guess my. Well, I don't think I really have a niche because it changes all the time. But that's been my take on how to use LinkedIn. But like you say, Harrison, it's a lot easier, especially for scientists or, you know, people who don't feel as comfortable creating content to take something. And the key, as you mentioned, is to have your take on it, not just repost. And I've seen, you know, the title of the article. Well, that's not particularly insightful, but if you can have that insight through being an industry expert, that's a really good way to use LinkedIn as well.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, the key, the key is to have your own take.

Yeah.

I think like the three most common posts that I see from sales reps that do it wrong is they post something just product related. Right. Which we talked about. Right. It's just like, hey, we just launched this new product or come buy our new products. Right. Or it's a link to their publication or a link to their blog post about some topic with nothing else on it. Right? Just the link and they just post it. Or number three, it's a picture of them at a booth and they're saying, come by booth 4345 at bio. Come see us and talk to us. Those are the three types of posts that I think every life science sales rep is putting out there. And it's also like the three that probably get the least engagement, I imagine, of, like, what's possible.

Yeah, you're right. And it's, it's funny, I can't remember where I read it. It might have been. I don't if you've read any of Daniel Disney's content on use of LinkedIn for salespeople, but I remember reading his book. I think it was him who said it, but either him or somewhere else. They described it as kind of buying your right to post about yourself and your product. So you create content that's engaging and useful for people in other ways. And then every now and then you slip in something that's completely selfish, I. E. Like you've just described. You know, I will do that. A product post or an event post, but because you've kind of created enough engagement and people have got enough, you've delivered enough value in everything else that you do that every now and then, it's. It's okay to post about yourself and something that's selfish, I guess. So that was quite a good way for me to, to yeah. Understand those posts that you've just described. But when it's only that it gets a bit boring and like I've said, the regurgitation of content from one company, the same thing by every single person in the company drowns out link the LinkedIn feed and it's quite boring in my opinion.

Yeah, I 100% agree with that. So I mean, and I'm sure you'd probably agree with this too though for the people that don't post at all on LinkedIn is to probably go post and start doing something and then you're going to learn from it along the way.

Yeah.

Because like even when you go to tell like to pitch your product as an example, you can do it through a story that is interesting that will get people like, that will get engagement on LinkedIn. Like you can tell the story behind the publication or the story behind the data set. Right. We had another guy here, Ben McLeod, who is great at this. Like he tells all these great stories, you know, specifically in like a very, very niche part of like the AAV market. Right. But it's like that is something that he is talking about regularly and using. He's got like a little story framework that he uses which is like problem but therefore. So it's like here's the problem, but this thing is happening therefore like you use this solution. And so if you just tell a story around your product or service, it's going to be much more engaging for everybody than just posting about it and you know, the features and stuff that you've got.

One of the issues is though, people are gotta get over themselves in some ways. Right. So you're not as important as you think you are and you're not as insignificant as you think you are.

Right.

So some people will care about what you say and you can be silly because you're not too important to be like silly in yourself. And I think most people fall into one of those two camps. I'm either gonna be business and serious or I've not done a PhD or I've not done X. So I can't post about this. No one else. But when you're posting your experience like you are, it's your experience. No one's more of an expert in that than you.

Right.

Good way of looking at it. And I think you're right. I think one of the biggest hurdles is yeah, getting over the fact that people aren't going to judge you. And yet I'M sure there are people who think, oh, why am I seeing another alpaca in my LinkedIn feed? And I'm sure there are some people thinking that's just absolutely crazy. Why is she doing this again? In which case I'd say, well, stop on. Stop following me then. But, you know, I guess I've been quite fortunate in the fact that I've always been quite stubborn, which probably my parents were so happy about when I was doing. But I've always just been quite, you know, not always, but I've been quite confident in myself. And I just thought, you know, what I'm going to do, what I want to do. And it started off as something that makes me really happy. So I really just enjoy writing content. I enjoy writing things and I enjoy, you know, making people laugh. I'm a bit of a clown, you know, I enjoy just doing tough things and trying things out. So for me, it started more, like I say, so people would get to know me, but also just as a. Something that I enjoyed doing. And then it snowballed and I got that, you know, that positive feedback that people were relating. Like you're saying, like, my stories are my stories. Nobody can tell me I'm right or wrong about my experience. But funnily enough, actually a lot of people had had similar experience and had. Have felt the way that I felt along various aspects of my journey. So, you know, people started to relate. And I think then once you start to get that feedback that people are enjoying what you're doing and, you know, you get that message in your inbox saying, thanks a lot, that helped me out today, or you get somebody telling you they've used your. Have had people tell me they've used my post as an example in their training. They've given. So that's quite, you know, those small tidbits of, yeah, positive feedback. Then you. Then you kind of set off, but it's that first step. You've just got to get over yourself that first time and just think, what's the worst that's going to happen? Assuming you don't say anything ridiculous or offensive or something that's going to get you in trouble. But yeah, once you've got over that part, I think it's. It gets easier and easier.

I can say the alpacas are slightly triggering for me because I was once dragged around a car park by an alpaca.

What'd you do? What'd you do to it?

Okay, so I'll keep it short, but I was working at a zoo, right? Because I've had many ridiculous jobs. I was working at a zoo and I was told, were you on the.

Inside or wait, were you on the inside? You were behind the cages?

No, no. This is what. So the alpacas had a good area, but one of them didn't socialize as well. So they used to take this alpaca for a walk to his favorite tree where it eat apples. And they're like, nick, you take the alpaca. And what they didn't tell me was, don't go this way round. Because if you go this way around, it sees the apple tree and runs. You have to go this way around where it doesn't see the apple tree until it's close enough that you can control it. And they intentionally sent me in a way where it would see the apple Tree and like 100 meter distance where it just takes off and I'm like holding on like a flag behind it, just waving behind an alpaca as it goes across the house.

Okay, I won't be sending you one of these then. It's true.

It's one of three alpaca stories I have, but I'll leave it at that.

You've got me.

The fact that you have two more.

We'll go back to the podcast. I'll tell you later.

We don't need that. Yeah, we'll just, we'll just rebrand this to the alpaca podcast.

Yeah, podcast.

Well, back to back to reality. So clearly LinkedIn is working for you. And it sounds like it's also helping from a, you know, sales perspective and that it's easier for people recognize your name. You're getting more responses to when you reach out to people. Right. There's some sort of connection that people reach out to you directly. But I think would be great to understand what else is working because I ran a poll the other day on LinkedIn and it's like 80% of reps were struggling in Q2 or had struggled in Q2. It's just like 69% were, you know, basically saying it's really hard out there. And then, you know, another, you know, 11% like, meh, it was tough. So yeah, it's, it's hard out there. And you were one of the few who actually said you were crushing it. So, yeah, definitely want to hear, you know, some of the details around that.

I think, I mean, part of it is the nature of our business. Like, you know, alluded to where one of the smaller companies, but that's changing massively, I think more and More people are starting to, you know, wake up and realize who we are and that we have great products and maybe they should be considering us. And just because the we're not top of the citation list. Although that's also changing. I think they're realizing, oh, they're a great company, great quality products. It sounds like a pitch right now, but, you know, where people are recognizing us. Right. And I think part of that has been building a really strong team globally, having that presence, being, you know, in the field a lot. So we do a lot of events. I know a lot of people are kind of moving away from doing events. I've heard that feedback from a lot of companies. But we've seen the impact that being out in the field and getting that brand recognition has. So I think, I mean, the antib antibody market and the other kinds of reagents we sell is massive. And it's just, I think that a lot of it is just being, being out and about, being present and having a great offering. Right. I mean, it's difficult to sell if you don't have a great product. It's difficult. You know, it's a, it's a quite a saturated market, to be fair. But we have a lot of reasons why we win and why people should work with us. So, you know, I, I often joke it's quite easy for me, really, which sounds terrible to the people who maybe are struggling at the moment. But when you've got a great product, great price, great delivery time, what more do you need, really? So it's, you know, people still need a lot of antibodies. They weren't previously buying from protein tech and now they're starting to wake up and realize maybe they should be. So it's a good position to be in.

I'm going to completely counter that and say, bullshit. There's something you're doing that is working because I work for companies that had, well, I mean gauge maybe not worth. Companies engage with companies that had a great product and also had people that said, don't worry, it sells itself, we don't need a sales team. And if that was true, what you just said, those companies would be amazing.

Yeah, no, you're right. I mean, do you know what? As I just said that as called me out on my bs, one thing that I've had. I think I did a post about this.

You're being humble is the problem. You're being humble, that's the issue. Yeah, we want to know the details. Brag. Brag for yourself a bit.

Stop being British.

And I'M so bad for that. You know, one of the things. And actually I did a post about this the other day. I even gave this as a freebie to the sales community. Although I did say, unless you work for a competitor, in which case don't, don't use this tip. One thing we are consistently getting across the team is feedback about how quick we are to respond. Now, this to me blows my mind, right? This is. This is not, to me, something I am doing. Well, it might. It clearly is something I'm doing really well. But I get this 90% of my emails, somebody asks for a quote and they thank me immediately for how quick I am. And to me that seems crazy because that's not skill, that's not technical ability. That is really just being responsive. Now, I don't know if what's happening out there with the companies, I don't know what's going on, but clearly something's happening because we're getting this feedback. And it's not just me that's across the team. I get in this feedback that we're quick, our customer service time is quick, our technical support is quick. You know, I'm probably giving away all these fantastic tips to the competition here, but that, that's genuinely something that we hear a lot now. Like, I say that to me, isn't anything super duper fantastic. But why is everybody thanking me for it? Maybe that's something.

Well, it's interesting that it's just something. So it's funny because we've talked to companies in the past and when you talk, you listen to their sales process. And some companies have like, ridiculously laborious, like, approval workflows and all of these different systems that they have to go to just to get a quote or has to go through like nine different people to get their opinions on it. And so your sales process is also a way to differentiate yourself. Right. Especially if you're in a crowded market. So if you're in a market that is saturated, lots of stuff going on, if you can be the first person that gets back to them with a quote, they could just take that quote, be like, hey, this is good. This is good enough. We're just going to go buy this thing. Yeah, it's like where speed can really, really matter. And the way that you sell has more of an impact in a crowded market than if you're the only option that somebody has. And so it really, it's interesting you call out speed there because it's the little things, I think, that really matter. And it's you know, maybe less so about this technique or that technique. And it's just like, are you responsive? Getting them the information that they need in a timely fashion faster than everybody else? And it's, you know, to your point, you've got a good, good product.

It's true. And I think the nature of the business that we're in is it's reagents. Right. It's not an instrument that you have to spend six months thinking about and comparing with other instruments. And there's not a million pounds at stake. It's small, frequent orders. And like you just said, you know, somebody gets a quote from me and quite often not so much, you know, for one antibody vial, but quite often people. A lot of the academic processes require maybe three quotes to compare side to side or whatever. But quite often, like I say, they get a quote directly from me if they're waiting for another couple of days for somebody else to say, all right, the first in the one I'm going to buy, people don't have time to wait around a lot of the time as well. So speed delivery is a big thing. You know, being able to deliver quickly. Most of our orders go out next day. I think it is about 95% or something go out next day. So people aren't waiting around for our products. They know they can get them.

And you're getting the product to people faster than they can get a quote from some company.

Yeah, literally in some cases is actually, that is actually a fact. So, you know, and, and the point you made around process, that's absolutely true. You know, I've. I've had enough experience now and worked for enough companies to have seen different processes. And that can largely be related to the size of the company and various complexities. But I am responsible for my territory. What I, what I do affects my number. I'm trusted to, to do what I've got to do to hit my target. Trust is a big element, I think there aren't 25 hoops to jump through. If there's something a bit bigger, I might ask, you know, my boss what he suggests. But ultimately there is the trust there that I'll get done when I have to get done, and that's what I do. So I don't have to wait around for anybody else to approve anything to up to a limit, obviously.

So I think that comes back to the freedom again, actually, like going full circle of what we've spoken about. It is something that I've always enjoyed doing and I think a lot of good. Not Saying I'm good, but in general, good sales leaders I've seen is that they will treat their reps. If you are a territory rep, your territory is your business and you're the managing director of that business and you need to run it to an extent how you see fit. And it sounds like that's what you're doing in terms of customer success and making sure the customers are catered more quickly. And that's a big thing. There's different kinds of businesses and not all of them have to be amazing brand new technology.

Right.

Some of them can just be excellent customer success or excellent operations. And then if you excel at that, people go to you.

Yeah, absolutely.

Oh, Nick froze. Great. Okay, there he is. He's back. One other thing I want to dig into because we're coming up on time here, which is the difference for you. It sounds like there's a difference between new business and existing business. If you've got an existing customer who's coming back to you and they're like, hey, can I get a quote for this product? I kind of know you, and you give them a quote, those are going to happen, right? Those are kind of just going to come in on a regular occurrence. Obviously, you got to keep them happy, you got to go back to them and, you know, keep your name top of mind. But how does that differ from like a new customer and how does that sales process different for you where you're coming into a new opportunity, this person is using abcam, somebody else, whoever, and it's like, how do I come in and I have to like, get them to switch to us?

Yeah, it's. It's obviously much harder. And I think in the reagent space especially, people have often validated a reagent in a protocol. And you hear, my lab's been doing it this way for the last 10 years. Why would I change now to me, unless I can see a very good reason scientifically why it would make sense to swap to us? I don't try and go after that business because people have spent 10 years approved, you know, getting through that. It works well for them. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. That's the way I approach it. If there is some value in the product I'm offering, if it's going to be faster, it's going to be more reproducible, which is a big thing in our industry. If I'm going to get them that material quicker, if it's good to be, or maybe sometimes it's just price you know, I don't like to lead with price, but sometimes it is just that. I've heard that a lot. You know, budgets are getting smaller and smaller and smaller, but prices are going up and up and up, so people's amount they have to spend is getting less. So if you can help them out with price, then brilliant. And like I said, I don't like to lead with that because it's not the number one thing usually. But so in one century, if they're already bound into a certain supplier and it's working well for them, I'm not going to try and change that. Right. But in our market, if, or in, in the antibody space at least, if somebody then switches projects and starts looking at a new protein and they need a new antibody, that's where I would like them to be thinking about protein tech. That's where I'd like them to say, hey, Jess, actually, I'm looking for something. Do you have what we're looking for? And that's where that early where the protocol's just being developed, that's where I come in. Now, there are cases, of course, where people say, oh, I'm really struggling with this antibody supply, or it's too expensive or they just can't deliver, in which case, fine, I'm happy to look at that. But I've also, I've seen a lot that, you know, I talk about brand recognition. Once a lab starts to work with protein tech, the first hurdle for me is going, I've never heard of you before. Why have I never seen you come across citations? Why did nobody ever talk to me? Had somebody say to me a couple of months ago, if you've got antibodies against 13,000 targets, why have I never heard of you? I said, that's a great, great question. I'm surprised you haven't. But it's, I'm not also not surprised because there are a lot of researchers who haven't. Right. So there it's that, getting them over that initial. Kind of not so sure about working with you, but I found that once they are, and you know, we offer samples and we have small sizes of antibodies, which is quite different. So people can test in a small amount, relatively risk free after that point, and they've seen the experiment results for themselves after that, it's, it's quite easy. And you know, I've had some labs just say, well, you've got great service, great delivery, great price, we'll start to switch other antibodies out where we can't. So I guess I would say if there's not a real benefit. I kind of leave those people behind. But plant the seed that for next project it might be good to think of us. I don't find there's much I think you did a post the day orison about kind of sailing early and understanding where you can win early rather than wasting your time trying to convince somebody to do something that isn't going to add much value. And I think that's what's key in, in this, in, in this rigid space as well.

I think also in this market too, this market is hard enough then to like chase your time on bad deals. Like it's hard enough to sell like things don't waste your time on bad deals that aren't going to close where you can't like if you can't align. This is a great example, right. I always tell people if you can't align your product or service to a high value and urgent initiative that's happening within that company or within that lab that you don't have a chance like you just, you're just not going to get budget for. It's not worth your time. And like to your point, if you're, if they don't have a new program being spun up, right, which is, that's urgent because they have to basically work on that program right now or if they don't have an active issue with a supplier that they can't get something to work again, that's another urgent, high priority thing that has to get done. If you can't align to one of those things, there's no point in trying to convince somebody of making a change when it's not going to be of use. And so you just have to align to these initiatives and know where you fit and then pick the deals to focus on.

Exactly. That's exactly.

From all the reps I've ever worked with. The ones that routinely get close achieve smash targets are the ones that know where to focus their time and energy because we're all busy. And the ones that are always not necessarily bad race but struggle a bit more with that. You can always see it because their, their pipeline's bloated and they're like, well he said he might come back to us in a year and a half. So he's just in right just in case, you know, like whereas there's no.

Match there where they're always pushing the deal out every single month, every single quarter, every deal review, it's like where are we at with this month? Oh, it's coming in next month. It's coming in next month, next quarter. Awesome. Well, that is pretty much it for this episode. I know we're right on time. A little bit over, actually, but this has been such a great conversation. So thank you, Jessica, for being here with us and sharing your wisdom. And hopefully everybody out there can take something to help them here in Q3, which is, you know, be quick, and you'll focus your time on the deals that actually matter.

So, yeah.

Thanks, Jessica.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you.