[Sales] What not to do from a former lab manager with Alison Leightley

Hey, yeah, I've been really enjoyed. Today's one. We had Alison Lightly on the podcast today and and she's got a huge amount of experience in different areas. She's been not only a scientist, a lab manager, an award winning rep and then a senior leader in the marketing with loads of great insights and that view across all of it, it was really good fun. Also, I know Alison myself a little bit, so it's good to have someone on the call. I really enjoyed.

Yeah, I think you touched on some great topics there. We also go deep into how to run an effective event. 2024, right here, right now, more people are going to be investing in events and so we kind of talk through all of the different playbooks and steps and actions that you should take to run an effective event and then we sort of wrap it up with how you can get on the same side of the table with marketing to be more effective as a sales rep. All in all, really great episode. And what do I always say, Nick, let's jump in.

Hey, Alison, really pleased to have you on the show today. How's it going?

Hi, Nick. Yeah, really pleased to be here. Yeah, well, thank you and lovely to see you as well, Harrison.

Yeah, you too. We're really excited to have you and we did prep you for this question. We start off every episode with the same one. Can you give us a crazy or funny story that's happening in your career?

Yeah, sure. So when I was working in sales and it was my first sales role, so just bear that in mind, young, fresh salesperson, I got a customer inquiry asking whether I could go in and talk about a protein workflow. Pretty standard. Went in, had my branded notebook, rebranded pen, everything all laid out on the table. As you do start going through the conversation and the customer mentions a product that I've instantly recognized is a competitor product. And so I've said to him, you know, I'm really sorry, I think you've got me slightly confused. We don't sell that product. He's completely ignored me, just carried on talking about this one product. I thought, it's fine, I'll just go with this. And asked him loads of questions, as you do. Nice open ended questions. Found out more about his whole workflow, what he needed, what he wanted to set up. And of course finally at the end he said to me, so I need this product. But I said to him, well, I don't sell it. It's a competitive product. We actually don't have like a, you know, we don't have anything that matches that. You need to go to X Company to get it. But I can sell you everything else in this workflow. And when the kind of penny dropped, he was just mortified, just absolutely mortified that we'd spent 45 minutes talking about essentially one product that I couldn't even sell him. But it had a really positive outcome because I think partly through embarrassment and partly because I've managed to get so much sort of information out from him and how we could actually help him. He bought the whole work from Play from me regardless. And then he ended up becoming a really good customer. They just kind of shows when even if it's not necessarily what you went in for, if you ask the right questions, you can get a great day of outcome from it.

That's brilliant. I think that's. We talk about a lot in all of our stuff that discovery calls are for discovery, not for the sell. And I think because had you approached that as you were trying to sell in the room on that day, one, you wouldn't have got a fun story out of it, and two, you, you probably wouldn't have been able to identify the workflow where you could fit everything else in. But because you treat it as a discovery call and protected his ego slightly by not shutting him down every two seconds, I think that worked really nice.

I think loads of customers don't, they think they know what they want, but actually because they don't know about all the solutions that are available. And that's our job, sales reps. Unless you do a full discovery, regardless whether they think they know or not, you'll never know enough to be able to give a good solution. You might be able to give them the solution they want, but actually there could be a better one out there for them. So always great to ask those extra questions.

Great.

Maybe we could start off with one question, though, sort of summarize yourself a bit. So we're going to have and have had lots of people on our podcast from various areas of commercial and science. I think we'll be lucky if we get somebody else like you that's been a scientist, a rep that's award winning, and then a leadership in marketing as well. So it'd be great if you could give us maybe an overview of your opinion on those roles, how they intersect, what the differences are. I appreciate that's a whole dissertation, but just a feel of it.

Yeah, sure. No problems. So my career path's been a little bit like this. I haven't taken a classical linear path, and I started as a Researcher and a lab manager at Cambridge University, where I was then obviously a customer to a lot of the science companies. And so they're taking the rep meetings. And when I first started, like most scientists, I just hated them. I just. It needs to make me sweat because I didn't mean I thought they were going to try and hard sell to me. You know, it's uncomfortable and. But actually, throughout the years of doing it, I made some really good friends with a lot of my sales reps. And it was through that sort of friendship and relationship that I actually then moved into commercial right at my first commercial marketing role, because one of them identified that I had the sort of right skills that was required. I would have never ever considered commercial before that. And through that I started doing events marketing. I did that for a couple of years, really enjoyed doing that, saw what the sales reps were doing and thought, hey, I think maybe I could have a go at that. It actually looks okay. So my boss at the time as well gave me some really great advice, which was to be a really great marketer, you have to understand a sales cycle and the only way to truly understand a sales cycle is to do it. So when the opportunity came up to manage Cambridge University for Merck, I decided I'd move into sales and give that a go and really enjoyed it. So, as you mentioned, Nick, I won an Award in 2019 for being the field sales rep of the year for Western Europe, growing my territory, the largest out of all the territories. And I think having that background of being the customer sitting in that seat and understanding why they're terrified and why they hate it, and also understanding how marketing works and how marketing there actually, you know, to. To work with sales and not against sales. Having that knowledge helped piece that together for me. And then I was able to be a really successful salesperson. And then eventually I've moved back into marketing now because I've done my time in sales.

Done it, done with it, over with it.

Yeah, I enjoyed it. But I love marketing. It's definitely my niche.

You talk about a lot of different things in there which I think are really important and I think we could tug on some of those different strings. One of them was being the customer, so having the experience being the lab manager in those conversations. So how were you able to leverage that when you moved in to sales?

I think being a bit more human about it because I'd. I'd spoken to some reps who I'd really enjoyed having conversations with and I'd spoken to some reps who honestly, they could call as many times they wanted. They were never getting a second meeting. So I think taking the best parts of what I'd seen and completely avoiding the terrible parts helped make me like a sales rep that scientists like. And I knew to drop in immediately that I was a scientist, that I'd been in their seat, you know, that. That I'd done my time in the lab, I had the credibility. I wasn't just trying to sell things and knowing to never go for the hard sale. I've never, ever been one of those. So it's very much about, you know, we can have a very nice conversation for 20 minutes just about your science. And if I come away just learning about your science, for me, that's still, you know, a great day. I'm quite happy with that. And then when it's, you know, when you need help in the future, just know that I'm there.

Yeah. It kind of comes back to the story that you gave. Right. It's like you were just genuinely curious about, you know, that guy's workflow and what it was, you know, all the different parts of it. How can you ask great questions? Just be genuinely curious about what's going on? And I think when you're genuinely curious, people respond in kind and they are willing to open up, have an open discussion with you and a dialogue. So I think that's. That's great. It's a good tip for everybody out there.

Yeah. And I think, I mean, you've both been in the lab, you've both been scientists. Like, you want to talk about your work. You want to be. You want to talk to someone who's enthused about what you're doing, because it's exciting what we do, you know, it's cool. So let's talk about it more and understand it more.

Harrison has been a scientist, and we're not going to let him have that talk. He hasn't earned it.

I have not earned it. I have not. Yes.

Because he's in biotech and always been scientific companies. It appears so, because he's learned some.

Stuff, I think, or two here or there. But now, you know, I come with a different angle, but I have.

Yeah, I think that that's really key. Could you. It was a little while ago and you've been in marketing since, but I wonder if you could point out, you know, you said you didn't do the things that those reps did that you hated and they would never get a second meeting. Could you maybe point out one or two of what those things were that we could learn from.

Yeah, I hated when reps were really forceful about trying to come into the lab. We worked in a restricted space. I wasn't allowed to bring people up and it wouldn't have been appropriate. It wouldn't have added to the meeting. All they wanted to do was kind of sleep around a bit. And that's horrible. Like, you know, so never be forceful. If a customer doesn't open the door willingly, then, you know, sit where they want you to sit. Others as well, really stupid things such as I had one rep who I could remember that I'd met them, bearing in mind, you know, I meet lots of people, they couldn't remember that they'd met me. And even though it's not an ego thing that I knew they must have systems, they must have a CRM. I didn't know as a CRM system at the time, but I knew that there must be systems. You know, we're intelligent people. I was like, at the very least, you can just check that you've seen me. You can pretend that you remember what we spoke, just at the very least. So I think just small things like, you know, making sure you update your CRM with relevant notes so that the customer does feel like you can't, you know, that you are special. All customers want to feel special, to some extent at least memorable enough that you remember that you've met them. So, yeah, I think that'd be my. Kind of. Make sure you avoid doing that.

So another thing that you talked about in your kind of your background is you spent a lot of time in events. And we've been talking to a number of different companies and we see events are a big part of their 2024 strategy. So it's. How are we going to get more people at these events? There's more events coming back post Covid. You know, we've kind of spent 2023, you know, cutting costs and trying to figure out how we can get lean and as efficient as possible.

And.

And then now, you know, 2024, we're starting to come back, get into the groove and figure out how we can go to market. And events are obviously a great way to do this in life sciences. So would love to hear from you, maybe a couple tips for how people can get better at events, because I think a lot of people do them really poorly and they don't really drive the sort of demand, the leads and the interest that you want from these events.

Yeah, they. I completely agree. I think events marketing is really core if you're trying to sort of grow brand awareness, especially for like smaller companies. And it's one of those things where companies don't necessarily want to spend on events because, I mean, they are expensive. The event themselves is expensive. And then getting people there, hotels, food, everything like that is expensive. Which is why I'm always surprised that when companies do send people that they then don't really care what they do on the stand and they don't really care of the return. So I don't know, I'll just quickly throw the question back quickly. What's the worst thing you've seen, like when you've been on a fence stands? Because there is.

Well, there's one. There's a. One where the person's just sitting there on their phone like this, just like laying back, just not paying attention. There's like people staring at the booth, like ready to get asked questions on their phone. I think that's obviously like the cardinal sin that you don't want to do.

Yeah. And I think the current company I'm working out as well as Succession. I don't think the CEO mind me saying this because he's got a good sense of humor, but I turned up to the first event with them and packed everything. I went to grab a coffee, come back and there's people sitting behind the booth. And I just walked over and there's rules here, right? The rule is you don't let a customer walk past you, you don't sit behind the booth, and you don't eat. At my booth, if I see any of these three things, you're out. And this is like to the CEO, lead scientist, and they're like, who's this guy? What's he think he's doing? But yeah, I just think that lack of open and engagingness on a booth in any form. And the best reps I've seen are the ones that are just in front of the booth chatting to people.

Yeah, completely agree. So they're the things that I always see. I always see people sat behind the booth on their laptops, completely ignoring customers, which I find insane. Or worship. Not even at the booth that I just, you know, I don't even get that at all. Say, always having someone on the beach 24 hours, you know, like from the minute the booth opens earlier even to the point it closes. Because you always get those sort of keen beans who come early and the ones who are the hangar rollers making sure that you've got a really good lead capture device because not all stands up not all shows give them if they're smaller. So ensuring that you've got something that's slick, that works ideally without Internet, because a lot of these times you don't get Internet. Making the lead capture as simple as possible so that it's not onerous for the customer when they're on the stand and kind of bearing in mind what a good return would be. So for some companies, you know, that could be finding just three really good leads if they're, you know, high value leads, in which case you want to be able to have space on the booth where you can sit and have that in depth conversation because you've got your target customer right in front of you. But other companies, if you're sort of more sort of consumables or reagents based, where you're looking at high turnover and you just want a ginormous number of leads you have to everyone on the big, you need to know, get them on, get their details, get them off, talk to them afterwards. You know, there's loads of time afterwards to talk to them. So it's just about bearing in mind what your goals are before you go and then making sure you kind of stick to that. And then I think also always having more people on the booth is a really great idea. I always see people turn up with just one, maybe two reps. The last thing you want is a customer who wants to talk to you and you can see them in your sideline and there's no one there to talk to them. And they always say they come back, but they're not coming back. The conference is too interesting, you know, why would they come back? So I would take 3, 4, 5, just depending on the size and the number of leads we expect to take and make sure that I've got enough to do kind of shift rotation so people can go out and have a break. Take your break off stand, never ever have your break on stand and then come back. And then I think the biggest thing to drive leads or lead capture is to be proactive. And that comes back to what you said, Nick. So for me personally, I don't even stand right next to the stand. I stand a few steps away from it. I look at the chair, you know, look a bit more casual and as someone's coming by, just smile and say hello. And then it's amazing how many people will stop and talk to you if you approach them. But so many people are just too sort of, I don't know, shy to, to say hello. So, yeah, make the first me thanks.

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Yeah, I think one thing you said there is actually I don't know if I actively do it and I think I see myself as big headed and think I'm quite good at doing booth stuff. But actually I don't do one thing you said there which I think is really, really important, which is plan out the kind of approach you want at the booth. I always go with the same sort of approach, but actually you're right. If you want key meetings, you should organize your booth space around that so you can have those key meetings or at least know where you're going to have them. So there's a table over there, we'll go sit sort of thing or whatever. But I think that's really useful. If you want many leads, you've got to churn through them, get people out. So you need multiple lead capture devices and multiple people. But yeah, that's, that's something I'll take away from that as well. That's good.

And I think the other area that we see people mess up is the pre event process and then the post event process. Right. So I think we just went through like some really good stuff of what do you do when you're at the event. But there's like this whole pre event process that you kind of have to go through to get your maybe meeting scheduled while you're at the event, get people to come to, to your booth. And then there's the post event follow up which is how do you now either nurture, say this long list of leads that you've generated or get meetings with maybe some of the better leads that you have stood out to you at that event.

Yeah, that's, that's something that a lot of companies I've been at don't do well as well just because I think we're all so busy. So even as sales reps and as marketers, we're so busy that as soon as we finish one thing we just go right onto the next. So. No, I completely agree. You need to make a really good events plan from the moment you book the event. Essentially if it's a big, obviously if it's a small local event, I'd probably be passing as a marketer that onto my Sales team and saying, hey, you're going to be at this research campus, why not send out some emails to everybody at the research campus, try and drive up business, perhaps even offer them an on stand giveaway. You know, if they come, they'll get a goodie back, doesn't matter what it is. And if it's a larger event, then obviously marketing would be generally handling that in conjunction with sales. So ensuring that you've got a good kind of social media and email marketing plan so that people at least know you're going to be there and where you're going to be and what you're offering. If you're, you know, if you're offering on sound promotions or if you've got something really exciting or innovative, get that message out beforehand, give them a reason to be there and then.

Well, I think that's a key point though, real quick, Sorry, but that's a really important part which is give them a reason to come to your booth. So come up with something unique that will bring and drive traffic to your booth. Right. If every booth looks the exact same, how can you differentiate your booth from somebody else? And we see all of these emails, I think they all look the same for the most part, which is, hey, are you going to be at ASCR? Come by booth number 375. And it's like, okay, I don't know what that is. And I also got 10 more of these that are all saying the same thing to me. Whereas I think what you just highlighted is something really important which is to create a unique booth experience for somebody that gives them a reason to want to come and it gives you a reason to reach out to them. Right. So it's, your email now looks different when you're setting up this pre event email.

We did something really interesting with a distributor partner at an event once where we were both sponsoring and we actually did a joint giveaway. So it was very much a, hey, come to this booth, grab a token, take it to the other booth and speak to somebody and get something from them and vice versa. And actually that was a really nice way one to drum up traffic. Both booths who were obviously we're not competing so we're working together, but also to ensure that we are all capturing, you know, a larger amount of leads. So I think just getting inventive like don't do the same thing, make sure you don't, you know, make sure your booth itself, I know it's coming back on the day again, but making sure that your booth looks different. So at My last stand, we just took a load of plants because they all bring plants to booth and actually it just looks really nice and inviting. So just little things like that makes a difference.

I was so annoyed about that because you was like the opposite. Me and previous previously at my last company, I always used to go to the shop, get a couple of plants, put them on the boots. It just looked natural and inviting and I'd kind of just forgotten all about that. I. We used to do that as a team and I turned up and my booth was opposite yours and yours looked better and I better swag. And I was furious. So ideally tipped your stand over, but.

I didn't appreciate that. I used to be known as like the Krispy Kreme wrap because any event I went to just like a stack of Krispy Kreme, but other people started clicking onto that. So I've now changed tact. But, you know, it's all about continuously thinking about new things and moving forward.

Yeah, I think that's something that a lot of people miss outside of marketing and like CEOs and people holding budgets don't see the point in swag, or we call it swag or giveaways, whatever it is, and having something fun, unique, something somebody wants and they're like, well, they're just taking in, it's going to sit on their desk. And the. What I see, and I'd curious to hear your opinion, is that actually if you've got something great and you walk off of it at the conference, somebody at the conference sees it and wants one and it drives them to your booth. It's not about what happens to it after as much, but more about that traffic on the day.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, for me, it's always about having the biggest bag. Because if you offer the biggest bag, everybody else's stuff goes in your bag and it's your. There's been. So you never get a small bag, always get big. And. And I always hate when you turn up to a show and you see someone else who's got something great and everybody's talking about it, whether it's a cup or a soft toy or. I went to one where an automation company were doing cocktails on stand and honestly, people were, you know, 10 mil of cocktails, not like a glass, but people were standing there for over half an hour to get one for, like social media purposes. Cool. So just being innovative and it's definitely worth the budget. I'd spend it any day if I'm going to a show. You've Got to turn up with stuff even as well. Talking about beforehand, where you're planning who you want on your stand. You need giveaways because there are. You always get. There's nothing wrong with PhD students, but you always get PhD students who just want stuff, and that's fine. So you get your pen, and as soon as you've identified that, you know, they're not really a core customer yet, give them a pen, give them a nice little bit of information about the company, move them off, make space for someone who actually is going to be a good customer for you.

Brian, who was on the podcast recently, had a really good tactic for that, which is give yourself a qualifying question, whatever that might be for you, some sort of qualifying question that you can ask the first person that you see or you can ask somebody that you see to understand if they might be a fit and, you know, for. At synthego, Right. The question was like, do you work with cells? And like, are you doing crispr? Right. It was like this sort of really basic, simple qualifying question that you could ask, but it lets you know right away, is this person worth my time or is it not worth my time? And then how do you triage that? You know, when you're busy at the booth?

Yeah. And I think it's always about still being polite, though, because I have seen some people at stand who all makes their borderline rude. And I think we always have to remember that everyone moves around in science, and just because people aren't customers yet, they may need customers in the future. So always giving a great impression of your company and making sure you keep that kind of brand promise there, whoever they may be, is always still important.

And a tip for anyone listening, you said something earlier and it made me just think about something about how people don't want to meet reps and they don't want to. They're shy about it. Always engage your reps, especially around conference season, because they're the ones with the budget to take you out for the night. Right.

So.

So all reps know where the best meals are, where the best parties are, and if you want to go out on a conference and you're there on your own or with a couple of people, make friends with the reps, as many of them as you can, and you'll find out where the parties are at.

And especially if the conference doesn't have good coffee or good food, then get your reps, get them to get you a coffee. Yeah. From the rep's perspective.

Yeah, most of us are happy to do it because a coffee and lunch for a conversation where you may learn something is a fair exchange.

Yeah.

I think the other piece too is like the after after event networking. Those little sessions, whether you drink or you don't, it's always worth showing up to those things because that's where you can actually build a more personable connection with the people that go there because the people that go there are wanting to make those connections. So it provides an opportunity for you to build a deeper connection with potential customers that might not be related to, you know, just like work talk. Right. It's like if you could build that more personal relationship, then you have a better opportunity to chat with them at a future date.

Yeah. Following on from that, Harrison, I would say being once again a customer who's been at these conferences all day. And I've spoken to reps all day as well. By the time that drinks reception comes along, don't start telling me about your products. I'm happy to talk to you in person and find it very interesting. It's a blood science. But don't talk to me about your products when that wine is in my hand. Leave that.

That point that time is so that when you learn. This is going to sound really countless. I don't mean these weeks. I just love talking to people. But at that point when you're having a chat and you learn that they've got a dog or they like Harrison told us about his cat throwing up everywhere when we got to the last conference, you learn this. Right. So now when you send that email for that meeting to talk about your work, you're like, how's your cat? You know each other, there's more of a connection. And they'll answer you. So that networking time is for building that connection and rapport.

Yeah. Completely 100% right? Probably. And even better, you probably get your best customers out of that period of the event. And then we moved on to, we were talking about post event as well. That's another area that a lot of people don't do anything with the leads, which once again seems insane. When you've paid all that money to be there, why would you then not follow up the leads? And so I think here, and this is where now being a marketer and a salesperson, this is where I think you need to work together. If you're a salesperson with your marketing team or vice versa. Because actually I think you can both do a really nice joint approach at following them up. You can have some generalist materials coming from your marketers. You can make sure that you're putting out, you know, what people are interested in, you've just spoken to them, make sure you're putting good social content out at that point because that's likely when they're going to hit your social channels, your website. But then as a salesperson, given that really tailored, you know, I met you, we had a good conversation, let's carry this on, let's go get a coffee, let's meet up kind of conversation, let's dig into this a bit deeper and if you can have that kind of joined up effort, you're definitely going to convert a lot more people.

Yeah, can't stress the personal follow up from sales afterwards. And I think stressing personal there, even if there was another rep that met them at the event and it's your lead for your territory or something like that, your message to them needs to be personalized, it needs to be relevant. You almost need to think of it as almost like outbound email. Like do your research on what it is that they're doing. There's maybe some notes in the CRM from the conversation and really tailor the message to that person to book that meeting. Because if you just say, hey, you talked with Nick at this event, let's set up some time to chat. Like it's just not a, it's just not going to stand out because they're getting that from every single other rep that's there. Yeah, I think the biggest thing that we need to remember sales reps is every other rep is probably doing the same thing you're doing. So you need to do something different or innovative. You could be the Krispy Kreme person for a while but then you have to change it up and then maybe it's, you know, coming with something else next time.

Right.

You, you, these tactics and techniques have to change and adapt over time just to be able to stand out from all the noise.

For me, I find when you're on stand having that conversation, if you could like any connection, tiniest connection, write that in your notes because you will forget within 10 minutes because you've spoken to another 10 people and then as soon as you come back it will jog your memory and it can be on anything. So it could be, you know, where they've studied or you know, what coffee they're drinking. It can literally be anything. And that's just a little bit of an edge to say, hey, I remember you. Maybe you might remember me because we had this slightly odd conversation about X and so I think you're Right. Personalizing is key.

Yeah. Imagine now you said that rep earlier that you hate it. They didn't know they'd met you. They didn't remember your name. They had no influence. If that rapper walked in and knew you drink a flat white, for example. But that's. That's going to make you feel like a superstar. Right. Because they remembered something specific about you.

Yeah. And it could be stupid, you know, it doesn't matter what it is. But like you said, it could even be just a house of dog, you know, I mean, you could probably go in and just guess that. But. But yeah, post lockdown.

Everyone's got one as well.

We're coming up on time here, so we want to wrap up with one other question for you. You gave us already two tips that reps can stop doing, and you've given us a bunch of different tips that reps can start doing specifically around events, even for discovery. But would love to hear maybe a tip for how reps can work better with marketing.

Yeah.

And how they could build that relationship with marketing to maximize that relationship.

So I think for me, it's just remembering that you are working together towards a common goal. You're not working against each other. It doesn't matter who gets the lead or who closes the lead. You're all trying to do the same thing in a company. So just really getting to know your marketing team. And that can be hard when. Because I've worked in large commercial organizations, you know, and they can be sat in different countries. You may not even know their name. But spending that time to understand your sort of your marketing counterpart. Understanding what, it's a little bit like an internal sales conversation. It's understanding what they can do for you because they could actually have. You might have a really great idea, but they might know how to amplify it or vice versa. So if you're in marketing, you really should know your salesperson. Because as marketers, when I, before I did sales, I used to always be like, hey, look, there's all these great tools. Go use them. Why would you not use them? And as soon as I became a salesperson, I was like, I don't have time for this. I've got to sell. So if you have that really good open dialogue, they could say, I've got this great tool. You could say, but actually it needs to be improved in these ways before I'll actually use it. And they might be able to then do something with that feedback. And then you're working together really well. So it's just having that openness and making sure that you share information and understanding that you're working together and asking for help from each other. And I think that's the best way to work.

Yeah, 100%. I think that's a great, great way to wrap up the show. Allison, it's been a pleasure. Thanks so much for coming on and enjoy the rest of your day.

Thanks so much for inviting me. It's been great. Sam.