[Science] How to increase your credibility as a sales rep with Johnnie Walker

I've realized that a lot of. A lot of sales reps started out in the lab. Right. You have science degrees. There's things that we're interesting and engaged in about science, but working that job, being on the bench, being attached to it, isn't for everyone. But you still want to. You still want to participate. Right. I completely appreciate that. I think that that's a way to take your personalities. Right? You still have then your. The things that. That inspire you or at least, you know, you want to read more about and keeps you engaged.

All right, Nick, today we have a great episode. We've got the legend Johnnie Walker in the house. Early on at Synthego, he was one of the original chemists on the team that really helped build out and scale the whole platform. You know, he's got a ton of insight, not only from how to, like, buy stuff from early stage company, but then how do you pass, you know, those early research projects onto development and then to scale as you grow your company over time? What were some of the stuff that stood out to you?

Yeah, I think I just really enjoyed hearing his viewpoint on reps because he's a great scientist, but he's quite a likable, charismatic guy. So I really enjoy hearing about how he does or doesn't tolerate reps and what they can do to ingratiate themselves to him.

Yeah, I think he also gave a lot of good tips on what reps can do. I think not only for him, but for, you know, all scientists in general that they're working with, how you can become more consultative and really understand the broader scope of what the company is trying to accomplish. And I think the other great piece that really came out was the Story of the Lawnmower. So that'll be a good one to really kick off this call. Yeah, will be awesome. All right, well, let's dive in. Hey, John. Welcome to the pod.

Hey, thanks for having me. Harrison, how you doing? Nick?

Hey, Johnny.

Yeah. So good to see you, man.

All right, likewise.

So we prepped you for this one. So what is a crazy or funny story that you've had in your career now?

I started thinking about this one, and what I realized is I've been in and around chemistry labs, manufacturing, et cetera, for around 30 years now. Every story that brought a smile to my face is probably a health or safety violation somewhere. And so I'm not sure I want to share any of those. So. But let me tell you. Let me tell you a story that made me laugh when I was younger, but I've turned it into kind of metaphor and analogy going forward. So when I was younger in the summertimes, I worked for city services, you know, street, street crew. I. I was actually attached to a water treatment plant. But basically I went out and mowed. Mowed fields and lawns and things like that. So I'm about two weeks into a job and there's a guy who was also working. You get driven out back of a pickup, get dropped off with your mower, gas, some water, say, we'll go come pick you up for lunch. So I'm still new and I'm trying to get things done. I didn't realize there was like this work rate at the city. So I get like five of these, well, houses mowed and everything. They come pick me up first. We go over to pick up the other guy, and there's one that's mowed, and it's about the other one's half mode. And he's just standing there looking at the mower, right? So we've been out for about three hours, pull up, and the two guys in the truck who had been working like, oh, no, here we go again, right? We pull up and the fella goes. He just starts. He goes, I don't know, boss. It just broke. It just broke. And I'm just sitting there taking all this in, and they're just. The other two guys are mumbling. Just broke, just broke. We all go back, we have lunch, right? They take the lawnmower to the maintenance guys. They're throwing their hands up. They're like, things do not just break this often. So I come to find out this was a pretty regular occurrence. So I'm two weeks on the job. They set me up as a sting operative. They're like, we're going to drive you out, but you're going to go and watch this guy. You're going to tell us what he does. So I go and watch him. Sure enough, he gets out. He mows. One mows, another one stops. He looks around, finds a pile of rocks, starts at the mower and just starts bashing them over the rocks until the things just stopped. Goes and parks it back where he stopped. Goes and finds some shade net.

That is.

Got up. Here's his pickup chugging. Common picks up. He's like, I don't know, boss. Just broke.

Somebody just didn't want to work that day.

Oh, somebody just didn't want to work any day.

Do you want to know everywhere?

Everywhere I've gone now. And you go into the lab. I don't know, it just broke. I have to tell that story. I'm always staring at the person.

Always.

Questioning break the same way ever again.

So the worrying thing about that story is if anything breaks in our house, my wife looks at me and goes, oh, I guess it just broke. Because that's my phrase to her, if anything breaks. And she's like, she knows I've broken it somehow on purpose or by accident or by doing something stupid. And she would just go, yeah, it just broke. So never tell her that story.

That's about it.

Yeah. Okay. And you may want to watch out for some hidden cameras in the house.

Yeah, well, I've got three daughters, and I'm now worried that they're part of a sting operation.

Yeah, for sure. 100%.

Yeah. I had guilt for a while anyways, that.

That.

That's my story. I don't know if AA just broke.

That's. That's great. I love how it's translated into the lab, too. And now anytime somebody breaks something, you got to question them. I love.

I love young researchers. I love training up young researchers, and I love them all making the same mistakes.

Yeah, I love it.

They don't think they're the first to have made it, though, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They'll never know. No, I'm experienced, got the grade.

That's great. Well, yeah, I think one of the first places we wanted to kick off this conversation is early days of Synthego. You were one of the first people on the chemistry side to come in and know, I really build out the entire platform to. To what it's become today. And I know you've got some. Some great stories I'm sure you can share from there as well. But I think specifically around how do you think about working with different vendors throughout that whole life cycle? So from the very early days, moving quick to, you know, later stages when you have to scale up as well, we'd love to kind of hear your insights there.

Yeah, you know, you. I think you really need to have a different mindset. And so in my background, I've worked at. At a few startup companies where, you know, the first of 20 employees, and so that's a different set. And I've also been at large companies like a bio rad, and we also built up Synthego to be a larger company. Right. Larger manufacturing. So it is a different mindset early on. It's a competition. You want to move as quickly as you can. You want to find the materials that you need. So from my end, I'm looking for Materials, chemicals, pieces of equipment, things like that that I can get fairly quickly at a fair price. But, but yeah, I think speed, speed influences, right. So that, that's what's important from my end, especially being on the research end. Right. I can get things to work, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they move on. And so it, if you're not cognant, you just buy from anywhere and say, okay, it works and you haven't necessarily thought to the next step. But once you get something to work, you need to start to switch a little bit of your thinking, right? And especially at a smaller company because you don't have all of the functions there that can properly do the jobs like say supply chain. You don't have a fully built out supply chain and management within there. And so you, without thinking about it, you could tie yourself to a very tiny manufacturer who has maybe some money issue supply issues of their own and work yourself into a corner. You want to be cognizant of that at the same. And then if we think further down the road, as you're more mature and you find somebody who can turn things around quickly and can promise you a little bit of the moon or the stars and say, no, this is an issue that we can fit into, you should, you should question that, maybe continue the conversation a little bit more. But at that point, I think what you're concerned about is consistency and making sure that whatever you're starting in that development doesn't stop. And so you may want to renegotiate or re. Engage with vendors that have similar services. And then look at the groups that got you going as always being there in a pinch and if they're able to mature, if you're able to grow together, then that's great. There were a couple companies that we kind of grew with at Synthego. It was worth it for them to take some chances on producing some new materials. Chemical manufacturer, solid, solid phase synthesis materials. And that was great. But yeah, early on it's, I just need it now. I got to get the job done because tomorrow's not necessarily promised a couple of years down the road. Success brings you. Success brings you that. Okay, I need this in a year, I need this in two years. And it's just a different mindset.

Yeah, no, that, that makes a lot of sense. So it's like if you're, I guess if you're a rep and you're kind of like selling into maybe these like really early stage companies, you could probably leverage that sort of mentality that says, hey, you Know, for you, speed is really important, whereas I guess it's important to ask the question to determine if speed is really important. But then it can't just be about, hey, I need to sell you this product or service. It's that you're also thinking about it from your perspective of this has to be able to move into development. This has to be able to be moved into, like, the actual product that's going to be used. You know, it can't. It can't just be great. You can solve my research problem, but that doesn't matter because I need to actually scale this thing up.

Yeah. And I mean, if you're. And if you're trying to work as a team within an organization, it's not enough to just do, like, solve. Like you say, solve your part, be that individual. Well, I got it to work. Now you go figure out everything that's attached to it. Because everything that's attached to it isn't necessarily just technology development. Like we said, it's supply chain. It's how do you sell it, Is it worth the effort? And what are other people doing? Right? So I do appreciate when the sales rep understands where we're at within a certain stage of a project or a company and just gets us set up. What I really appreciate is when they've seen that before and kind of have that, okay, here's your starter kit. I know that you need this. Here's your starter kit. And we'll have conversations about what you need down the road. Make sure that you're set, guys, to.

Kind of have that experience to come in. It almost can guide you saying, hey, I've seen this story 10, 20 times. Here's my recommendation, right? It's like, you know, probably what you want. You don't want them to come in and just like, pitch something that's irrelevant to you, but you also want their expertise that says, hey, I've seen this road show, rodeo show, or whatever, you know, I want to go.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I like conversations with sales reps because it's. Whatever I'm doing is generally newer and innovative, but it's related enough to other industries that once you kind of get that. That lexicon down and the other side sees the problem that you're trying to solve, that's when it becomes, I think, really pro, like proactive and enabling.

So really it's down to the rep asking the right questions to understand your path forward. So they can, like, imagine transposing that onto something else they've seen before and help you Navigate those next steps. Because if I could say to you, here's kit A. Once you're done with kit A, that's going to get you to where you need to go, but we'll switch that or scale it so your development scaling team has the resources too, and we can solve that.

Yeah. And I do think it takes a conversation and some listening, for sure. Because one thing that can be a turn off would be, oh, I know what you're talking about. Here's my cookie cutter.

Right.

I don't think cookie cutters work, but if you come and say, I think I know what you're talking about and I've got a kit here and we can put some things together, that's probably the way to go. And then if we can progress to cookie cutter, then that's, you know, that's when it gets boring for me. And you can hand that off to daily operations.

Yeah. Interesting. And so do we. Is it helpful for like a sales rep to also, you know, connect the different people within the organization? Right. Like connecting both the research and development side so they're actually proactively talking to the development team, understanding what they need. They can almost bring that back to you and vice versa. I imagine there's some benefit there too. Right.

I think there's probably benefit to both sides. Right. If, if you as a sales rep understand the next group that I have to move to the way that they like to deal. We're not the same. Right. So you may have to change up your approach a little bit. But I think if you start that early conversation with who's downstream from me, it's probably a benefit to you. Right. And not everybody within an organization, you know, hands off cleanly. So sometimes having that, having that third party to tie it together is helpful. It's helpful, yeah.

And I bet it's good for them too. If they're talking to the group downstream from you first, they might want to ask who's upstream so they can come and talk to Johnny and then get Johnny's point of view too, because then now they can work with you to make sure you're handing off the right things to them. So it's really understanding the ecosystem of how everything is connected in that company. That's it.

You said the word, the ecosystem. I think it's important to understand that. So you start in your central point, probably where your strong area is, and then, and then spread out. Right. But without stomping through especially areas that you're not familiar with.

Yeah, but I think even if you don't have like a product or service that needs to fit within that other area. I think it's good to understand what the goals are of those other teams as well, because that is, it can better align within your ideal customer, which might be you in this case.

Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. I'm not fully built to be in sales, but one of my roles at Synthego was subject matter expert around all the chemistry and especially the analysis processes. So I would interact with our clients who are developing, say, therapeutics and their qa, QC groups, et cetera. And it wasn't so much a sales mentality, but it was getting that. What are you trying to accomplish on your end? Here's what I have on my end that we're bringing to you and we're trying to, to mesh that up. And as soon as you have that sort of click of understanding, then it's a lot easier to get that flow of information, data, et cetera.

Right.

That back and forth. So one of my bosses used to say, everyone's in sales at some point. Right. And the idea is that you're listening to what the other side needs. Right. And not just saying, here's what you want.

Thanks for listening to the podcast. It would mean the world to us if you could help spread the word by sharing it with someone you know. 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, community for peer to peer networking and learning, and live workshops delivered twice a month. You can get access to all of this as an individual for just $79 a month or up. Level your entire team with customized learning paths built for each individual rep. Come join us at Succession Bio. One thing that you mentioned, data just now. So a lot of reps, I think actually I would say there's maybe half the reps. Half the reps come with too much data and half the reps don't come with any data. Where do you fit, where do you fit from a customer perspective on like, how do you like to interact with the data that sales reps have available to them?

For me, you can hit me with, with a big overall picture. At first, I'll ask for, I'll listen to your story and then I'll ask for specifics so that I can go and vet this a little bit. And, and I'll do this. Not just buying for science, but in general. This, this would be my, my approach. Right. I'm interested in something. I have an idea of who can, who can sell this to me? Give me the overall picture. I'm going to take it from my perspective and start asking you some questions. I think if you, for me, if you come with data straight away, I get lost in that story and we have to really bring it back around to what am I doing right now and how, how does that work? But if you're, if you, I get impressed if I ask a question and you're ready, you're like, you know, we thought about that. We've got some things we can discuss.

So you use data slides to back up. Like you set the, you set the framework of the story at the big picture level and then everybody's oriented around, okay, what are we talking about? Then you have specific questions like, hey, I got a data slide for you and I can like pull that up to talk about it. So you leverage data slides not as like a presentation of everything about like the capabilities of features of whatever it is you're selling. It's more as it's support for the question that's being asked or for what you're trying to answer.

Yeah, yeah, you summarize it pretty well there. And I'm not sure it's easy from, from a sales end. Like I said, I've been in a lot of startup companies, so we've had, you know, alpha products and we've had early sales rep trying to go out and present what it is that we're developing that we think is better than what's out there. And sometimes I don't know if you can do anything other than say, here's what we build, here's what it does, here's the data and here's how we think it compares. But you're right, the story from the other end, it sounds stronger if you say, here's what we can do and then you, you kind of defend from there.

Here's a run a question for you because I have a theory I've always gone by but actually never really properly tested. Is that if you're in a room and you're talking to a sales rep who's delivering data to you, does it sudden, does it have less credibility because they're a rep, or is it, or vice versa, is it more credible if it's an FAS or a scientist in the room with you, or do you just care about the detail?

That's a good, that, that's a good question.

I will.

So if you're here, I think a sales rep can hand, can handle it. Um, if you've you've done your homework and you understand what, what, what you're selling, right? Because you can, you should be able to take some, some question, should be able to answer some questions that come and then some that maybe are a little bit deeper. You know, that you can go to your SME, right, and probably get that person their, their answer straight back. I do like, I do like when there's a sales rep and then maybe FAS or a tech rep because then you just get the conversations out of the way sooner. That's a personal preference, right? And so I think if you're well studied, right, as, as a sales rep, then, then yeah, you, you can handle it. And I don't have a problem saying, well, can you get me something deeper or can I talk to one of your scientists a little bit later? That just means, that just means that you've done the job of convincing me that it's not all over the place.

You're just, you're just at that point, you're just trying to better understand, you know, making the right purchase and are you making the right decision. You're just trying to get like the, the validation of that by the time you're trying to want to talk to more people on their team, right?

It, yeah, that's, that's it. And that, that's how, that's how it works for me. I have a brother, I have a brother who's in sales. He's actually in brutal sales. He sells cars. And so just the approach is there. You know, when somebody is listening to you, listening to what you want and trying to get you set up the right way. And then, you know when somebody's trying to dance around, just get you to, to commit. So I don't like the dancing around.

No. I also think it's an intention.

Right.

So if you're a scientist and a sales rep, you go in the room with, in, you want to be inquisitive, you want to know more. And if you think as a, a fit for us to help you, great. If there isn't, we'll see you when there is a fit. Whereas if you go in a bit too broad when it's like, well, I don't really care if it helps them. I just need to sell you this thing. I think, yeah, that gets felt a mile off. Am I right? Like, you could just feel it.

I think so. And I can tell you from my end, I used, I'd get excited when, when sales rep would say a customer wants to talk to you, they're Interested more because then I would learn. Right. It seemed to help everyone around there and just made everyone's decision making easy.

So here's a million dollar question everybody's gonna have. How do they get time on your calendar? How does a sales rep get in front of Johnny Walker?

Yeah, that's, that is hard. I do ignore a lot of cold reach outs because I also, I also study. So I try to stay ahead of the game and I know the things that I want and I will, I will go out looking for, for some of these things. Every once in a while I will have something that comes across either LinkedIn or an email that is relational. But mostly it goes away. I try to have empathy and when sales reps have reached out, maybe to contact two or three times, I'll try to have a short conversation. Okay, you're really trying and maybe I'm missing something but generally that ends with thanks but no thanks. I think what helps is if you've, I think what helps is probably the network. So if you've done something and solved something within my area elsewhere or worked with somebody that I know, that's the easy, that's the easiest way. And if you solved a problem within my area, but nest haven't necessarily worked with somebody I know, you can say, hey, we've done this and that'll catch my attention. So I guess on, I guess you can catch my attention by what you've pulled off elsewhere and then we go from there, which is bad.

It's stuff that's important to you though, right? It's not, I think the issue with a lot of outreach and I'm sure you get a ton of it, it all looks the same. It's like, hey, here's our product, here's our different capabilities, here's our turnaround time and the email's about this long. You know, it's so it's not, there's like all this information, you know, and it doesn't really help you. You trying to figure out like how you can benefit from what, from what it is.

I will say the, the, the ones, the, the cold reach outs that are shorter, let's say that are kind of bullet point and should we have a conversation, those, those are more effective, those I may reply to and say, no, that's not quite what I do, you know, good luck. Right. What I have learned from working with, with sales is, is no is a better answer than no answer at all.

Right.

Because it allows everyone to move on.

Exactly. Actually, no, it's a, they say a no is better than a maybe. Right. So yes is great. A no is great because you can move on, but a maybe is the worst answer because now you're just trying to drag it along and drag it along and falling up purgatory. It's just. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. I will say though, once you're in the door, if we have a good relationship, I'll go to bat for you. You always get first, first dibs. And I like building longer term relationships because ultimately we're all trying to do the same things, right?

Yep.

We're trying to advance science, we're trying to save lives, we're trying to make an impact. Right.

I think that's the thing that not all scientists appreciate that is a lot of biotech reps actually still love science and they still want to see what they're doing, have an effect on the endpoint of a patient. They're just maybe one step removed and they're trying to facilitate science. And, and that's not always obvious for scientists.

So I, I've realized that a lot of, a lot of sales reps started out in the lab. Right. You have science, you have science degrees. There's things that we're interesting and engaged about science, but working that job is it being on the bench, being attached to it isn't for everyone. But you still want to, you still want to participate, right? I, I completely appreciate that. I think that that's a way to take your parts, your personalities. Right. You still have then your, the things that, that inspire you or at least, you know, you want to read more about and keeps you engaged. So yeah, I think, I think I joke with my brother who sells cars. I said I can teach you the science. You have the skills to engage with people and to, you know, make them feel comfortable and stuff. And I can, I can teach you clients, but I'm lying. And so at some point it's good to talk to somebody who's done it before, appreciates what it is you're actually doing. Right. And then they deliver that product.

Well, I think to your point though, you mentioned earlier, it's the teamwork, which is if somebody's got the sales background and can really, you know, drive a deal forward and like even help you make the right, like purchase decision and help navigate the buying committee that is on your side to, to buy something. Right. Like that's what sales people are really good at. And then they partner up with the technical subject matter expert who can answer all the detailed questions and you can kind of get your troubleshooting stuff out of the way with them while they're working on managing that deal through to the end.

Yeah. And I'll also say, I mean, not in sales, but it's satisfying when someone on the other end has their problem solved one way or another. Right. But that's something I've always heard that people in sales really like enabling, you know, that other end.

Well, one thing that's really nice is when you actually get to hear that from customers. I think a lot of the times we don't actually get to hear the impact that we provided as a sales rep. And so, yeah, no, maybe. Yeah. So a lot of the times it's like, hey, we close the deal, we pass it on and maybe it moves to the customer success team. Maybe they get some support questions answered. But you don't always get that closed loop of, hey, this was awesome. This, you know, whatever. These guy Darnay really worked in my experiment. You don't always get that closed loop feedback. And so, yeah, I think maybe from a customer perspective they should be reaching out to sales reps and just being like, hey, thanks so much, that'd be great.

I think it would. I think they should. And I'm going to try to do that more often as well.

I think what a lot of us don't realize is actually we, we have a wide network and if you've done something with something we've sold to you and you've done a paper, a publication or something, we actually are proud that we're part of that, even a small part, and we're going to shout about it. And for scientists, credibility and publication is everything. So we're going to help raise your profile just by being proud about it. So it's a, it's a feedback loop that actually helps everyone. We get a nice fuzzy feeling from it and we don't look like cold, callous money grabbers. And then. And you guys get the notoriety increase.

Yeah, yeah. Feedback data, you should always take that. So I'm going to make sure that I give it more.

Love it. Yeah, I'm sure reps will appreciate that a lot. Let's see. I think one other topic would be a fun one is you talked about the good cop, bad copy from a customer perspective. How do you like to run that play on the sales reps?

Yeah, so. So this is, this is me personally. I don't like getting into conversations about money so much. I like identifying what I want. I know what I think would be a fair price. And if you always worked with me, you would Love me Because you. You wouldn't have to make. You wouldn't have to make so many sacrifices on your end. But if I worked for you, then I'm probably spending the 5, 8% more than we should be. So in general, I'm the one who will go out and find the equipment or the material that we need. Say, this is great. You're my new friend. I love you. Let me introduce you to my friend over here who's now going to talk to you about pricing.

And they're going to break.

And so I'm good cop. I'm the one who brings a man, and then there's bad cop. But the dynamic then gets reversed because when things aren't working, I like to complain. So then I'm the one back to the sales rep. I'm like, hey, remember me? Yeah. You like me. This isn't working. So now I need you to drop what you're doing.

Well, I bet you're more likely this.

Guy about getting paid.

I bet you're more likely to get that answer, like, respond to that answer, though, or like to those complaints, because, hey, I loved working with Johnny during the sales process. He was my guy. Whereas then on the. You know, then when something comes up, you might be more likely to get help there. I don't know.

Yeah. And then I think once we set that triangle, then we know how it works, and then I'll. All transactions in the future are smoother.

Yeah, there you go. Nice.

Yeah, for sure. I get shy talking about money because it's not my money.

And to be honest, sales guys are the worst of this because if I ever go out to buy anything, I've got all of those things that have been used against me as a tool to try and get the best price on what I'm trying to buy. So sales guys are the worst of this. So we're used to seeing it all.

Awesome.

Maybe I just mentally put a number in my head and feel I get a deal every time, and I walk away happy.

There you go. All right, well, we're coming up on time here, so I want to wrap it up with one last question for you, which is, what's one thing that sales reps should stop doing?

It's a good question. I don't know. There's probably. You come up with a bunch of flippant answers. Here's what I think sales reps should never stop doing. Learning, Learning and listening. When I think. When I think about, there's a sales rep from a company called Saitiva, and I can hold him up as a perfect sales rep. He's very good at listening. He solved a lot of problems, solved a lot of similar problems, but not exactly what you're doing. So he's very good at listening. He'll learn the new sciences that are coming up to have that conversation and guide you into what you need, but also what you don't need. You may come with what you've read and think that you need something. He's listening to everything that you're trying to solve and guiding you in the right direction. So I think if you stay inquisitive.

Yeah, I think that's a really great piece of feedback for everybody. So it's always be learning. Always have a growth mindset, learning from all of your customers, even, you know, learning skills outside of, you know, what you might be getting taught at work as well.

Even if it's. Even if it's what you've sold for 25 years. Yeah, somebody's doing something slightly new. Keep your ears open.

I love that. Great feedback. Great. Well, Johnny, it's been a pleasure to have you on the podcast and, yeah, thanks so much for having me. Sharing your wealth of knowledge. I'm sure everybody learned something here. I know I have. So really appreciate it.

Thanks, Johnny.

Thanks for having me. It's great seeing both of you again.

Yeah, you too. Talk soon.