Monthly Archives: December 2012

Customer Engagement: A Startup Secret Weapon

Never underestimate the power of sharing a cup of coffee!

Why now
Although this may seem counterintuitive, it is vital to begin customer engagement activities long before you have a product to sell to them. This is especially true when you have an innovative new concept and will potentially be first to market. Failure to engage with your customers early will more often than not lead to, at best, wasting a lot of time and effort working on features that are unimportant to your customers and at worst, launching the wrong product.

The value of a good relationship with your future customers
Customer engagement is not marketing. It is any activity that fosters two-way communication with your customers. This is where you will find out exactly what features of your product will be most important and also who most values them (customer segmentation). The reason that it is critical to begin doing this early is that the insights you gain from your future customers will allow you to more accurately determine the critical product specifications that will delight your customers when you launch.

Some Customer Engagement Tactics:

Face-to-face meetings
This is the best way to confirm that your product and its feature set is right for your customer. You get the most information this way and non-verbal reactions to your product or feature set proposals are worth the time and effort that this method requires
Phone feedback
Follow-up phone conversations with customers that you have already met face-to-face. This can be a good way to validate any changes to your product concept that you made based on the feedback you received from your prior prototype

Social media
Start and maintain a blog to get additional and ongoing feedback. (Be sure that you allow commenting and respond to those comments – remember this is a conversation).Share your concepts on a short YouTube video (2 – 3 minutes max.) and end with a question, your website and e-mail contact info.Consider setting up a Facebook page for the business and initially use it to drive traffic to your website and blog.Use Twitter to stay ‘in-the- know’ of late breaking changes in your industry by following Key Opinion Leaders. Don’t just lurk, ask questions.Use LinkedIn to find new people to connect with that could become customers for you. Once you think you know who your customer is, use LinkedIn to help you connect with them and then schedule a time for a face-to-face or phone conversation.

Get started now
Ideally, you will begin engaging with your customers prior to any alpha testing. Start now because the earlier you start the better you will limit the costs and delays of rework. The company leadership should be conducting these and ideally the Founder/President is part of this effort as well.

Picture Credit: © Surkov_vladimir | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos

Beta Testing Checklist Your Competition Doesn’t Want You to Have

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Laboratory glassware, symbolic graphic for beta testing

Beta testing insights will smooth product launches

By Andrew Johnson, Ph.D.

Beta testing done right can significantly improve the chances that your product launch will be a success. When done wrong, this can be a terrible waste of time. With this in mind the following checklist should keep your team on track for a successful launch.

Select a technically savvy Product Manager or BD guy to lead the Beta Testing, not someone from the R&D team.
The purpose of the beta is to confirm that you have created the best product to meet the needs of the customers you plan to target. The intent here is not to modify the product, but to adjust the type of customer that you will target at the product launch. Technical feedback will be shared with the R&D team but this should be viewed as a commercialization effort.
Identify a number of prospective Beta Evaluators that closely match the demographics of the customers you hope to win.
You want to select those evaluators you believe will typify the customers that will purchase your product. Keep the number as small as possible but large enough so that you get at least one or two evaluators who do not like your product (it is just a vital to know who your customer isn’t as who they are).
Prepare Launch focused survey instrument.
It is important to find out what each tester likes about your product as well as what they don’t. This should not be a complicated or long survey but it should probe deep enough to give you insight on how to modify your positioning, marketing, technical support and their view of the competition. This can be completed informally in a discussion or by asking to have the evaluator fill this out directly.
Contact prospective beta evaluators and get commitments from them on what you expect them to do for you including timelines.
Select the fewest number of beta testers that will give you the information that you need to insure a strong launch. Managing this effort can be very labor intensive and can include travel and other expenses. Keeping the number smaller will allow for a more manageable effort.
Collect feedback testimonials to support your launch.
Online surveys are OK. However, the best way to do this is by meeting with the beta tester face to face. You will get much more information and it is easier to get a testimonial or two from happy testers when you are meeting with them.
Convert as many beta testers to paying customers as possible.
One of the best measures of a successful beta evaluation is when the tester wants to continue using your product and is willing to pay for it. It is easy to tell someone that they have a great product but there is no better validation than someone that is willing to back that up by purchasing your product. Offer to sell them a unit at cost (if an instrument or piece of software) or at a deep discount on their first order if this is a consumable.

Picture Credit: © Valkhromov | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos

Alpha Evaluations: Going from Great Science to Great Products

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Give your customers what they want with great alpha testing.

By: Andrew Johnson, Ph.D.

Why do alpha testing?
Alpha evaluations, also known as alpha testing, can be a crucial way to reduce the risk of launching a product that will not be accepted by your customers. When alpha testing is done well, this can provide crucial insights on how well your final product is going to be valued by customers and what is not. A good early understanding of these product attributes will save you considerable effort and expense during your product development. Essentially, this effort will tell you how to best transform your innovative science into products your customers will want (and purchase).

Alpha evaluations are:

Run by R&D not Product Management
- These efforts should provide R&D with the insights they need to make changes to the product performance and/or feature set. Further R&D may be necessary if the current prototype does not meet the performance expectations of your target customers. Remember to keep product management in the loop during this effort though.
Tests of very early prototypes to gauge customer acceptance of proposed product
- For software products, consider creating a mockup of what the software will be like using PowerPoint slides. You walk the evaluator through what each tab and feature might be like very quickly with a minimum of up-front effort.
- For reagent products or kits, don’t worry about any fancy labels or packaging. Prepare some samples and use them with your tester. It is important not to just send them to the tester and ask for feedback but really to work side by side with them in your lab or theirs to maximize getting the most relevant feedback on your current concept.
- For instrumentation or equipment, bring ‘bread-board’ version or other mock up prototype to tester’s lab or invite them into yours, for the evaluation. This does not need to be ‘pretty’ and not all of the functionality needs to be in place. You want to get feedback on the core function of your instrument or equipment to see how well they accept it.
A source of customer insights that will change your final product
- Unlike beta testing, changes to the product will be made based on alpha evaluator feedback. Be sure to get feedback on the desired (or expected) performance characteristics of your proposed product (e.g. acceptable linear dynamic range, sensitivity limits, through-put, ease of use etc.)

Important safety tip
Beware the danger of this effort becoming a research project (leading to time and cost overruns not to mention confounding your commercialization plans). Alpha testing is not feasibility testing or discovery research. The goal of this effort is to see if the current concept for your product will be valued by potential customers. At this point, it is assumed that the underlying science works. Set specific goals for what you hope to learn and stick to that.

When not to do alpha testing
Alpha evaluations may not always be appropriate. If you are making a better version of an existing product (yours or a competitors) alpha testing is most likely not needed since you already have plenty of information on what customers like and don’t like about the current offering(s). Use alpha testing when you can’t easily answer “yes” to this this statement.

“The design of my current product offering will meet or exceed the expectations of my customers.”

5 Easy Steps to Effective Brainstorming

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By Andrew Johnson, Ph.D.

Brainstorming is a little like crowdsourcing today, getting as many opinions and inputs from a group of people to solve an issue. When done poorly this turns into a creative waste if time. But if done correctly, this can be a transformative force for change resulting in not only new ideas but actionable steps toward achieving your goal.

Step 1:
Create and send an agenda that clearly states what you expect to achieve and how the meeting will be conducted to participants. The following is an example of what you should include:

Example Agenda for First Meeting:

This meeting will be to discuss how we will … (e.g. boost sales by 20%, solve technical problem A, identify the next killer application, etc.)
Introduction of issue – 5 min (You)
Brainstorming session – 40 min (All)
Identifying next steps and meeting wrap up – 15 min (You)

Note: By sending out the goal of the brainstorming session prior to the meeting, the participants will have a chance to think about this on their own prior to the meeting which improves the quality of the ideas.

Step 2:
Start the meeting by writing the identified goal on a large piece of paper or in the center of a large whiteboard or PowerPoint slide and circle it. Be sure to let everyone know that the meeting minutes will be used to begin formulating an action plan and to set priorities for any follow-up brainstorming meetings (there should be at least one more) and that the final fifteen minutes of the meeting will be used to identify actions to be taken.

Step 3:
Lead the brainstorming session by asking for major areas that need to be considered. Write these topics around the central circled goal and circle them as well. Then ask for what should be done at each of these focus areas by asking for 3 or more and for each of the sub-categories. This should be linked to each of the subcategories.

Note: Make sure that you ask someone else to take minutes for the meeting including the names of all attendees. The meeting leader should be moderating the session, updating the figure on the board/screen and keeping the team on track and on time.

Network diagram after first brainstorming meeting showing concept relationships

Sample brainstorm meeting graphic after first meeting. Identified goal in center white circle, first level major areas in blue and second level details in yellow.

Step 4:
Take a picture of the diagrammed feedback from the brainstorming session and send this along with the meeting minutes to all participants. Ask each of them to select the top 3 subcategories that they think would have the best chance of achieving the circled goal in the center of the figure.

Note: This is a critical step since not everyone is comfortable speaking out in a group setting and this will allow you to get unbiased feedback from the quieter participants.

Step 5:
Take the top two or three highest priority sub-categories to use for a follow-up meeting to build the plan. This meeting should only include those team members that will be important to completing the goals of each of the sub-categories identified from the first meeting.
This meeting will start with a slide with a subcategory on the top of each. Under that will be each of the 3 or more actions that the team identified from the last meeting.

Example Agenda for Second Meeting:

This meeting will be to identify everything that needs to be done to achieve the goals in the subcategories we identified at our last meeting. – 5 min (You)
Cycle through each of the actions for categories and identify all tasks and actions that will need to be done to insure success. – 40 -45 min. (All)

Use the feedback from the second meeting to create a plan to solve the original problem. Creating an actionable plan will insure that you and the team will get the most out of this exercise.

This method will allow a team leader to garner the best thinking from their team on a given issue while keeping this from devolving into a useless diversion. By keeping the agendas clear and with the group and individual inputs to this exercise in place, you will be able to get better, more thorough input and ideas for moving things along. By breaking this process into two meetings, you will get the widest number of opinions at the first one and end up with a focused and prioritized plan of action from the second one.

Network diagram showing connections between topic, tactics and tasks

Sample brainstorm meeting graphic after second meeting. Feedback from the first meeting indicated that Tech Support was the highest priority and this branch was selected for the second meeting. Identified goal in center white circle, first level major areas in blue and second level details in yellow. Actions needed to achieve the second level details (yellow) are shown in red.

Taking This to the Next Level
There are professional software tools to facilitate brainstorming. (Brainstorming Software Review) These tools make the visual diagramming process fast and easy and often allow direct conversion of the ‘mind map’ to lists in Excel, Gantt charts and meeting notes.

Picture Credits: © Andrew Johnson | UpStart Life Sciences

Building Buzz while Avoiding the Buzz Saw: Public Relations and the Life Science Start Up

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Get the PR buzz you want, avoid getting stung by bad press

By Andrew Johnson, Ph.D.

You have a ton of things to do to get ready for your product launch at the upcoming trade show. You have got your website in great shape, you have product on the shelf, trained your sales team and/or partners and have a great booth. You have even spent some valuable marketing dollars to promote your product. Public relations is often neglected and mainly because it is often confused with marketing. In its starkest definition, marketing looks to build a positive image and its products to a target audience though advertising and other paid means. Good public relations looks to do this in an unpaid and perhaps more organic matter.

Public Relations is…
A good PR strategy will include interviews with reporters (both in trade journals and potentially in the mass media as well), speaking engagements, arranging to be on influential panels at scientific meetings and, if appropriate, on state and local panels when your products could have an impact with the general public like a new diagnostic or therapeutic offering.

Why You Want a Professional for This
This is often an effort that is best delegated to a professional. A good PR consultant will often have a ready contact list of key people that will get you the interviews, articles and speaking engagements that will not only help to increase your visibility to potential customers but will also generate the valuable but hard to grasp concept of ‘buzz’. A PR firm or consultant can also help to resolve any bad press or negative reactions in the media and on the web should that occur (that’s the buzz saw, in case you were keeping track).

Quick Tips:

Do develop a PR strategy with a PR Firm or experienced consultant
Unless someone on your team is an experienced PR person with all of the contacts you need, include this in your business plan budget as part of your commercialization plan.
Do Make sure your website is up and running and contains compelling content
When your PR activities generate ‘buzz’, you want interested parties to have ready access to additional high quality content.
Do prepare a ‘Media Kit’ to better manage your brand and image.
Put a tab on your website that contains high quality images, logos and other resources that journalists and other media folks can use when they write about your company. This gives you better (not absolute) control of how your logo and products are conveyed and helps to generate the positive impressions you hope to foster.

Second to None Customer Experience: Beating the Goliaths

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Great customer relationships = Powerful competitive advantages

By: Andrew Johnson, Ph.D.

The quality of the interaction your customers (both current and future) have with you in the early days of your company can be a powerful differentiator in the long term. In fact, establishing a high level of customer care is something that startup companies with small customer bases have a decided advantage over larger competitors. When you have only a few customers, you are able to actually speak with them on the phone to ease purchasing or handle technical issues. Doing this in the early days can help to create a group of evangelists for your product(s) that will generate the kind of positive publicity that will help you win new customers and successfully compete.

Hold onto this advantage by growing with your customers
All of this may seem pretty self-evident. However the key here is to make sure that your customer care efforts are scalable. In the beginning, you may be able to plan visits, schedule direct meetings with your lead R&D team members and other activities that will delight your first customers. However, these types of interactions are costly (with regard to time, effort and money) and are likely not sustainable as your customer base grows.

Maximizing your customer relations efforts
Use your early effort-intensive efforts to learn what particular customer relations efforts are most valued by your customers and begin to plan scalable, sustainable and cost effective alternative that can grow along with your increasing customer base. Doing this early, will allow you to plan for the budgets, human resources and other efforts that will be required to maintain this.

The following list of Customer Relations Tactics is intended to kick-off the thinking that will lead to a winning strategy.

Smooth purchasing process
- Small Customer Base: Every order handled in-person or by phone
- Larger Customer Base: E-commerce, ‘Click here for quote’ button on online store, hire inside sales dedicated personnel
Caring technical support
- Small Customer Base: Every issue handled in-person or by phone
- Larger Customer Base: FAQ’s on website, ‘How-to’ videos, hire dedicated tech support personnel
Easily contactable
- Small Customer Base: Encourage customers to call you with any issue anytime
- Larger Customer Base: Encourage customers to contact via email, hire dedicated tech support and/or inside sales personnel to handle calls
Insuring customer satisfaction
- Small Customer Base: Check in with all customers by phone or in-person
- Larger Customer Base: Check in with a customers by e-mail (automatically set up at the time of sale), periodically send out satisfaction surveys, randomly select a subset of customers for calls by dedicated inside sales personnel.

The Business of Life Sciences: Using Great Science to Build Great Businesses

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Big sand dune with dark shadow on one side

There is no ‘dark side’ to commercializing Life Sciences – just a ‘different dise’.

By Andrew Johnson, Ph.D.

Having a clear understanding of the differences between how science is done from an academic standpoint with how it is done in the typical Life Science company can significantly ease the path from discovery to market success. To the uninitiated scientist, the commercial team (Sales people, Marketing people, Business Development folks and the Financial Team) has been viewed as ‘the dark side’ and only interested in driving the business and either not understanding or valuing the role of the underlying science. From the business perspective, there is a concern that company scientists are only concerned with making more discoveries and not pushing towards doing the kind of work required to launch a compelling product. Neither view is accurate. Getting a good understanding of the differences can help to align the critical goals of each of these important parts of the life science company and increase the chances for success.

Why the Confusion?
Some of this confusion is caused by the way that scientists are trained in academia. The increasing pressures that academic scientists are facing to fund their research programs as NIH funding continues to become harder to secure only acerbates this. New relationships between commercial life science and biotechnology companies with academia, often facilitated by university technology transfer offices, are providing new sources of research capital. Strategic partnerships, patenting and out-licensing of intellectual property from research conducted in academia are increasingly filling the government sponsored funding gap. Like it or not, the lines between academic and commercial science have already been blurred.

Confusion is created because academic – commercial partnerships do not really combine the science being done in university labs with the commercialization efforts being done at the outside company. This separation allows traditional roles and attitudes to remain prevalent. In a Life Science company, the priorities of the science, the way that it is conducted, how it is validated and decisions on what projects will be worked on and which ones will be discontinued must be driven by commercial priorities. However, it is equally crucial that the commercial team allows enough freedom to R&D to insure the quality of the experimental and feasibility work and that there is some room for discovery (you never know what killer application you will find or valuable intellectual property your R&D team will develop).

Getting the R&D and Commercial Teams on the Same Side
The following table lists some of the key differences between academic and commercial science.

	Academic	Commercial
Research Scope	The scope is wide. New research findings drive the efforts in often unpredictable ways. This process is inherently unpredictable and random.	The scope of the experimental program is very focused. Only work that progresses the science from feasibility to finished product is encouraged.
Goals	Improve understanding of scientific or technical discipline	Improve robustness of product and provide initial data to support applications that will support commercialization
Scientific Validation	Publications, Presentations, Patents	Product Sales, Patents (as part of a strategic intellectual property estate)
Funding Sources	Grants, Foundation Sponsorships, consulting fees, licensing fees and royalties	Investments, Sales Revenue, licensing fees and royalties

There is no ‘dark side’ in a successful life science company, just a healthy relationship between the scientific and commercial teams. In both academic and commercial cases, the goal is to produce new technology and science. The only difference is in the path that each of these endeavors use to achieve this.

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