#007: Stop losing to "No Budget"

Welcome to the latest edition of the Succession newsletter where growth-minded biotech sales professionals improve their skills and take the next step in their career.

Read time: 4 minutes

This week we’re continuing to talk about discovery conversations. Discovery is the most impactful part of your sales process because it influences every step that follows.

Lately, we’ve been hearing that a lot of deals are lost to “no decision” or “no budget”. These 2 reasons account for over 60% of all closed lost opportunities (Jolt Effect). So how can you unlock the budget to get your deal across the line?

Budget can be unlocked by aligning to business-level problems or initiatives.

Business problems typically involve one of four categories.

1. Increasing Revenue / Funding

2. Decreasing Cost

3. Reducing Risk

4. Speed to Market

Your discovery conversation needs to focus on business impact. If you only discuss the technical capabilities of your offering, you’re likely not tying those capabilities back to business impact. This means the real decision maker in the deal may not see the value in what you’re offering.

The Power Line

There is a power line that exists within any lab, company, or department. There are people that have decision-making power and those that only influence decisions. Where this line is drawn can be different based on the size and structure of the organization. Different levels will have different “signing authority” (how much they can spend without needing further approval).

It’s your job as a sales rep to understand the unique dynamics of each organization you work with.

Below the line

It’s common in biotech sales that many sellers stay “below the line”. They’re really comfortable talking about the technical specifications and capabilities of their product or service. This is exactly what the below-the-line people want to know about.

The problem is, if you sell a service, platform, or product that is above their signing authority, they will have to get approval from someone else in their organization. And if you’ve only spoken with them about the technical capabilities, when they go to sell your offering internally, the proposal falls on deaf ears.

To combat this, you need to identify specific problems, find the root cause of the problem, and tie that root cause back to one of the 4 business impact metrics.

Finding problems and impact

To connect your solution with a business impact metric, it's essential to ask the right questions. If the person you're speaking with doesn't have the answer, they’re likely “below the line” and may not be in a position to make the final decision. You'll need to reach out to the decision-maker to understand the overall business impact and align your solution with one of their business initiatives.

Here is a simple technique you can implement on your next call to tie a technical problem to a business impact metric.

Question Laddering

Question laddering is the process of asking questions in a specific order to get to the business impact of a problem. Here is an example of laddering 3 questions together around a specific problem.

1. What is your biggest challenge with [process]? [Problem identification]

2. Why do you think that is happening? [Root cause analysis]

3. How does that affect the lab/business as a whole? [Business impact]

This is a logical flow of questioning that digs deeper into the problem they’re facing. You’re now able to take a simple process challenge and tie it to a business problem that needs to be addressed.

Not sure what exact questions to ask? I created a list of 60+ technical discovery questions you can use right away.

Budget follows high-priority business problems

Here is a real example of how a rep was able to identify a clear problem, root cause, and business impact. By engaging above the line, budget was created and allocated to solve the problem.

The project: The customer needed to validate GWAS mutation data in cell models.

The problem: They had 60 different targets and not enough resources to go after them all at once. The plan was to start with 12.

The root cause: They didn’t have the expertise in the lab to complete each project before their next grant deadline.

The business impact: They could select the wrong targets to go after and completely miss their deadline and not get the funding to move their research forward.

By understanding the entire scope and business impact of not hitting their timeline, their PI was able to pull the budget from other projects to outsource the editing for all 60 targets.

Take Action

1. Download the technical sales discovery questions

2. Create a simple question ladder (problem → root cause → business impact)

3. Use the question ladder on your next call

4. Find the “above the line” contact to speak with about the business impact

5. Close the deal

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