There comes a point in a biotech’s lifetime when bringing in the business requires more than just the founder.   The person who the company has relied on to get onto the podium at conferences, be invited in to big pharma to trump the theories and applications of the technology and write seminal papers can no longer sustain the business on his or her own.

Becoming “more commercial” in approach is typically something people think about after Series A funding when new investors put on the pressure develop more rigorous business practices, or if the founder decides to exit the business through retirement or a management changeover.

From “tech-led” business development to commercial best practices: a great opportunity

First of all, the advent of a new commercial way of thinking and doing business should be a great opportunity.    It’s a time to rethink the business offering, perhaps examine new applications of the technology, explore potential new markets and services that may have been overlooked in the past.  As you establish and grow a small biotech, there is enormous pressure to stand behind a single idea and ignore other potential avenues – through single-minded dogged determination to prove your personal beliefs or simply as a result of the shear focus that you need to put into creating a new market for a new innovation.  Not to mention the limited budget that precludes spreading yourself too thinly.

Secondly, it is pretty risky for a small business to be so heavily reliant on one person for a prolonged period of time.

So how can you effectively replicate what the founder has done so far in terms of building the business?

1. Define what you’re actually selling: your products and services. Sounds funny, but until this point many start-up biotechs don’t actually do this.  Business is built out of peer-level consultations and each “deal” is a result of piecing together the scientific components to meet the needs of each client on a case-by-case basis.  The idea of defining the “product” often only comes afterwards.
2. Capture the key messages that are inside your founder’s head.  Don’t just take his/her slides.  They are usually useless without the anecdotes, statistics and personality that your founder uses to accompany them.  You need to capture those – in note form to start with and distil them down to a set of key phrases that describe the business offering and benefits.
3. Think about your different audiences: the financial community, potential acquirers or partners, your customers.  Develop a set of key messages tailored to each of your different audiences and assemble the case studies, data, statistics, financials and competitive comparisons that will support each statement.    Your founder probably does this on the fly but your next team of business developers won’t have the background to do this.
4. Carve out your commercial budget. In the past, your founder/CSO might have attended conferences, given talks, attended networking meetings etc.  They will have flown here and there to meet clients.  Similarly, other technical staff members may have presented posters.  Make no mistake: this was your marketing effort.  The costs for these activities may have been distributed over different budgets so you may have little idea of just how much you have been spending on marketing to date.  Now you need to carve out a budget that enables you to go out and achieve more in order to feed the business development pipeline.   You will need to assess your return on investment for your marketing efforts – hence the need for a consolidated budget.
5. Develop a communications plan. You need to assemble your case studies and supporting data so that you can develop a fresh set of materials for new white papers, editorials, blog posts, press releases and posters.  Third party agencies or freelance technical writers can write all of these things in future.  Don’t think that you can rely on the founder’s publication archives forever.  If you’re not fresh, people think that you’re just waiting things out until the money dries up.
6. Make a tactical marketing strategy for the year.  Your founder may have been asked give talks or chair meetings or forums.  You can achieve the same level of external presence but it takes planning and sometimes you have to pay for a speaker slot (by sponsoring a conference for example).  All these require advance planning – they won’t drop into your lap any longer.
7. Define the fundamental business development process.  Until now, forecasting may not have happened regularly or formally.   Break down your business development pipeline into leads, prospects, opportunities, contracts, and record those that have been closed/won and closed/lost (along with the reasons).  I recommend Salesforce.com to help you do this – it will make the business pipeline more transparent and help you to understand the sources of your leads and marketing ROI.
8. Develop a set of marketing materials that will be used by a BD team. They are not the same as those used by the technical founder who will undoubtedly be used to giving a lecture-style presentation.  Slides need to be strongly visual with clear key messages backed up by sufficient supporting evidence.  See here for how to develop a good slide set.
9. Identify and develop your next generation of technical experts. As you develop the business and recruit more operational team members you will spot the rising stars – those technically- minded individuals who can also communicate well.  Take them on road trips to see your clients, let them present at posters and on podiums and get them on the exhibit stand at a busy conference.  Not only will you develop your next scientific gurus but you’ll also reduce that yawning chasm that often exists between the business development team and the people who work in the lab.  Good will come out of this!