Sales Cycle and Adoption Curve in the Clinical Research Landscape

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Sales Cycle and Adoption Curve in the Clinical Research Landscape

If you’ve spent any time at all working in the clinical research and/or pharmaceutical/biotech/med-device industries, when you think of sales cycles and adoption curves for new technology usually there is a long ‘groan’ involved.
Pharma companies are conservative – we get it. Let’s face it, our approach to medicine today is not unlike throwing darts in the dark. Very few compounds are of much therapeutic benefit and the costs associated with finding the ones that are, studying them, and bringing them to market are astronomical. So are the risks involved. It is natural that approaches are very conservative.


I am in no way bashing the pharma industry for producing imperfect cures. This is a complicated process and in the scope of our history our approach and safe guards in the quest for meaningful medical breakthroughs have never been more effective. Scrutinizing heavily every aspect of the approach to this process is understandable. Medicine is changing though and so is the entire world in which we live. Information technology has profoundly changed the way we live today (personally and professionally) versus even 5 years ago.


Technology Adoption


This really struck me recently when I read a blurb on the brochure for the eClinical Summit. It comes from Ray Kurzweil, from Singularity University. He’s described as “the restless genius” by the Wall Street Journal. Ray recognizes that we are at a pivotal time in health technologies and in particular with respect to genetics, Ray points out:

“…medicine has transformed into an information technology. As such, medicine is now subject to the “law of accelerating returns,” and in 10 years technologies will be a thousand times more powerful than today, and a million times more powerful in 20 years. Up until recently, health interventions were hit or miss. Today it is within our grasp to slow the aging process and take full advantage of advances in bio- and nanotechnology occurring now and evolving at an accelerating pace in the years ahead. “

I work with a leading silicon valley company with top software development engineers. I don’t believe the word “conservative” is in their vocabulary. We are an agile development company, which means we design, build and design solutions in a rapid iterative manner – in stark contrast to our customers (and competitors.)

That’s ok though; it doesn’t mean we can’t play nice and achieve great things together in reasonable amounts of time. I’ve already seen it happen with big companies. They may surprise you and turn around things quicker than expected!

I believe that an approach with an open mind, having no predetermined outcome or expectations, will yield the path you need to follow to achieve a successful collaboration with customers in this marketplace. The key to getting people and clients through their own adoption curve is to provide them with a solution to a problem first.

If they recognize your solution and see value now you can help them get through the curve. Meaning, be flexible – very flexible and creative in your approach. The client is driving but YOU are navigating. At this point you can help by making the rest of the process easy for them and showcasing this as THEIR success.

As for finding the right solution to the problem: Recently an esteemed colleague of mine showed me a great article on ways to spot markets ripe for disruption.

Closing Thoughts

The author of this article, Luke Williams, a fellow at Frog Design and author of Disrupt: Think The Unthinkable To Spark Transformation In Your Business. states:

“…more often than not, it’s the small, seemingly unbroken aspects of a situation that provide the richest opportunity areas for innovation. These are often the nagging issues that never get much attention. We ignore them, precisely because they don’t change.”

So it seems to follow that in order to provide a solution to someone’s problem, you may first have to help them identify the problem. Most people agree that study startup is broken and cumbersome, yet everyone is extremely attached to their spreadsheets! The idea of getting through study startup with the easy you find in making a purchase at Amazon.com is one that probably hasn’t been considered by most of our clients.

I also believe that more and more those of us in technology and life science will see the industry accelerate their vetting processes. As solutions become more sophisticated, targeting specific pain points, they will also become more intuitive and economical. Nothing but good stuff on the horizon for the combination of information technology and medicine!

As is the case with many of my blogs, I hope to start a dialogue here and welcome input from vendors and buyers. What approaches to vetting new technologies are the buyers out there employing? For example, I know of sponsor companies setting up internal departments just for this purpose.

For those of you Selling to this marketplace – your thoughts on expediting the purchasing process and can we manipulate the adoption curve?

Thanks for reading!

About the Author

Dan Manak is the Director of Sales at goBalto and a graduate of the University of Wisconsin – Madison. After earning his bachelor of science degree in Molecular Biology he began his career in pharmaceuticals with Hoffman-La Roche, holding positions in sales, sales management, and training. He has worked in pharmaceuticals, health care, and clinical research for over 20 years with Fortune 100 companies as well as start-ups. For the past seven years he led a small clinical research service organization as the President and Director of Business Development. His expertise and passion exist specifically in the area of clinical study start-up, having worked on several hundred protocols and initiating close to a thousand investigative research sites. In his spare time, Dan is a volunteer EMT and martial artist/Instructor.

About goBalto: goBalto is a small team that creates simple, focused and affordable web based software for the global clinical trial industry. Our products offer drug trial sponsors the easiest possible way to start their clinical studies on the web, which makes them feel better. www.gobalto.com