You're Not the Technical Expert- and That's OK!

Can technical sales people in B2B sales be TOO technical?  And can their technical knowledge be a comfort zone crutch in the sales call, to the detriment of understanding and satisfying customer needs? In this episode of the Luxury of Choice, Steve Vaughan and Jonathan Slasinski are joined by Matt McCormack, International Sales Manager of Natus Sensory to discuss:

• The role of technical knowledge in sales success
• Building credibility through honesty and relationships
• Knowing when to involve technical experts
• Personalization and customer connection strategies
• Balancing technical expertise with sales skills. 

Our thanks to Matt for joining us for this show. 

Matt McCormack on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjmccormack/

Steve Vaughan, Jonathan Cooper, Pru Layton, Christian Walter, Pascal le Floche,  Jayne Green  and Jonathan Slasinski are Sales Trainers from george james ltd.  You can email the show at:  Podcast@georgejames-training.com

 The trainers on LinkedIn:

 Steve Vaughan https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-vaughan-salestrainer/
Jonathan Cooper https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-cooper-18716b1/
Pru Layton https://www.linkedin.com/in/pru-layton-b46a3528/
Christian Walter https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-walter-a1857b1/
Jayne Green https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayne-green-salestrainer/
Pascal Le Floch-Riche https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascal-le-floch-220ba46/

Jonathan Slasinski https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-slasinski-449a655/

george james training website https://georgejames-training.com/

Transcript

Steve (00:00)
Hello again, welcome to The Luxury Choice, a B2B technical sales and business podcast brought to you by the training team of George James Limited. My name is Steve Vaughan. I'm a member of the training team here and I'm also the host and the producer of this podcast. And I've also got a bit of a cold, so if I'm bit croaky sounding today, it's not your listening device or your headphones. It's actually me with a slight croak. So my apologies for that. I'm enjoying also today with another colleague of mine who's also got a bit of a cold today. It's from our team meeting, think, Jonathan, recently. How are you? Jonathan Slasinski How are doing?

Jonathan (00:30)
Doing well, Steve. Great to be here.

Steve (00:31)
good and we're slowly getting over allergies. But more importantly, we have a guest today again and our guest today is Matt McCormack who works for a company's sales manager for a company called Natus Sensories. So Matt, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.

Matt (00:46)
No problem at all. Thanks Steve. Thanks Jonathan.

Steve (00:49)
Why don't you just tell the listener a little bit about yourself, your background and then the role you have at Natus.

Matt (00:54)
Yeah, sure. So as you just mentioned, I work for a company called Nata Sensory. We're a leading global medical device manufacturer, mainly in the hearing and balance and newborn care products. My current role is as an international sales leader for the UK, Ireland and the Nordics.

So I manage our direct sales and clinical teams, as well as our distribution partners in that region, but as well as medical devices, we also offer supplies and consumables for capital equipment, but also services such as calibration, repairs, clinical training. So I've got good experience selling different solutions, whether that be products or services into the healthcare sector.

Steve (01:31)
Okay. So your customers would be NHS organizations typically in the UK or?

Matt (01:36)
Yeah, both NHS and private practices as well.

Steve (01:39)
Okay. Thank you so much for coming on and you you reached out to me a little while ago and I do appreciate you stepping up and offering to be on the show today. Thanks. So what are we going to talk about today? Well, the sort of working title for this podcast today is I'm not the technical expert and that's okay. Now that's not talking to me specifically, although I can argue the case it probably is, but from a sales perspective, what do we mean really? Why is it okay?

Matt (01:47)
Much. It's all my pleasure.

Steve (02:07)
if you're in a sales team and you're not the most technical. Bear in mind, our people listen to this, our customers typically are people in life science, lab, medical devices, which are technical fields. But as a sort of working title, and I guess a slightly provocative title, you don't necessarily have to be the most technical person in the team to be the best salesperson. let's start that one around. So Jonathan, first of all, do you agree with that premise as a working ⁓ topic?

Jonathan (02:35)
I agree with it in the fact that you can be successful without being technical, but I will say in my, in my, you enablement past, I wanted my reps to be as technical as possible. Obviously, you know, to back up the sales skills, but again, you know, there's, there's times when you have new products or there's things maybe you're not, you're not as comfortable with that. You don't need to be that technical to still engage with customers, talk to them, understand their needs.

You know, the basics of sales is not technical. It's building understanding, it's qualifying, it's understanding who these people are and trying to build those relationships. That's not technical. And if they can do that and then add that technical layer on, that's just going to blow their credibility through the water.

Steve (03:18)
I guess your business is a very technical business Matt. How important is technical product knowledge for the sake in your sales team skills?

Matt (03:27)
Yeah,

to an extent it is obviously, you know, you don't want reps that don't know the products, but at the same time, I would much rather than be transparent and honest about the knowledge when they're talking to clinicians and very experienced people in their field. So there's no problem at all with saying that's a great question. I don't know, but let me come back to you. You know, I'll find out the answer to that. Use that exercise as, you know, a learning opportunity to maybe build a list of frequently asked questions or difficult questions that you get asked to,

prepare better for next time.

Jonathan (03:58)
Yeah, I love what you just said there, Matt. know, it's funny. like, always would think, you know, when you're talking to PhDs and, I wasn't a PhD when I was selling to PhDs. If you don't know something, just be honest. I think so many reps try to, you know, they get into this trap of I have to answer, I have to sound smart. And that usually, you know, puts you back in a hole, which again comes to this. It's like, you don't have to be technical. Be honest, right? I don't understand this, but you know what? I'm going to get that answer for you. And I think that's what, that's what customers want. They want to, they want to, you know, want a little bit of a solution.

but they also want to know that you're working for them and you're really going to try it out. And then again, from the rep perspective, then you learn. the next time you get asked that question, hopefully you can answer it a little bit better, but I love that you said that it's about that transparency.

Steve (04:41)
Yeah, great point. And I guess our customers, they'll always be more technical than we are in their particular field because it's their career, it's their job, it's often their life's work that we're talking to them about, listening to them talk about in the sales core really. I guess we need, it's another basics, we? So I mean, I know companies in lab equipment from in the past, for example, who've hired people from like an FMCG background.

a very different sales background and it's never really worked from my experience. Please ring in and tell me if you know different. Normally, I think you do need some technical knowledge to be able to empathize with the customer. I don't know how much is enough, but you do have to have enough. Would you agree with me on that Matt?

Matt (05:26)
Yeah, I think one of the, one of the approaches that I certainly used in my career and I encourage our sales teams to do is, know, say to the customer also, I'm new, you know, there's no harm with that when you're starting out in a new role. It's probably a card that I played for more than six months ago and has seen some customers, you know, and just saying, you know, let me learn from you. you know, can I, if it's in a hospital environment, like,

my reps, know, ask them to shadow a clinic, you know, even within, within the team, you know, speak to your colleagues, see you can follow along from them and pick up some of that expertise along the way. I would recommend anyone to do that, particularly starting out in either a new role or a new, a new field.

Steve (06:04)
Sure, sure. And in your background Jonathan, you your sales and development backgrounds, how much did you get involved in the technical side of the training or was that another organization or another team that did that?

Jonathan (06:15)
Yeah. So in, in, in my first role, actually had a technical training team, which was fantastic. And, know, all the reps went through what we would consider a, technical training light, right? You know, the, the field application scientists, science and technology advisors, the engineers, they went through more of a deeper, deeper technology, technology training. ⁓ but that, you know, that kind of level set them on the technical aspects. ⁓ and then it came down to the sales skills part of it.

But I will say the reverse was, you when we would have application scientists, you know, come into sales roles, you know, these very technical minded people, you know, there was some, there was a little bit of a learning curve of what, know, you don't always have to be, you know, you don't always have to be spewing technical and technical expertise and talking about this. It's really just about connecting and figuring out what does the customer need and then aligning those to those technical, you know, aspects that we have. So it's kind of funny, like, you know, you always want your reps to be technical.

But then when you get technical reps, you want them to be a little bit less technical. It's, it's kind of that, that ebb and flow of what we have or what I, at least what I experienced, you know, in, this life science market.

Steve (07:23)
I can think back to my own career and I won't mention the companies involved, when I moved to a very large US based instrument company, you can probably work out the rest really. I didn't have that same technical background as some of my peers, even though I'm coming in in a senior management role. And I felt that quite a disadvantage. In fact, I felt a little bit of inverse snobbery almost. was, dare I say, even perhaps even look people down a little bit, if I'm being really honest, because I didn't have

the PhDs and you know, I had a degree in chemistry, but not that sort of domain knowledge that some of my peers did. But then my view on that was, well, that's your role guys. You know, I bring all the skills, I bring all the benefits to the organization really. So can you be too technical? Do you think guys? It sounds wrong. So that's flaws you both.

Matt (08:15)
I'll go Jonathan. Um, yeah, I think you can, I think that's probably a mistake I made early in my sales career as well was trying to, you know, make sure you get all those features and benefits in, know, regardless of, uh, whether, whether you really fully understood it or not. And yeah, there's, there's, you know, no real advantage to that. Like I said, there's, there's much more, um, it's much more effective to be honest and transparent and, and, you know, listening, um, think tends to be a

A downfall of some sales reps certainly on the first start out is wanting to talk a lot more rather than listen to the customer's requirements. So I think it's trying to find that balance.

Steve (08:52)
Do you agree on that Jonathan?

Jonathan (08:54)
Yeah, definitely. You know, I feel very similar experience with Matt where it's, you know, especially when I was younger, it was always like, how do I get enough of this technique? How do I speak enough so that they think I'm, you know, I'm smart. again, I see that you, didn't have the PhD, right? I did have a science background, but I didn't have the PhD. So, you know, it was always trying to be like, well, how do I, how do I build this credibility? Well, let me, let me sound like I'm so technical. And it took a couple of years in my career was like,

just listen to them and have them talk and try to connect. And that's, that's where I really started seeing some of these successes happen from, that perspective.

Steve (09:29)
I think the danger is... Sorry, go ahead.

Matt (09:31)
No, I was going to say just on the subject of that, a former manager of mine gifted me a book a number of years back. Just talking about, this. I think it was like a Christmas gift for the sales team, but it sort of resonates with me and some of the stuff I still think about today actually. it's, don't be put off by the title. It's a book called Go Naked, The Credible Expert. Wow. By a guy called Michael Smith. I think he was an ex medical device rep, but the concept of the book is that.

Jonathan (09:39)
Here we go.

Matt (10:00)
personal credibility is much more effective than I'm powerful and selling based purely on features and benefits. So, you know, you don't necessarily have to be overly technical to be successful. Just be someone at the cost of the trust. yeah, I'd recommend it to any of you. Any listeners.

Steve (10:15)
But look at that

Jonathan (10:15)
A customer would email me and they get a reply the next morning or I would be in the lab the next day if there was an issue. That's that credibility, Matt, that you just speak about, right? And it's another thing that I used to train on, which was the of the scale of credibility versus likability. Like where do we need to be and what do you feel is most important? And again, most like the technical people be like, I have to be credible. And then some of the sales reps would be like, no, I'd rather be more kind of towards this like likable phase. So it's just funny to see how different

you know, team members react to that. But again, I love kind of what you're talking about, you know, when it that it becomes sound, that credibility versus this technical, technical expertise. Did they, do we get it? Did they address my needs?

Steve (10:55)
we get the credibility? Sorry, Jonathan, how do we get the credibility then with a customer? you know, it's hard to imagine, but imagine I'm a young salesperson, you know, my first sales job with a chemistry degree and I don't know, you know, I've had the product training, but I don't know everything about my product applications. I'm meeting a, know, a professor, expert in his field. How do we get the credibility without having necessarily the, because you never have all the technical knowledge, you know, how do you get the credibility? What kind of things can we do with somebody like that to get

you know,

Jonathan (11:28)
I always thought it came down to, you know, the personalization, right? Do you understand what they're doing? And can you just connect just a little bit on, know, when you introduce yourself as a new rep, just connect a little bit on what they're doing, right? That right off the bat is going to be like, they researched me or they, they, read this paper or they looked around my lab and they understand my work, right? Right off the bat, personalize something, right? Figure out a way that you can personalize and make a connection.

And that's non-tech, that can be non-technical. it doesn't, just has to be, used to work, I'd walk the halls in the NIH and I'd look at a poster and I'd be like, okay, cool. What are they using? Boom. I'd go in there, start talking to them about that. How'd you know we were using that? Oh, your poster was out there, I was reading it. Oh, you actually spent time reading your poster. Yeah, I did. You know, you don't have to read a poster now. We just put the poster in the chat GPT and it, you know, summarizes it for us. But you know, just ways to make those connections. mean, don't know, Matt, how do you feel about that kind of stuff?

Matt (12:24)
Yeah. And I think that's it. It's really good. You know, it's something that I've seen my teams do well. know a couple of your previous episodes on the podcast were about utilizing LinkedIn. And I know I've seen my team do that with, you know, if they've seen someone's won an award or written a paper or something like that, just dropping that into the conversation. It's also more human, isn't it? You know, ⁓ it sort of builds that relationship and that rapport rather than just going in and waiting to tell them all about your product or your service. know, just have that human interaction.

Steve (12:53)
Yeah. And I think also LinkedIn is a great example of this, but your own personal network could be a great way of building credibility, can't it really? Knowing people who are doing similar work to this customer or similar situations where you've helped a customer out, you can refer to that experience or that scenario and build the credibility that way really certainly. So technical knowledge, can you then be a comfort zone do you think for people in our industry or too much technical knowledge? Is it something they almost use?

Use as a security blanket or as a crutch. Mixing my metaphors.

Jonathan (13:26)
And I think I've seen a mix of it. think I've seen that, you those, those very technical reps come in and think that they know more than the customer, right. Which can sometimes, you know, put the customer on the offensive or, or, or, or, or again, when we talk about that, credibility, are you really making that connection where when you come in as a know it all. You know, that kind of, that could turn off some people. And then again, you have that where you don't know anything and then everyone's going to be like, well, what are they doing? Like they don't know anything, which, this, you know, there's both sides to that equation. And I've seen both, right.

⁓ To me, I always wanted to be as technical as I could be, right? Just so I would have that in the background. But I think my forward-facing was always the relationship, the need, connecting with them on something that was a human or more of a personal level, right? This is the salesman in me, right?

Matt (14:13)
Yeah, I agree. think it depends on the individual as well. I've in teams I've managed, I've seen clinicians come in and do sales roles and do it really well because they can speak at a different level to the customer. But at the same time, probably some of the best reps I've encountered in my career, you know, were not technical experts. It was just an ability to build relationships, you know.

Do as you promise, really come back to the customer in a timely manner. All the really obvious things, you know, that just makes common sense. But yeah, I think some salespeople do get hung up on knowing technical specifications, but it's not to be all and end all.

Steve (14:45)
think from a sales trainer's point of view, we probably would say on that as well is people who understand the sales process and are able to manage the sales process and drive the sales process, you know, they're experts on that, if you like, as much as they are on their product knowledge. Have you ever lost a sale by being too technical? Of course Jonathan, yeah. Meanwhile, back on Planet Reality.

Jonathan (15:02)
I never lost any sales.

But you

just can't, I'm not thinking of it. That's not, nothing is really registering with me about being too technical. think there were times that, you know, I would, I would be well over, overbearing on the specs of something, right? That just probably didn't really rec or really connect, you know, with them. Like, Hey, this is exactly what you need. How do you know that? You didn't even ask me a question, right? Well, it's cause you have this sitting on your bench. So that means you need this, right? I mean, those were the kinds of things I think early on in my career that I missed a lot.

you know, where I made assumptions around what they needed. And then I would just go in and pitch my products about, you've got Western blotting. Well, I have a transfer device that will do this in 10 minutes. Well, we really don't do much Western blotting, even though you see the rig sitting, you know, it's things like that.

Steve (15:53)
interesting. How about you, your team?

Matt (15:55)
Yeah, but again, probably similar examples. I'm sure I can't think of any specifics that jump out, but yeah, I think it's something certainly early on in your career where you often go in and you may be a little bit too keen and ⁓ enthusiastic wanting to talk about tech. Having not been ever really a technical expert, I suppose that's why I'm struggling to think of any real examples. I've always tried to be successful without that. So yeah, I'm sure we've all come.

You know, all fell foul of that at some point.

Steve (16:27)
can't think of any specifics, but I know in general terms that when I first moved from selling general live equipment to moving into instrumentation, technical instrumentation, definitely lost sales because I wanted to share everything. you've got to see the whole thing. You know, you've got to share every button, every application, every mode, every routine, every bit of everything on the software. And after half an hour, the customer's eyes are glazing over and then they're probably saying, have you got a simpler one? Have you got a cheaper one? That's way too complicated.

Give me, give me the basic version. Yeah. I've definitely done that in my career.

Jonathan (16:59)
I will say Steve, like thinking about this, where I did fail technical is prospecting where I prospect just very technical. Like, you know, here's this email, here's this, you know, here's this, you know, here's this paper. I'd have these like, I mean, I don't know. I thought that they made sense, but again, when I go, when I think back to it, it was like, why would you put that much information into like a reach out email? And it was literally technical, technical, technical, technical.

And then I changed and I was like, all let me just write a two line email. And I would get more responses that way than these huge technical kind of pieces. But I don't, think that there's definitely a need for technical followup, but I will say thinking back, like my reach out based on technical was definitely not as successful as, you know, the whole personalization and trying to bring some value.

Steve (17:46)
Yeah, I've definitely done that as well. Definitely. Let's just sort of move slightly to a different topic on this one. I'm just thinking while you were talking there, Jonathan. So it's quite common. I don't know if it's the same for you, but it's sort of in lab equipment sales. It's quite common to have like a generalist salesperson that covers a whole range of products and knows a fair bit and then have a product specialist that will come in and provide the more detailed support when needed.

on a particular product line or a particular, does that kind of thing work in your industry as well?

Matt (18:19)
Yeah, it does. mean, I've worked in maybe smaller companies where you, you're the one having to follow up and be, you know, the trainer and going and sort of not demonstrate the equipment, but train them on it once they maybe purchased it. in the current organization where I work, we are fortunate. I do remind the sales team of this, that we, know, we have a clinical training team and they, they support with both pre-sales and post-sales. ⁓ so the, the not, ⁓ suppose they're not.

They say they're not salespeople, but they're very much part of the sales process before and afterwards. yeah, it's not, it's not in the, I know the sort of scenario you're talking about where it's maybe, you know, a joint effort between salespeople, someone may be more technical. So it's slightly different to that, but I've, I've seen, I've seen both, but I've also worked where you kind of have to be that person as well. that's a little bit tougher. Yeah.

Steve (19:10)
Absolutely. So just, just sort of pushing that envelope bit further then. thinking about the scenario where there's a salesperson who's got some technical knowledge, but then a product specialist or an applications person or whatever phrase they are, that is also like the more technical person. I've seen that work really well. I've seen it work really badly in the sales team. What are the things, and did you used to do that in your last company, Jonathan, for example? The challenges with that.

Jonathan (19:37)
Yeah, we had,

you know, we've, I've always in my whole career, I've always had the application scientists, you know, to support me, you know, and then in other roles, we had application scientists, science and technology advisors, know, another overlay, right? Yeah. And again, I've seen very good stuff out of it. I've seen very bad stuff out of it. Right. I love, I love the value add of bringing in an expert, right? You know, like.

You should know a little bit about your product, but hey, we really going to do a deep dive into this and your specific requirements, your specific setup. Let's bring in an expert. Let's talk about experimental design, you know, things that are way, definitely way technical than, than me, you know, things like that.

Steve (20:18)
Sort of things we need to see.

Jonathan (20:19)
where I've been more technical than they have. That's where it's like, okay, well, what are doing with this person? Why are they here?

Steve (20:27)
Yeah, that's kind of where I'm going with this really. the challenge I think of this one is knowing when to bring them in, particularly, know, for example, you know, North America, you know, people flying on planes and hotels and rental cars and all that kind of stuff. You know, how do we make that call as a technical salesperson when to bring in the product space place? How do we know when it's the right time to do that? And how do we get that right? Yeah.

Jonathan (20:50)
Again, it comes down to what we, I think we preach a lot of this podcast, which is qualification and understanding the real needs of the customer. But I will say, you know, in my previous roles, you know, I've had reps who wouldn't go on a call without their STA with them or wouldn't go on a call without, and that's, know, so that's like this extreme, right? And then you have the other reps who just would never use their STA and it's like, well, okay. Are they really getting the most benefit?

out of having these kind of roles, you or the FAS, are they really getting that benefit? But to me, comes down to qualification. mean, Matt, I'm sure you have some insights in this as well.

Matt (21:25)
Yeah, I think we trust the team to make that call on when to bring that person in and they're a very close knit team. But yeah, I've worked in organizations where it's maybe more difficult to know exactly when to bring that person in. So I think it probably comes down to experience, you know, the salesperson deciding this is the point where I need a bit more support here. You know, it's either getting to the stage where they need to trial the equipment or they're asking questions that really the salesperson isn't, you know, because maybe they're not clinical or technical.

They then do need that support. So I think it's just about using a bit of common sense to bring them in at the right time.

Steve (21:59)
Yeah, absolutely. And as you quietly say Jonathan, the importance of qualification. I think you said on the chat before the call that some of your business goes through distribution partners. So what about their technical knowledge? Is that an extra complexity? Cause they presumably representing not just your products, but other companies products as well. How does that play out?

Matt (22:16)
Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, we, try and do regular training sessions with them. also have a technical experts within the company available to them as well. but yeah, you're right. It's a slightly more complicated factor ⁓ because they, you know, we're trying to train them up to be able to go out and do, the same role as our direct sales team. So, yeah.

Steve (22:38)
Okay. So last thought on this from me then really, you know, can be thought on this really, what about right at the end of the sales process end? we've, let's assume we've done a great qualification. We're working through the sales process and we're now in front of a buyer, a purchasing person, as opposed to a scientist or a clinician or a professor. What things do we think about from a technical knowledge perspective when we're in front of a buyer guys, a purchasing person, presumably who hasn't a lot of technical background at all in your products.

is the things we need to be aware of here, or things we need to think of.

Matt (23:10)
Yeah, I think you want to avoid being overly technical. know, it's, it's about reading the room and understanding what people's, ⁓ so, you know, what, what they're looking for, you know, someone in procurement is not going to be wanting to know the ins and outs necessarily of a piece of equipment. It's more the cost or the ongoing costs, you know, the maintenance side of things as well. So, yeah, so I think it's, it's very much tailoring it to the audience. ⁓ and certainly in our line of work, lots of different stakeholders with different interests.

Steve (23:29)
So, that's very much it.

Matt (23:40)
still around the same projects.

Steve (23:43)
interesting. What are your thoughts on this?

Jonathan (23:46)
Yeah, I think Matt kind of nailed it. It's, don't want to be overly technical, even though I think, you know, earlier it was always like, well they need this, right? Like the, the, the, the purchaser doesn't understand how much they need this because of the technical expertise and all the things that are, it's going to benefit them. But to me, it was always about setting the stage. What would you like to get out of this meeting? Right. Like from the purchaser, what do you need from me? What, why are we meeting? What kind of things, you know, can I potentially help you with?

And then you start to get their feel of what they need. You know, it could be service contract. could be, you know, what's up with installation or it could be, you know, what it comes down to a lot of times, just pricing, right? But I always loved, you know, starting that off, you know, what, can I assist you with? What, know, what's your, what are your, what are your, you know, what are your, what are your aims of this meeting here? And let that put it on them, right? So it doesn't have to be me talking to them about service contracts and pricing and.

Steve (24:26)
Interesting.

Jonathan (24:43)
You know, all that kind of stuff. Let them figure out, you know, let them let me know what's going on.

Steve (24:48)
I once made a, again, I won't go into the details, but I went to a terrible mistake in front of the purchaser. But basically, I paraphrase widely by saying to them, of course you wouldn't understand this. You know, in not so many words. And the purchaser said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,

can you just explain to me what it is that I'm buying? You know, and they may, they may want to know at the right level what the product is that you, that you'll hopefully, well, you said I'm buying, so yes, they are buying. Um, you know, what, what it's doing for them, why, why they need it, how it benefits the organization. And I think being able to put that in no, I don't want to say layman's terms, but in the right terms is an important skill to have really. yeah, it does seem you're nodding, Martyr.

Matt (25:42)
Yeah, I was going to add to that, that I've also seen sales reps make the mistake. Yeah, you don't want to assume that they don't want to know about the technical side, but I've seen people drop sort of clinical acronyms or things like that in, and you can just see that the procurement person has got no idea what they're about. So it's, about finding that right level, you know, and sort of, yeah, maybe not asking it in that way, Steve, as you explained, trying to find ways. Yeah, no, I'm sure we've all been there.

Steve (26:08)
way you dropped the three letter, you dropped the three letter I came in earlier, Jonathan, which I let go. Remind me what the one you did. I, when you were talking about product specialists.

Jonathan (26:18)
There is a fa asset

Steve (26:20)
STA, STA. So just for the listener, what's an STA?

Jonathan (26:23)
science and technology advisor. you. you know, instead of being more about, instead of being more about training and really getting them up and running, it was more about the pre-work, like research, ⁓ experimental design, really diving in, you know, if my SCA was with me, they had probably read four or five of this lab's papers, you know, getting the nitty gritty down of that kind of stuff.

Steve (26:47)
Okay, I just hadn't heard that term before, so thank you for that.

Jonathan (26:49)
But I loved Steve, you know, and Matt, you know, when we talk about purchasing, used to have, you know, at the NIH, would go to the, there used to be like one building with all the purchases in it. So, you know, there would be like a, ⁓ you know, ⁓ a floor where you're, you know, cause you, you work with this building, these are your purchasers. And I would do like a lunch and learn where I'd bring in lunch and I would do like a one-on-one. These are my products. When you see this happen and it really, it was cool because it also, just, a, lot of them were like, I didn't.

I don't know what this is, right? You know, things like that. But the credibility that it built where I can actually then just reach out and be like, Hey, ⁓ is this PO coming in today? is there Jonathan, we'll get right to it. You know, it's like, it's just taking that extra step to really, and again, the 101 of it, right? It doesn't have to be technical. It just has to give somebody an understanding of what your product does. when they're, when this, when these papers, when these POs come through that, my God, they're doing next generation sequencing. I know what they're doing. Right.

That's kind cool when you can connect your job to the value that it's bringing to the organization that you're in.

Steve (27:51)
That's the thing. Yeah, absolutely.

Matt (27:54)
My wife's a vet and luncheon learns very popular within, within that industry as well. Cause they don't always have the time to meet with sales reps, but you know, if they come in over lunch and kind of do an education session, ⁓ I know it normally goes down well, depending on the quality of the sandwiches.

Jonathan (28:08)
Yeah,

you gotta bring good food. The key is the lunch, right? It's like, oh, you're not bringing us pizza. No, no, no, no, no. We're getting Panera Bread sandwiches and soup. Let's go.

Steve (28:18)
It's we're getting off topic, actually, but I found them always a great way to get into an account I wasn't necessarily active in to do things like lunch and learn to approach people like child departments and do just training, you know, and might just be a way of getting into an account that, know,

Jonathan (28:33)
But Steve, I will say something. There was something important to kind of what Matt was saying and what you're saying about these lunch and learns, right? I've had people walk away from technical seminars complaining about the food, right? So not about what they learned in the seminar. Again, it my seminar because I always had great food, but it was about the fact that, I can't believe I went here and all I got was pizza and salad, right?

So it's kind of funny, like we talk about this, right? Think about a non-technical thing, which is what kind of food do you bring, right? Bring something that people are gonna like, because you don't want, the last thing you want to do when you're doing one of these things is to people walk away being upset about something that has nothing to do with your product. Again, non-technical.

Matt (29:21)
So I've experienced that as well. One of my clinicians, depending when we're organizing training, if it's an offsite event somewhere where we're inviting clinicians to come and be trained, the trainer might be free of charge or linked to some equipment that they've already purchased. yeah, depending on what lunch is provided. yeah, one of our clinicians is always very keen to check the menu on the venue before we commit to going there.

Steve (29:46)
I'm really worried next time we have a team meeting now Jonathan that the food's gonna be good.

Jonathan (29:49)
Dave,

we could sum this podcast up, non-technical buying, just bring great food.

Matt (29:54)
always help.

Steve (29:56)
guys, it's been a great knock around on this topic. It's an interesting one and I think it's not a of a mainline sales process kind of topic for us that we normally explore really. But think it's something to think about, know, technical knowledge, technical experiences is so of course important in that role, but it's not the be all and end all. One final thought from both of you on this before we wrap up.

Jonathan (30:16)
Yeah, I think that, for people who think that they are technical, that's great. And again, I always want some type of technical competency in any sales rep, especially in our industry. But the, all the sales skill sides of it are way more important than any kind of technical competency. Understanding how to make connections, personalizing things, qualification, being able to just build that credibility. Those are all things that I don't care how technical you are, you don't do those things. It doesn't matter. You're not going to get a second chance if you don't build that stuff. ⁓

Steve (30:45)
Absolutely.

Matt (30:46)
I think, um, you know, do you do your homework, always try and better yourself in terms of knowledge on, know, what your company can offer, but don't get hung up on it. You know, there's, uh, more important things than just the technical specification or data sheets of products. So, uh, yeah.

Steve (31:02)
My final thought of this is I've had a million dollar order before now for an instrument I couldn't even switch on. There are ways and means, but you do need to understand sales process as well as the product features of course. I guess that's what we both just said really. thank you ever so much for coming on the pod. Great to have you along. Please come again and join us again on a future show. It's been great. Fascinating finding out more about what you do and about your business as well.

Jonathan (31:16)
Thanks, Matt.

Matt (31:20)
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Steve (31:26)
And if you out there, the listener would like to also come on the podcast on a future episode, enjoy the panel. We would love to hear from you really, if you work in a kind of core markets, life science lab, medical devices, precision industrial, biotech, whatever, whatever broad church that means. Yeah. We'd love to hear from you if you work in sales, management, product management, even perhaps we would love to have you on as a guest on the podcast. If you have enjoyed this episode, then don't forget to leave us a review on Apple or Spotify does help us in lots of weird and wonderful ways.

We'll be back again in a couple of weeks with another pod. Until then, happy selling and well talked to you