SCORRCAST On Location | Reaction from CPHI Americas

Recorded live from Philadelphia, this SCORRCAST captures fresh insights and reactions from CPHI Americas. From brand awareness to demand capture, explore how trade shows impact marketing, sales alignment, and true market differentiation.

Transcript

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Hello, Hello, folks, and welcome to another episode of the SCORR cast. This is a special edition of the SCORR cast because I am recording in my hotel room in Philadelphia. It is Thursday May 22 and we just wrapped up a fantastic two day conference cphi North America here in Philadelphia. There's a little bit of activity happening here on Thursday, but for the most part, everybody is headed out. A lot of people headed out last night after the show ended at five o'clock. It is a a quick turn show. It feels like you get into Philadelphia. A lot of people on the East Coast, but a lot of people getting in late Monday, even early, early Tuesday morning. And then it's, it's a little bit of break neck pace on Tuesday and Wednesday, with some interesting panel discussions, and then the trade show floor being open from nine until five, and really, then being pushed out into the city of Philadelphia. Now, I wanted to hop on and record this special edition of the podcast, just because I thought there were some really interesting conversations that we were having on the show floor. And I really wanted to break it down into three different parts. I thought that a short recording. You know me, if anybody has listened to this before, if you're listening to this now, short is is is relative, because I'm certainly going to go on a tangent on each of these three different areas, but within our conversations on Tuesday and Wednesday, there were three key items that were discussed at length. And it's not to say that other issues like trade show support or content development weren't discussed, but they weren't recurring themes in the same way that these three areas were. And these three areas are the relationship between sales and marketing, filling the pipeline from leads or filling the pipeline with leads from marketing or sales, and then the messaging that everybody is saying, being very, very, very, damn similar. So I want to break down each of these. The first that relationship between sales and marketing, it continues to have strain and frustration. There are some teams that you can tell are getting it right, and frankly, you can tell they're getting it right. The boot looks great. The handouts look good. There's a strategy and a purpose behind what they're doing. And for lack of better terms, the team seems to be in a good mood on the show floor, and they're excited to be there. And I know that's it's a little bit anecdotal, but I think it's relevant. And the teams that are getting it wrong, you can also tell from their booth, from their strategy, from their handouts. And it was interesting, on a couple of different conversations that we had, it felt like there was a yearning to have more involvement. You know, we want to be able to do that, and sometimes that's the marketing team, and sometimes that's the sales team saying that we want to be a little bit more connected. But it's just not the way that things are set up right now. And there's too many people on that side, that don't want to be involved and kind of have a negative attitude around it, or maybe just historically, we've always done it this way, and so we're not creating that one to one connection between the two. But there's a sentiment that this is how it should be, and that's almost more frustrating, in a way that the roadmap is there, that it's sales and marketing. It's not sales marketing, it is sales and marketing. That is how we have to work together. When you go to a trade show, marketing and sales have to be in line with how we are going to approach that presence. The presence there is brand awareness. It's thought leadership, it is value proposition education, and it is lead generation, lead opportunity, lead capture, demand capture. All of these things are possible within a trade show. All these things are possible within different tactics that we produce, whether that's on LinkedIn, whether that's through a business development prospecting initiative, we can still be doing value proposition education, shit. That's what we should be doing. That's what's going to lead to us being successful. Is working together in that way. And I think, you know, we've talked about it before on the podcast with a handful of different guests, but it is a lot of times. It's a marketing led Business Development Initiative, right? And so marketing is working in the background to make sure that we have the right story, to make sure that we have the right strategy in place, the right message in place, the right assets. And then business development or the sales teams are working to understand, hey, is the right target going to be there? Is that person an influencer or a decision maker? Or is this just a touch by are we trying to, for lack of a better terms, and to use a bad sports analogy, are we trying to hit a home run here, or can we sacrifice but can we take a walk? Can we just take a pitch? Are we just trying to open a conversation and have an initial touch point with somebody and create something positive for us to be able to go back to and. Think a lot of times again, that gets lost in translation at trade shows. And so it goes back to being so, so, so important that we have a pre show, a during show, and a post show strategy, have that packaged out, be able to really establish that from the beginning all the way through the end. You know, where you're looking back and saying, is this show successful? How are we going to capitalize on the conversations that we had there? So number one, right out of the gate, relationship between sales and marketing. It has to be relationship. Revenue is a team game. Revenue is a team game. Revenue is a team game. Forget worrying about small aspects of attribution, forget panicking over who, who's responsible for that lead? Touch point, you guys are working together. We are driving the revenue forward. We're working together as commercial team, and we need to be able to work hand in hand in order to be successful. Number two, filling the pipeline with leads from marketing or sales activity. It felt interesting. There's been more of an opening and an openness to discussion around prospecting strategies, lead generation activity, how brand plays a role, and how marketing and sales need to be working together to drive the top of the funnel, the middle of the funnel, and the bottom of the funnel leads. The bigger concern right now is lessen how the leads are getting there. Well, we have an established sales team, or we have this or, you know, we go to the trade shows, but the fact that we need to know that they're coming in, and the topic of conversation around so much of your target audience is not ready to buy today, right? So yeah, you might have 60 conversations. You might scan 70 badges, 80 badges, but maybe two of them, maybe three of them, actually have a project that is viable for what you can bring to the table, which means you're making a lot of introductions to people who are not ready to buy today, and they're at that very top of the funnel. So what does that messaging look like versus that bottom of the funnel, what type of leads are coming in from this side, what type of leads are coming in from that side? And then, I think historically, there have been a lot of pressure. And again, that separation, for lack of better terms, church and state, of sales and sales, has to go out. And they have to prospect, they have to hunt, they have to set the meeting. They then have to take the meeting. They have to do the demo. They have to do the walkthrough. They do contracts. They do that. They have to do a lot of things. And the marketing's over there being asked to do capability stacks and brochures. And hey, can you create a fire and can create a one pager? And it's really static, and it's just in there as support. And don't get me wrong, I say all the time marketing is job is to make sales easier, but I promise you that does not mean creating the flyer, creating the capabilities deck, creating the brochure. What that means is creating a brand and generating demand for your services. So that way, when the salesperson goes and has that conversation, they're ready, and they know your organization, they know SCORR Marketing, they know X, Y and Z, and they're willing to have that conversation. So sales and marketing, marketing working together again, tying in the pipeline, turning off marketing today hurts your sales pipeline today and tomorrow. Marketing investment today is an investment in your organization. It's an investment in the organization today, and it's an investment in the organization a couple of weeks from now. So very important. The second part about this is, how can there be a team that's something that SCORR does, but it's something that you know, a lot of a lot of companies are building in house right now as well. How can there be a team? Maybe it's called Market Development, or maybe it's that traditional BDR role, instead of an account executive role that is actually responsible for going out and prospecting and hunting, not at massive scale, but more aggressively, utilizing AI in order to be able to do that, it's really important. Now, I don't believe in AI for every touch point, but AI to make it more efficient, to create scouting reports, to create dossiers, to know who their outreach, to know when that person is going to be at a show, and how active they are on LinkedIn, and are they an influencer versus a decision maker versus the end user. We can do that with AI. We can churn out that prospecting pedigree, that that prospecting work, and be able to hand those off, hand off warm leads, or even marketing influenced potential leads to the sales team, to the AE team, in order to to go out and get them. And so I think you're going to start to hear these conversations around AI more so in market development and in sales development than in content creation and in other aspects of marketing and business development. AI is a freaking kick ass Avenue, and there's a lot to be done there, but I think you're going to start to see it more in how can it make and make our lives easier? From. A sales perspective and from a prospecting perspective. And again, that's not that kind of BS outreach. Hey, you know, I noticed you went to Missouri State Springfield's beautiful, but hey, can you help me create a dossier? Give me everything I need to know. Give me the history of SCORR Marketing. Give me the founder, give me the CEO, give me the clients that they've worked with, the projects that they've done, what they're known for, what they like to do. And now I kind of have an entry point, and I know, okay, here's some information that is going to have me at least have the table stakes to be more aggressive from a prospecting perspective. So tied a bow on number two. Number one, we talked about relationship between sales and marketing. Number two, filling that pipeline with leads marketing, understanding where the pipeline sits, and then understanding that you might have to get creative in terms of filling that 3060, 90 day. But realistically, this isn't B to C. I had a conversation, you know, somebody who's on sales team, and he's brilliant individual sales and marketing mindset, B to C, sure. I can fill that pipeline within 60 days. I can fill that pipeline within 3090, days. This isn't that. This is a lot harder. So you're looking at that pipeline and saying, Okay, I had a great meeting here. Nine months, six months, nine months, 12 months, 18 months. And so understanding how that actually impacts the potential for revenue, how that under impacts the actual book to Bill, you know, the agreements, the relationships, the RFPs that you have, is going to be really important to to how we're successful in the second half of 2025, and in 2026 the last one here, I said on LinkedIn. The question is, are we all running the exact same company, or what the amount of trade show boosts that say, one stop shop, end to end, all encompassing, full service provider, the messaging and storytelling on the show floor is so similar for so many different companies that I know are doing different things. And when you get down to the secondary messaging, they are doing different things, but the way they're positioning themselves, the way that they are positioning themselves against the competition, is basically yeah, we Yeah. We pretty much do the same thing, which means you're going to be competing on price, you're going to be competing on relationship, you're going to be competing on things that you don't want to be competing on. You want to be competing on that, that special sauce, that expertise that you bring to the table. And if you aren't going to invest in the story of your company, you're going to look and feel you're going to sound a lot like other companies in the marketplace. And I promise you that is not where you want to be. It is absolutely not where you want to be. And I, I posted about this, gosh, I posted about this a couple of days ago now, where I was talking about the differentiating value of A of messaging and how we can go about to create a better story in our in our branding and in our positioning. And I'm actually in real time here, I'm going to pull up this post and read it out loud, because I really think that not only the post, but then the comments that I received from an individual who is is fantastic on the the cdmo side, I think was extremely relevant here. And so I want to make sure that I get Heather's comment correct here on this, this LinkedIn post. But I was talking about how when you go out and you say the same thing as your competitors, you are going to lose more often than not, right? We have to talk about differentiators. So the post that I kind of went through was, most of your marketing is not landing with your target audience. And this isn't because they don't care, but because they're too busy to focus on messaging that doesn't move the needle. A lot of what's out there in the life sciences is, is is fluff, it's vague, it's interchangeable. Claims that get lost in the sea, the sea of sameness. So you're a full service cdmo, you're a trusted partner. You're on the leading edge. So is everyone else that is table stakes. That kind of messaging isn't enough to spark interest anymore, let alone action. What you need is the nugget, the spark, the big idea, as SCORR calls it, that clearly and consistently communicates the real value. You deliver something that cuts through the noise and earns attention. And here is the key that cannot come from just a boardroom brainstorm. It needs to come from your audience, from your clients, current loss lapsed in future. What keeps them up at night? What would make them stop and give you the time of day? What would make them change how they are trying to solve that problem today, and what would make them remember you when it's time to buy and I promise you, it's not your feature set. It's not that you've been into. Business for 25 years find you have to find the sliver of value that you can own, and you build everything around it. That's how you grow value proposition, Proposition awareness, and that's how you stay top of mind. It's also how you go from guessing to growing in life, science, marketing and Heather sagrew left just a fantastic comment that I wanted to share. She said she loves this post. Differentiators. Differentiator she talks about it all the time, and you're spot on with the answers. She mentioned a couple others were flexible. Will work with you on your timeline, or her least favorite is where a one stop shop. Everyone says the same thing. The difficult part about getting to your big ideas that it's not easy, especially when you are out one out of more than more than 225, cell and gene therapy cdmos out there. That was her example, which is why it's so necessary. But think about how many competitors there are in this space. You're not going to stand out. She adds in that she could not have done what she did at Ben bioscience, then ricro Greensville without SCORR marking helping lead the way. We were at that time, one of more than 600 oral, solid cdmos At the time, but they found their special sauce, and look at the growth that happened there. And Heather is is fantastic. She actually just started her own cdmo consulting firm called chrysalis, bio, brand new website. Make sure that you check it out. Heather, thank you, as always, for listening, listening and participating in some of this content. I'm excited to have you on the podcast, and I'm sure we will rant a little bit about this here in the next couple of weeks. That is all. I said. It was going to be short now we're at 17 minutes. I get fired up. You know that if you're listening to this and you've listened to it before, you know that I get really excited. But again, main three takeaways, sales and marketing have to be working together, leads, leads, leads, but you don't have to think about it in the traditional sense anymore. Let's get creative to fill that pipeline. And for the love of all goodness, being a one stop shop, when everybody else is saying they're a one stop shop, is not a differentiator. There are things that are table stakes, and then there are things that actually differentiate you in the marketplace that are going to make an impact for your organization. And that, my friends, is what you need to find. This is Alec McChesney on an episode of the SCORR cast from Philadelphia, and I hope you have a fantastic weekend if you're listening to this, if you were in Philly and I didn't get a chance to catch you, reach out and we'll talk soon. Bye, bye.