Proven Processes to Simplify and Assure Sales Success - Part 2
Jim Surek is a recognized sales leader whose teams have performed wherever he has been, based on proven sales principles. Jim is currently VP of Sales at Explorer Surgical and is also host of the podcast, Medical Sales Nation. In this episode Jim shares the sales process, including translating engineering language into customer language, aligning the company behind customer messaging, building a learning culture, question-based selling, setting sales targets for a new product, and identifying and segmenting buyer types.
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Episode Transcript
This transcript was generated using an automated transcription service and is minimally edited. Please forgive the mistakes contained within it.
Patrick Kothe 00:30
Welcome. Selling is always hard. But professional sales leaders break things down into reproducible systems. This takes years of many times hard earned experience. As you may have heard, in part one of my conversation with Jim Surek. It all begins with understanding your customer and building solid value propositions. But it also requires sales skills to effectively communicate how your product provides real benefits to them. And also to get them to take action and begin using your product. As I mentioned in the last episode, Jim has dedicated his career to medical device sales. He is currently VP of sales at explore surgical and has been with Medtronic Sofimor Danik, Advanced Bionics, Entellus Medical Stemware, Aspen Medical and General Medical. Jim is also the host of the medical sales nation podcast, which I highly recommend you listen to. In this episode, we continue to discuss the sales process, including translating engineering language into customer language, aligning the company behind customer messaging, building a learning culture, question based selling, setting sales targets for a new product, and identifying and segmenting buyer types. Here's our conversation. So let's go back to the startup. So we've we've hammered the big companies a little bit, now we're gonna get we're gonna go to the startups. Because startups are a little bit different in that a lot of times what happens with a startup is is it's an engineer, it's a physician, it's a business person. It's an r&d person, that that's starting this idea. And they're taking this idea, it's not the salespeople. So you're you're going through, and you're developing this product, and and there's been a lot recently on voice of the customer to design that product. And people are, some people are embracing it, some people aren't embracing it the way it should be embraced. But regardless of whether they've embraced it or not, time goes on. So when you start to do your analysis, do I have a product here? Who are all stakeholders? What are the needs here? How do I translate those needs into design inputs, and you start developing that product, time happens, and then you have your clinical trial, and it may be four or 578 years later, when a product is approaching the market. And if you're good, and you keep your eye on it, you're continuing to ask those questions, and you're continuing to bounce back. But a lot of times what happens is, I already did that work. And now I understand it and the product is is going forward. And I'm almost there. And I'm just trying to get to the I call it the starting line, when would you have your FDA clearance or your FDA approval, that's the starting not blind, but a lot of people who say that's the end endpoint, but that's the starting line. But as you said, the sales group needs to be brought in a little bit earlier, for a couple of reasons, number one, to verify that everything that occurred early on, could be five years earlier, whether it's it was actually true. And whether you had the skill set the people involved at the company at that point that had the skill set to identify it. But secondly, it's what's changed in the past five to seven years. And and then, you know, really to dig in, because at that point, the sales group, the sales leader is about to put their reputation on the line. And you have to understand what you've got so So let's dig in a little bit further. And so if somebody is coming in at that, nine months, 12 months before, and it's a new product, what are some of the things that you're doing to assure that the messaging is correct.
Jim Surek 04:59
I'm going Gonna use Advanced Bionics, which is now like I said, Boston neuro modulation pain. I'm gonna use that I did it at Intel, us as well, we did it the Cochlear company as well, is that. But this is this is perfect. Because I walked in I was the first person hired for the sales organization to build a sales organization. And I started talking to one of the engineers, and this is the true story. Jim, so just so you know, salespeople are not smart enough to sell this product. It's too highly complex. You need to hire 50 Clinical engineers, and two regional salespeople to manage them. And here's a business plan that I wrote up for you. Psych. Okay. So there's a whole story with that, but I will go into it. And, and so but then what led to it was, I said, Well, let's start talking a little bit about the product. And we're in an engineering meeting. Some marketing folks were there. And they said, well, Jimmy, we can treat focal low back pain. I was like, Okay, tell me how you can do that. Why you can do that. We have four independent power sources, with closely spaced contacts with current steering. Like, okay, well, I have no idea what that means. So can we break this down? And it was C. Jim, this is why salespeople can't sell this. Right.
Patrick Kothe 06:32
And this is this is why our physicians are too dumb to buy it. Yeah, yeah.
Jim Surek 06:37
It's so. So long story short is, is that you're you get to the point where, you know, Doctor told me about the challenges that you face treating patients tried to treat patients with conventional technology for low focal low back pain? And their answer is we can't write that. I mean, that would be the answer. Tell me why you can't What is it about conventional technology that doesn't allow you to do that? And what is what is the pain that brings to your practice to your to what's going on here, and blah, blah, blah. So So what ended up happening is we took some engineers, we took a couple marketing folks, some field clinical people, three regional managers, and we went off site. And we spent a day and a half two days deciphering the technology. Right? What does this mean? Who are you selling this to? What is the value? What is the clinical value? What is the financial value? What is the strategic value to the multi headed customer, day and a half, two days of just driving home? Don't tell me about the four independent current sources? Because it doesn't mean anything? What is that driving to a value proposition for this multi headed customer? And then we came out of it with four very meaningful value propositions, that we then aligned with the marketing team with the r&d team, because we worked on it together to say, so when you say this, this is what you mean? Yes, Jim. That's how they can treat focal low back pain? Well, we're not going to say for independent current sources, closely spaced contacts and current staring, if they ask us, we'll be able to share that with them. But they're really caring about how we're going to treat that low back pain patient, right? And what that means for them what it means for their patient, what it means for the practice, they don't care. And that there's four independent current sources, they just want to know what's going to work. And so that is the beginning of the alignment process. And so what we did and what I did is I sat down with marketing and said, I want to do this, we're gonna have a conversation, I want to know why you the product manager, why you believe in this product? Who do you think we're selling it to? Why, okay, great. They go to the upstream marketing person have the same conversation, the VP of Marketing, engineering team, pick out the software engineer, the hardware engineer, the VP of Engineering, and get them to share with me their vision and then say, Okay, we're gonna go off site, and we're going to come up with value propositions. When I have full alignment and engagement from this multi departmental organization that was purely technically focused six months or three months prior. Now they're looking at it from a customer centric perspective, they always were, but they weren't articulating it that way. So now we're really focused on this. So now we've we've tested it, you've given me your technical analysis. Now we're gonna go out into the market and test this. And we did, my regional managers and I, we went out, and we talked to doctors, and we gathered the information, their responses, you know, back then their salesforce.com Wasn't round, everything was on an Excel spreadsheet. And we sat around a table and we shared, what people were saying about this product and what it could do for their practice, and then continued to refine the messaging and finding out don't say this, say that this way, and just like we talked about earlier, so That is the process in which you go into these companies you should startup should look at and make sure you're aligned to the value thought it was five years ago that that value exists or there's even more value today. Right? Especially, you know, it was interesting on treating focal back pain. What was the big impetus was the opioid crisis. Okay, wasn't being talked about five years prior, then the opioid crisis comes in you and you start asking questions. Tell me about the impact of a patient's life. If you can reduce their opioids by 30% 40%. With this device, you would, you'd be like, you've got to be kidding me. You're even asking me that question? Well, I want to ask you that question. Because I want you to think about it. Imagine what that would do. And I still haven't pulled out my device yet. So. So that that is where that lost art of selling. But that's the alignment that needs to take place within an organization. And when to the Coker company did that went to Intel, US did the same thing. And tell us was more of a turnaround. So we had to reorganize, and relook at things differently, and then hire a great team to get it done.
Patrick Kothe 11:09
Great points, Jim. And I'm thinking about consumers are think about you go to buy a car, when that car was being designed, you had a bunch of engineers in there, and they were all in the engine, they were really making that engine performance really stand out. And that's what they were really interested in the consumer when they go to do that. Now, I don't know about you, when I when I go to buy a car and somebody pops a hood, I just kind of look at and go, Okay, it looks looks like an engine hood. Looks like an engine. I don't know what's going on in there. I want to know, you know, in my cabin, does my iPhone work? Right? When I step on the gas? Does it feel good? When I'm when I'm cornering? Does it feel good rack and pinion and all? I don't care, I want to know, because I don't understand it, I want to feel it. And it's the same thing with a clinician, they, they don't necessarily need to know the four independent sources of energy, they need to know what benefit that's that's going to derive. So once you and I think what the other thing that you said is, now you are getting alignment from everybody, they're proud of their engine that they built. Yeah, they're proud of those, those four, and they should be because that'll that is what delivers the benefit. But bringing them forward and saying we have to talk in a different language to talk about these benefits. And you know, we're not going to talk about, you know, the independent suspension, we're going to talk about, you know, the benefit that's going to be derived. But bringing everybody forward is a really valuable piece too. Because you don't want to set up the whole thing of sales is go doing something else. And they should be doing this, you've brought you brought alignment and into into the organization.
Jim Surek 12:56
Yeah, it's really interesting, because at Intel, it's time Griffin was our CFO, he would say, and this happens in every organization, everyone can see sales. So that means everybody has an opinion. Right? I don't go into the accounting department and try to to tell them how they should do their job or finance, right? Or the engineering team, right? But everybody's telling me what I should do, right? So if you create that alignment, that conversation becomes a lot smoother, and the finger pointing stops because everybody's aligned to the execution. And if now you can walk out the door, and you could be completely wrong. Right? I haven't seen that happen, but it could happen. But now it's a company issue. Right? It's like, what did we get wrong? You know, it's not sales. It's terrible. It's like what has happened to the market that maybe something has changed.
Patrick Kothe 13:50
So I have seen it wrong. I've seen I've seen it that you did all of the work. And you thought that you understood exactly what it needed to be. And it wasn't. So every time you know, that's the old Mike Tyson, you know, you get hit in the face, you've got your plan, you think that you're you think that you've got it nailed. You hit the marketplace, and you have learning. There's learning that happens. And sometimes it's big learning, and sometimes it's little adjustments. So I think you you kind of said hey, we're making adjustments to this thing. I've seen both. I've seen the big learning too, as well. Even though you thought you knew once you hit the marketplace, that's when your your learning really occurs because sometimes it's really hard to discern, when someone is telling you what do you think you want to hear versus what they're really going to do or more importantly, when it comes down for time for them to pull out their wallets and make a decision. It's different, and the timing is a little bit different. So let's talk a little bit about that piece of it. How do you take that learning and feed that back?
Jim Surek 15:02
You create, it's it's you create a learning loop. And you have to have constant feedback. It's like I said, when the manager went out there, we're filling out Excel spreadsheets. And then we'd feed it back into marketing and r&d. And we'd sit around we talk about it. So it's that simple. But you have to create categories, I call it the market value matrix. And that is the product value. So it has four independent current sources. Okay. What is the what is the clinical value of that? Now, you have to say what that is, right? And then the next piece would be a clinical proof. Do you have any clinical proof that actually works? Right? And then it would be, you know, the financial value? What's the financial value to everybody? And what's the strategic value? Tell me about your product portfolio? You know, do you have the right products? Are you a niche player and to a certain piece are you expect to replace something, the company value, who's in the company, who's running it, you give a framework out to the folks in the field, so that they know what to look for? And there's other things that you can add to it. But then everybody across the country is thinking about it the same way, and filling out the answers that they're experiencing? You bring that information back, and then you look for consistency? You know, where is there white noise on the 20% on the low end, 20%. On the high end are saying this week? Well, we can't deal with that, that middle 60% of the people that are saying, hey, I really have to see more clinical white papers, I don't need a clinical study. But I'd sure like to see 20 patients treated this way. And you hear that you go, Okay, you go to your clinical team, you know, we got to do a clinical study, you know, it's not going to slow us down. But if we want to expand this market to the next category of adopters, we're gonna have to have more clinical studies at Advanced Bionics and Edd and tell us doctors want a certain feature or a certain addition to the product line. And 60% of them are saying it now. Now, r&d, product development, is involved with this learning culture, they get the information, they can call the sales rep, they can get on the phone with the doctor to understand what they're talking about. So now you have this engagement. Because it's a learning environment. People want to learn what the customer is saying about all the things that you're offering. So you really have to drive it, you can't just say it, you have to do it. And as companies get larger, that becomes more difficult. There's no doubt about it.
Patrick Kothe 17:35
Product Launch is always an interesting time. And as you're describing learning about the customers, our cups, customers are not monolithic. Right. I mean, we've got some customers that are the pioneers, some other early adopters, some are late adopters, you know, the majority, the laggards. So as you're getting this information back, you may be getting information that I need to see a 10 year study in order to do it. Well, that information is not valuable today, right? So as we're going out and launching a product, it's a different customer that you're you're selling to because you know that you don't have the longer term data, you know that there are some people that are going to be early adopters, and some that aren't. So you're looking for those pioneers, because that's by definition, who's who's going to be selling your buying your product, your messaging changes, depending on who you're talking to, and at what point. So explain a little bit about that, and, and how you how you get those initial sales, and then use the old crossing over the valley of death to get to get to the next group of customers. But your messaging has got to be geared towards not towards the general market, but to some specific people.
Jim Surek 18:51
Well, it's just like, within TELUS, we were office based, we want to move into the office to treat patients. And it's through that question based selling sales training, you would just start asking questions. And the questions revolved around how comfortable are they doing? Procedures? Do they have a procedure room in their office? What kind of procedures are you doing? Talk to me about working on an awake patient, how comfortable would you be with that? It's, it's all these different questions that you can then understand where that person falls within the potential adoption line. I mean, we had doctors who would say to us and and tell us, Jim, if I wanted to work on a wig patients, I'd be a dentist. Well, okay, I won't be back here for five years. Right? And so, but I would rather know that right, but then you would get doctors who you could just see, click but you know, I would have somebody an engineer at Intel, us would say, all you need to do is find the doctors that are using a navigation system, then they're going to be comfortable using our system was like okay, where's the website that tells me Who's using which navigation system? When and how, you know, it was just a silly thing to say. Because it's not that easy. You have to go knock on a lot of doors to find those people, but you have to be prepared with the questions you're asking. So that you can decipher if that person is going to be truly an adopter or not. And you have to ask some of the tough questions, you know, how comfortable are you working on a weak patient stock? Right? Could you become comfortable, you know, and then you would have doctors go, you know, what I say, I've been thinking about this, you know, and I think I have a way in which we can anesthetize an awake patients much more comfortably and effectively, six months after you met with them, and they still didn't do a procedure, then they come back and say, you know, what, if, if we did this, and this, I think the patient would, wouldn't feel anything, and then you'd start off in the ASC. And they would, they would try it right, now you've got your early adopters, and then you hone in on them, and you go deep. And when you're doing this, I've shared this a couple of times with different folks in different companies. You you need to get adoption of your product. If you're transactional, you're gonna it's going to it's gonna go away. So how do you get deeper and deeper clinically, you know, with this doc, and get to understand what's going to be able to drive that adoption of that product. And, you know, use case not one a month, but five a month to 10 a month, how are you going to do that. So that's just a process, like sales is a process, it's not an event. And then once the product starts getting adopted, we talked about strategic value. And those Doc's are sucking in patients, because they're doing an office based procedure. And they don't have to go to the bar, and they don't have to be take five, seven days off of work. Now those other doctors are saying, I might want to look at this now. And by that time, you've perfected the anesthesia technique. These patients are comfortable, your tools are better, the way in which you're teaching is better. And now you're getting that next selection. But in the beginning, you're actually dealing with cowboy doctors who are like, I can do anything. And that's what and that's where you have to start.
Patrick Kothe 22:14
That's that's where you start. But you also need to identify what you need for the next level. Oh, 100%. Yeah, because if that next level says, I'll do this, but I want to see 100 patients study or I want to see this amount of data, or I want to see whatever they want to see, you better start working on it today, while you're still dealing with the cowboys out there. Because again, that's that chasm, crossing that chasm into that into that next next group of customers, you could have a really good following of of pioneer surgeons, and not be able to get to the next level. Yeah.
Jim Surek 22:53
And that's why you create that learning organization. So you're feeding back in product development, we didn't edit at Advanced Bionics, we didn't have a paddle lead. And we didn't have other types of leads, I can't remember. And Dr. Tam, don't use it until you have it. So you go back to product development, you start feeding it, it was like the clinical studies, we're not going to get this next phase of doctors, unless we have four or five clinical studies that are showing different usage, tend to 20 patients, it doesn't have to be peer reviewed, just something out there that we can publish. And that that was from the learning organization telling us what they needed. And the same thing I didn't tell us. I am not doing this until you tell me how to perfect this anesthesia technique. And then we had studies, right, and then we had doctors teaching other doctors, you know, the centers have excellent visits, you know, that we would do remote, you know, back then, you know, it's so easy now to do both live cases from an office and Doc showing it and, and other doctors going, I can do that. But five years earlier, they weren't going to do it.
Patrick Kothe 23:57
Jim, let's let's talk about budgeting for a second because it's kind of an interesting thing. When you're a startup company and you're doing your your forecast and everything I've done I've done many, many of these things. And none of them are right, no, you're so far off because you haven't validated any your assumptions for it. So you're just you know, it's in this range of hundreds of millions of dollars that different 10s of millions of dollars of difference. But when you're signing up for a budget as a as a sales leader, then you've got you've got your your sales targets, all your compensation is based on that your sales rep, sales rep expectation, your regional manager expectations, your expectation as a sales leader is all tied to what the expected sales targets are right. And you just don't know. You think you know, and I'll give you my experience as a sales leader. My experience was I was always more optimistic than I should have been. It's like, ah, you know, I think you know, this is a really conserve adaptive sales plan, and then I wouldn't hit it. Yeah, because I was, you know, I think, by definition, sales reps, our sales people are very optimistic people. So we kind of do that. It's much easier when you've got history, if you've got five, seven years of history things, you know, where the trends are, you know, based on what you've got in the pipeline, you can do that. But early on, it's really, really hard. Talk to me about your experience there. And what do you how do you set the expectations? Or, and and whether you're involved in setting the expectations, or those, those budgets are already set? And you're living with them?
Jim Surek 25:44
Yeah. So I mean, it's, it's a great question is that, if you're given it, given a quote, and you have no input into it, the best case, what you do is lay out what you think the numbers should be based on, you know, your analysis, and just keep putting that in front of people. You know, just keep putting it in front of people and saying, you know, this is what I think. But to answer your question, if you're using commercialization as an initiative and a process, you should get pretty close to that. Because you can go out and I would say, this way, this is how I look at it. How many doctors based on what we know, could a rep have used this product within the first three months. So let's look at the third month of the quarter. It's taking them that long, to be able to get a doctor to try the first patient on this product. How many doctors do we think we can get based off of the work that we've done in the field? It actually always comes down to this three doctors, right? I don't know why I can get three doctors to do one case in the third month of the first quarter. Okay, so now the question is, well, what's about the fourth and fifth? Well, unfortunately, Doc's are going to probably do another three the next month, then they're going to wait to see how those patients do. They're not just going to start knocking them out of the park. So so now you have to start adding in that knowledge base of Listen, they're going to try it, and they're going to wait and see how these patients do. If they do great, great, then we'll start adding more patients on. So what do you do in the meantime? Well, at Intel, us, we go into the office, we're selling to the receptionist's, the office manager, the MA's, the PA, we're selling, not doing any cases, but we're getting them, hey, identify these patients who are potential candidates for this procedure. So when Dr. So and So sees these patients back in six weeks, and they're doing phenomenal, we can hand them the next 12 patients because we've already identified. Okay, so So now you're building onto that process Advanced Bionics, it was really the same thing. How many doctors can we get? And it just came down to three? How many are they going to do before they stopped doing it and to see when we got to the point of Okay, the next redox, I've got, I have my current Doc's that are doing it. Now, I think I can get them to do three cases a month, for three months in a row. Okay, there's a number, I'm going to bring on three new Doc's. But they're only going to do three cases and wait, okay, there's your number. And then you just have to add on to it as a mathematical problem. That's how I look at it. But I would go back to my experiences and our experiences, pre launch. And I would ask Doc's, okay, all BS aside, are you going to do this procedure? Would you be willing to? I'm not going to hold you to it? But what would? What would make you want to do it? What would it and how would you do it? And how would you implement it and get that feedback, so that you could go back to a board, you can go back to the CEO and say, This is what our analysis is telling us, it's probably still wrong, but it's probably closer to write them wrong. And, and the other thing is, I think is really, really important to understand is I would do six month quotas. And that's not to drop it down. But it's to raise it up to because if you start knocking it out of the park, you want to be able to raise that quota up as well. So you're not overpaying. And but then again, if you got to knock it down, so you keep your reps, you keep them motivated, because you learn something in the field. So I would do the six month quota for the first year to until you feel really comfortable that you got a grip on what's happening in the marketplace.
Patrick Kothe 29:33
How is it selling that to your sales organization to say we're going to do six months, six month quotas?
Jim Surek 29:39
I said it just the way since you I said listen, if we're killing it, I said we're gonna raise the quotas, right. But if you're not killing it, and we're struggling, I'm gonna lower it. The said you choose your poison I'll give you I'll give you a 12 month quota, but it's going to be higher probably than what you would want it to be. And if you're not hitting it there, I'm not changing it. And so you pick your poison. And when you're dealing with maybe a group of 10, to 15 to 20, that's an easier thing to sell. And usually you have leaders in the sales organization that can influence people. And so you'd run a pass them first. Because you always have, you know, the 20% that people look up to, you go to them, first you work on it, and then they're going to sell it for you. So you have to be strategic about it. But that's, that's how I would approach it.
Patrick Kothe 30:27
And it's a little bit different depending on what type of organization you've got, if you've got a direct organization, you can do that. If you've got a distributor sales agent organization, it's a little bit different. If it's a stocking distributor, then it's a really tricky thing, how much? How much are they going to invest in, in your in your product and, and my exposure, I could tell you that I did this with heart valves and had stocking distributors, and the product didn't move as fast as what we thought it was. And they were dying, because they had to do consignment inventory of, you know, $100,000 worth of stuff that went into the hospital. Yeah, to get consignment then they weren't selling any. They were they were dying. And we had to buy all that back, which trashed, trashed a year for us. Yeah. So all of these decisions that you're making, you need to have flexibility and build flexibility in there, because what's being signed up for is not going to happen. It just in my experience, it just you just don't know enough. And you can't know enough. And that top salesperson that you brought in all of a sudden, you know, they, they're getting a divorce, and they leave the company. And now now you got to redo that. So those three, three doctors that you're going to that didn't happen. So all of this stuff kind of compounds itself, and you got changes. I like your idea of the six month, the six month targets. But that's got to go both ways. When you're selling as a sales leader, you're selling your organization and what their responsibilities are. But you also have to sell back up the organization. Because the CEO is talking to investors. And and if if, if that is not being transmitted, and you're not on those conference calls, those board of directors calls, you're not on there and explaining to the investors what's going on, you're at risk as a sales. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You've seen that many? Oh, yeah.
Jim Surek 32:19
Well, it's, you know, I always say the first VP of sales in an organization is the most risky job to take. If the commercialization wasn't done, right, right. And then when I mean that as a process of aligning everything, creating the messaging, creating the value proposition, creating the training, understanding that market, you know, I hear this every day, we'll just going to hire a VP of sales and let them figure it out. That's just so dumb. You know, it's, it's not right, you know, it's not right, you should be thinking about this as much as you are thinking about FDA clearance. And like you said, it has to work both ways. And I think the one way of doing it is, you know, it's like I had somebody go, Well, we're gonna do $20 million in revenue. And okay, well, what are you exactly asking a sales rep to do to achieve that number? And it's how many doctors do they have to convert? How many procedures or whatever do they have to do? And what timeframe does it need to be done? And add that up? And tell me if that makes any sense? I mean, it's really that sense. It's that simple. So you're telling me you need a sales rep to convert 15 doctors a quarter that are going to do five cases a month, in the first three months just to get traction to hit q4.
Patrick Kothe 33:36
And how many doctors that you start at the top of the funnel to get to those that clean?
Jim Surek 33:40
No, that's exactly it. So I mean, it's there needs to be. It's like we're talking when you asked me about sales in the past, right? What it was like, you could get away with it 30 years ago, right? You could, you know, you take somebody who's got a great relationship with two or three people and you could get away with it. You can't do that today, you have to be much more sophisticated in your approach. Sales is a process, it's an operational process, more today than it's ever been in the med tech world. And that's how it needs to be looked at, in my opinion, you know, if you're going to be successful,
Patrick Kothe 34:17
well, and the other thing is, you're you're talking about the sale to the doctor. And that's certainly, you know, a very large component. But getting through value analysis, getting it on the shelf is something that's completely different. And you may not know that there's they're changing pumps at a hospital and they can only take on one big project this quarter, and you're you just got shelved for a quarter and you didn't even know about it because the priorities of the hospital or you've got something else go on. Oh, you're
Jim Surek 34:51
absolutely right. That changed. And that's the thing is that, you know, there are hospitals, they'll take you 12 months to get through the VAT process. Right. And so you have To look geographically of where you're going to put salespeople as well, you know, where the biggest challenge is, you know, getting into hospitals, it's the Northeast. So am I going to put five reps in the Northeast? No, I'm not, you know, I need to go to other areas where I can move a little bit quicker and learn and then slowly bleed into there. But it's, you've got to take into consideration. So we're going back to a quota number, how long is it going to take us to get through the vac committee, right? If it's average of four months, and you're not selling anything in the first quarter,
Patrick Kothe 35:31
you're not selling anything in the first quarter, and you're probably not selling anything in the first six months, because you've got to get get the physician excited about it. So you got to go through that process, then they've got to, they've got to talk to VAC then vac has to go for six months, then you've done they got to place an order and you go through that process, and then it's got to get them you got to get trained. So that whole, that whole gestation period for the sale is not three months. No, it's
Jim Surek 35:55
not. It's never, no, it's not. And so, so that's where, like, you know, I keep saying this is a process, it's an initiative that needs to think about needs to be thought about differently, as equally as FDA clearance in any sort of market access, because you want to set yourself up for that first commercial success and ramp. Now, you know, you want that hockey stick, obviously, everybody wants that hockey stick. But if you plan on a hockey stick in the first year, not to be negative or pessimistic, you know, let's be realistic. So we can work our way towards that hockey stick to three years down the road. But let's build a learning organization that's commercial, the commercialization is centered around that doctor and the feedback they have, so that we can move quickly to get them and the multi headed customer what they want, so that we can be successful. It's like you said, Well, you know, spent technologists have spent all these years building it, and their baby is so beautiful to them. And it is beautiful. Right? If it wasn't for engineers, you know, I'd be a ditch digger, you know, so thank God for engineers. But we've got to, we've got to be realistic about what we're attacking into the marketplace these days.
Patrick Kothe 37:10
So speaking of tacking into the marketplace, you joined a another startup, explore back what year or so two years ago, two years ago. So talk to me a little bit about explore because you joined it at a very interesting spot when COVID was exploding. So talk to the listeners a little bit about explore and what your what what you walked into what you thought you were walking into, and what the value prop was, and then what the value prop ended up ended up
Jim Surek 37:44
to be? Yeah, so right now I was when I walked into it, it was regaining access into the procedure room using basically an iPad. And and it's not just zoom, because what it offered was detailed procedural steps, that can be digitized. And that's including pictures, videos, animation, whatever you wanted to show that doctor to be able to look at during that procedure, and exactly how you wanted that procedure to go. So that you got the best outcomes. And at the same time, it's collecting procedural timestamp data. So a company can look back at the procedure and compare saying, hey, it's step four, and step seven, 30% 50% of our doctors are taking 70% longer time to do that step. Well, now we have some data that we can look into, is it our product is in our training isn't our tools is our implant, what's making those doctors take longer at those steps. So it was really an immersive tool to put people back in the procedure room. And it wasn't just it's not a replace the rep situation, it was an augmentation to the rep being in the room as well. So if you couldn't be in there, you could use this. But then the r&d people, their product development people, they're not letting them in the O R, that's that local represent everyone else's out? You know, we're not going to do that. And I don't see that changing anytime, soon. And so you saw this adaption of the product because you had product launches? How are we going to train dogs to use a product, right? We're going to do a clinical trial who's collecting data, you know, how is this all going to happen? And so because it's a mobile device, an iPad, and you could use a phone, quite frankly, if you need it to Microsoft Surface, any sort of mobile device, it became that very easy to use product. I mean, we're in Asia, and we're in Europe, I mean, because it's so easy to use. And so that's, you know, so when COVID was hitting, that's where it was going. So now we got acquired by GHS. Back in October of last year, and the market is changing, but the value of behind digital technologies and being immersed into a procedure room. There's two areas that are really developing in It really fits in well with explore is product development, I can put 10 r&d product development people in a procedure room today. And they can watch 10 cases today on their product being used. That never happened in the past and all from their home. And you don't want, you know, 10 people talking to a doctor, but you could have 10 people watching, the rep is still there, they one person can talk to the doc, you know, we have Bluetooth headsets, all this other crazy stuff, or eight people in a room could be wearing a headset and talking to each other. But from a product development standpoint, now as a as a product development person, I can see 10 times more cases 10 times quicker than I ever have in the past, to be able to innovate and iterate new products, right and or understand why my product isn't being used. Right, just as importantly, we're talking about why products fail. Well now put your your product development people in those procedure rooms don't rely upon the rep just to share the information that they're seeing actually see it. And from real world evidence and collecting data. Now you can do that as a multi force opportunity, you know, to be able to collect real world data to be able to submit to CMS to show how this product is being used that should deserve a higher reimbursement rate, or just be able to use a code. Because now you can collect data. And like just like the product development team, I now can collect data, and have so many people watching these cases collecting all this data much more faster than they've been able to do in the past.
Patrick Kothe 41:37
Jim, who's the customer? Is the customer, the medical device company? Is the customer, the hospital device
Jim Surek 41:41
companies device, the device companies, because they're the ones that are benefit from it, eventually will you see hospitals, you know, potentially want to limit rep access? Maybe, you know, and that's not our goal is to do that. But Is there potential to do that, for teaching institutions to be able to have resonance, as well as medical students watch cases? Right, where because you know, they're limited and how many cases they can see, you can open that up to teaching institutions, and they can watch as many cases as they possibly want to do that. So that's where a provider would be a customer of ours to do that. But our focus is on the suppliers, and getting them better access as a force multiplier to be able to innovate and iterate new products, understand what products aren't doing well, and collect that real world evidence to be able to drive reimbursement rates.
Patrick Kothe 42:37
So Jim, thank you so much. This has been a really interesting discussion, really appreciate it. Is there any main message that you you'd like to deliver to the listeners who are who are part of this medical device community? And you your specialty is in sales and marketing introduction? What would you what kind of messaging would you like, like to
Jim Surek 42:58
lead? Yeah, I've what I what I try to do with, you know, my LinkedIn stuff and my posts, and is to get people to ask better questions when they're looking at opportunities. And or if you're in a situation at a company, and you're not feeling as if the products or the you're getting what you need to be successful. Ask these questions. You know, who are we selling this to? Why are we selling it to them? What's the value? What's the clinical financial and strategic value to the multi headed customer? Let me understand that. And if you're not getting trained, right, if you're not getting that consultative sales training, and I know I hate that word, because it's overused. But if you're not getting that question based sales training of asking questions, sitting back and listening and understanding where to go with it, then you need to ask your company to provide that it's their responsibility. However, it's also your responsibility to take control of your own career and training. Keep your eyes open, right? Ask more questions, demand more from your company, and so that you can be successful and your whole team can be successful. I think that's really the message. And for the founders out there, start thinking about commercialization before FDA clearance comes 90 days, you know, think about this as an initiative, because you'll be more successful if you do.
Patrick Kothe 44:17
Jim provided so many great insights in these two episodes. If it didn't listen to part one of our conversation, please make sure that you do a few of my takeaways. First, translating from engineering speak to customer speak. We all know that the engineers provide great value, but it's got to be translated into what the customer thinks of as value, not the features, but the benefits, not the features that you think are important. It's what the benefits that the customer believes are important. And by doing that, you're going to assure that the customer sees how how your product is going to make their life better. But it also, if you do it correctly, you can help to align the company behind that transition and behind what's important for the customer. The second thing is sales is not an event, it's a process. And gyms discussed how you question customers, and how sometimes you keep your product in the bag for the next visit, in order to really make it a process and not just one, one, visit one event. And the final thing is creating a learning loop. As Jim described, you're getting the information out of the customer and learning what's going on to the customer. Well, that's great, but it's got to be fed back to the team. And it's got to be fed back because it's going to help you what you're doing today. But it more importantly, it's going to also set you up for what's going to happen tomorrow. So it increases the probability of success. It also gets alignment with your whole company, and it sets you on your pathway for the future. Thank you for listening. Make sure you get episodes downloaded to your device automatically by liking or subscribing to the mastering medical device podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Also, please spread the word until a friend or two to listen to the mastering medical device podcast as interviews like today's can help you become a more effective medical device leader. Work hard. Be kind
