June 4, 2025 • 35 mins
Brett Huselton shares his extensive experience in clinical research sales/business development with specific insights on how to be chosen by clients. In his discussion with John Reites, he emphasizes the importance of building relationships in sales, talks about the evolving role of AI in sales support, and clarifies the distinction between real world evidence and real world data (because he is passionate about how it is changing how research data is collected). Brett advocates for a focused approach in sales and strategy, highlighting the importance of evidence-based selling and the need for adaptability in a rapidly changing environment.
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
And I think a lot of people misjudge the complexity
of being a seller and being aneffective seller.
It's hard.
And there's an art to getting itright.
There's an art to creatingrelationships.
There's an art to standing outand being memorable such that in
a sea of parody for a lot ofdifferent competitive offerings
that are out there is havingsomebody choose yours, choose
(00:21):
you.
SPEAKER_00 (00:35):
Who is Brett and what do you do in clinical
research?
SPEAKER_01 (00:38):
troublemaker?
Cause problems.
I figured that nice, clean,simple answer, right?
No, I fell into the sector kindof by accident.
I was thinking it was going tobe neuroscience and practice in
medicine.
And as I got further along inwhat I was studying, I liked the
business side of medicine betterthan the practice of medicine.
So when I graduated, I hadfocused kind of on the natural
sciences and neuroscience andgot a dual degree in cognitive
(01:00):
psychology and wanted to reallyfind a place for that in the
market, in the business world.
And, you know, kind of bumpedinto the CRO sector, fell in
love with it, carried it magforever loved it and
understanding how the productswere being brought to market and
the labyrinth that they had tonavigate to get that right and
that was super rewarding for thenerdy part of me as well as just
the people part of me and justmeeting awesome people along the
(01:23):
way so had some fun with that insales led sales uh you know
jumped around a little bit untili found my place where i am
right now where it's puttingthat to work in a little bit of
a different way so myresponsibility is strategy
partnership and innovation soi'm functionally responsible for
kind of understanding what'sgoing on in the market.
What are the clients that wesupport navigating to get a
(01:45):
product approved, build evidencegeneration strategies, advantage
it in market once it's there andmake sure people can get their
hands on that therapy.
And so understanding all of thatand bringing it back to my
company is figure out what partof us do we need to show them to
help advantage them and get thatdone.
There's times that's all insideour shop.
There's times that we need topartner that out and I need to
(02:07):
figure out who to I need to workwith that has an awesome
solution that's maybe outside ofwhat we do, but it's part of
that comprehensive wrap that wethink is the right way to get
that done.
And then own those relationshipsand bring those in those to
market.
The innovation side is kind ofthe most fun, kind of the most
crazy right now with all the AIgoing on, which is placing bets
on what does this look like adecade from now?
(02:28):
So just scanning the market,bringing ideas in, giving it to
the leadership team, socializingthose with clients and seeing
who gets excited about those andbuilding them.
SPEAKER_00 (02:38):
let's take the carrying a bag statement in
quotes and let's move that overbecause I want to come back to
that.
But you spent more than 24 yearsin CROs and that's like 34 in
clinical research years.
Brett, what is it about being ina CRO that motivates you and
(02:59):
keeps you being bright eyed asyou have been since I've known
you to come into work every day?
What is it that motivates youlike that?
SPEAKER_01 (03:06):
So there's, You know, we've got a little bit
here on the side of the gray dogears, I guess.
It's interesting.
A lot of people will ask, why doyou stay on the services
provider side?
There's not a right side or awrong side.
The part that I find mostexciting, I feel like I have a
front row seat, an IMAX theaterseat, and new products come to
(03:28):
market.
I happen to have chosen a sectorthat's usually unmet need,
breakthrough status, orphanpopulations.
They are the coolest thingscoming.
forward.
And so for me, being on thefront lines of when I said we
have to solve things to get themto market, they're hard solves.
And they're very commonlyproducts or populations that are
underserved, understudied.
(03:50):
There might not be a precedentout there.
There's no course.
There's no Sherpa to help you upthe mountain, right?
And so being in part of thecompanies or helping the
companies figure out how toclimb that mountain, A, it's
rewarding and challenging.
When you win, It's amazing.
It's just, I don't even know howto explain it.
It's amazing.
And then the variability of oneday it's a oncology therapy, the
(04:15):
other day it'sneurodegenerative.
And so the range of all thedifferent things you see and
have to solve for me, I don'tknow if there'd be another
sector that had that much energybreakthrough.
and satisfaction when you get itdone and you get it right.
So it's super rewarding for meand super challenging at the
same time.
SPEAKER_00 (04:35):
One of my pharma friends a couple weeks ago was
in this conversation and shementioned that she's been in
pharma her whole career.
And she said one of the things Ithought was really intriguing
and interesting about CROs isthat I've been in pharma for X
amount of years.
It was a lot.
And she said, I've only everworked on products that failed.
And I never really got a chanceto see a product finish its
(04:57):
trials, win, and then go tomarket.
I never got to follow that.
And when you think about thelifestyle and what you get to
see on CROs, like you said,you've got variability, you've
got different programs, maybedifferent therapeutic areas,
different disease states.
Probably like you, I've had thechance to work on some programs
for products that are in themarket, especially one I got to
be on that my child was taking,which was really
SPEAKER_01 (05:19):
cool.
SPEAKER_00 (05:20):
And you know, that's like as a dad, you walk in, they
prescribed it, and I was like,oh.
Yes.
You couldn't say anything, but Iwas like, yeah, like that's
where it hit home.
But also I've been on failedprograms and got to see teams
that had put six years of theirlives into something to get to a
point where it just didn't, itcouldn't get where it needed to
go.
And so I think that's superrewarding and a big benefit of
(05:41):
CROs is that open aperture andthis ability to work on
different products.
SPEAKER_01 (05:44):
My conviction is that let's say they move that
product forward, they get allthe way to phase 2B, they've got
a dose, they think it's going towork and it fails.
We've got such awesome people inthe sector that there's
components of that journey ofthat path with that drug.
It's mechanism of action,something they learn that they
reapply, repoint.
So for me, I don't think youever go back to zero.
SPEAKER_00 (06:03):
What's the next thing you want to do?
Like, is there anything elsethat Brett says, I really would
like to accomplish this, or Iwanna work on this, or there's
this thing in my career that Iactually wanna do next.
I'm just curious.
SPEAKER_01 (06:16):
So let me go to the sector on the therapeutic side
for a minute.
You mentioned working on atherapy that was personal to you
and your family, me as well.
And whether it's because of mybackground or as people are
living longer and some of theissues that are associated with
aging set in, for me, it's adeeply personal issue to work in
neurodegenerative disorders.
(06:36):
Cognitive decline, motormovement and issues that get in
the way of cognition and memory.
Alzheimer's is very personal tome.
And I hope that our marketcontinues to forge ahead with
some of these areas of hugeunmet need where some major
groups have placed bets and notpulled it over the finish line.
So one idea would be trulyhaving advanced breakthroughs in
(06:58):
neurodegenerative Alzheimer'sand Parkinson's are on my mind a
lot.
On the kind of the functionaland the career side, we're at an
awesome moment.
I'm actually excited that I'vebeen able to do what I've been
able to do from being young bagcarrier to where I am now,
trying to think about strategyand leading companies through
that with the availability ofsome of the real world data
(07:19):
sources, the ability for them toanswer different questions in
different ways, our maturity orincreased maturity in connecting
those.
Some are super wide, not asdeep, and then some are deep,
not as wide.
So then thinking through theapplications and use cases of
those advances in privacy andinteroperability and add to that
how you can analyze and act onthat through some of the more
(07:41):
advanced machine learning andAI.
We're at a moment where the techand infrastructure is there.
Now it's the application ofthat, that I think, and when I
say moment in time, I actuallymean this decade, it's not like
this year, next year, it's kindof like in the next 10 years,
that's where I see a lot of theaction.
And so being a part of this nextwave of modernized study designs
(08:02):
and how we're still gonna answercritical questions in research,
we're just gonna answer themdifferently.
We're at a pretty awesome,moment for that.
So that'll be rewarding forwriting that, watching that,
guiding that, and helping be apart of the DNA of new study
designs in the next few years.
SPEAKER_00 (08:21):
We talked about when you say the terms carrying a
bag, we mean businessdevelopment, meaning you have to
go sell things so that you canget commission to make money to
feed your family.
Brett, you've been in an accountrole in a business development
almost your whole career, andwhere a lot of people will kind
of move into it or move out ofit.
You've been there for a longtime and you started as an
(08:42):
account exec.
As you think about how many ofthe steps you've had to climb in
that ladder in businessdevelopment, from the
entry-level jobs all the way towhere you are now in the most
senior of executives in theseroles, for someone who wants to
do that with their career, whatdo you tell them?
How does somebody have thewherewithal, the grit, and the
(09:02):
focus to really walk through andtake all those steps if they
want to be successful long-termin a commercial or I'll
SPEAKER_01 (09:08):
get to an answer, but now I'm distracted by when I
got my first job.
You talk about embarrassingyourself.
I showed up with a binder, athree-ring binder of examples of
my work.
And then I even had a DVD ofdocuments they could download to
kind of show artifacts of what Icould do and how I could present
and things like that.
Of course you did.
It's exhausting when I thinkabout it.
(09:30):
Of course you did.
And nowadays, I'm not even surepeople carry bags.
They probably show up with a QRcode.
But kidding aside, and I think alot of people do, A lot of
people misjudge the complexityof being a seller and being an
effective seller.
It's hard.
And there's an art to getting itright.
There's an art to creatingrelationships.
There's an art to standing outand being memorable such that,
(09:50):
you know, in a sea of parody fora lot of different competitive
offerings that are out there ishaving somebody choose yours,
choose you and work with you.
You got to put in the work.
Nowadays, there's a lot ofdifferent sales enablement
tools, a lot of different peoplehelping you, a lot of different
demand gen and marketing insales ops, but you have to own
it yourself.
(10:11):
The amount of work you put in tounderstand your market, your
buyer, and I mean by role, bytitle, what are they responsible
for?
What are they trying to getdone?
What's in their way?
Understanding and doing thehomework on what their next
moves need to be and getting outin front of that to research it
and truly understand it so thatwhen you make your outreach,
(10:33):
it's sophisticated, it'swell-placed and well-timed based
on where that buyer most likelyis in their search, depending on
where the product is, what phaseof development, even maybe what
therapeutic area of development.
Being savvy and understandingwhat they need to solve would be
step number one.
And maximizing the toolsavailable to you or pushing your
organization to offer those toyou to be educated on your
(10:58):
outreach.
But don't let that get in theway of something that's even
more important, which isbuilding that rapport, building
trust, and understanding thebuyer through a sophisticated
kind of, you know, beinquisitive, be curious, build
the relationship, not justthrough capability speak, but
truly asking questions tounderstand if you got your
(11:19):
assumption of where they arecorrect.
And so I feel like I learnedlater in my career than I had
hoped.
I spent so much time trying tobe the smartest person about all
these moving parts that I didn'tspend as much time understanding
the relational side of my buyerand building the rapport with
them.
Because you can know everythingon a fact sheet.
But if you don't spend the timeto get alongside them, they'll
(11:41):
tell you what they need.
They'll tell you when and whereand why they're making moves.
So having a really strongbalance by being super
sophisticated and knowing whatto look for, knowing what to
research and understanding whatyou believe their pain points
are, and then having a verybalanced approach to
understanding that personthemselves, their organization
(12:04):
and where they are, and thenunderstanding how to write notes
and sync that together will makeyou stand out, right?
And then you've establishedtrust because you've offered a
credible position, a credibleunderstanding of their needs.
You've taken time to be aphenomenal listener, and then
you've connected those dots in away that stands out.
So it's hard work to get thatright, but it's time well spent.
(12:27):
And ultimately, you establish asense of loyalty where they come
back.
SPEAKER_00 (12:31):
And so when I'm on LinkedIn every day, I read like
20 to 45 articles reminding mehow AI is going to replace every
business developer.
It's replaced SDR.
It's replaced CRM.
It's replaced basicallyeverything in the sales process,
right?
You read those articles, right?
They're the ones that you justcan't avoid them.
(12:52):
And so as somebody who's beendoing it your whole career, but
also has this advantage whereyou're in innovation, you're in
product, you're in strategy, youwork with actual companies doing
actual AI use cases What do youthink the mix is going to be
between the new businessdeveloper armed with AI
supported tools?
What does that look like to you?
And again, not in the farfuture.
(13:13):
I think that's really hard topredict right now.
I don't think we should do that.
I don't think that's helpful.
But if you think about somebodywho's newer in the market or
trying to pivot their careerinto business development, how
should they be thinking about AIand how it advantages or
disadvantages them in theircareer over the next couple of
years?
SPEAKER_01 (13:30):
As far as using what it's awesome at, which is some
of the information synthesis andfact finding and collecting as
much information as you can, itcan help offer a lot of scale.
So you can, as it relates to thehomework and learning and
positioning, another thing I'veseen reps do is it gets ready
(13:50):
for an event or they'vedownloaded an attendee list for
something is they take a lookand they capture information
from the account, the product ofinterest that they're seeking,
maybe a little bit of abackground or that person and
attributes of what theircompany's product position
solution is and they say, findsynergies between these.
What do you believe is aneffective way to position it?
That's fine.
But that's just moreaggregating, collecting, and
(14:11):
maybe connecting some thingsthat's very different than
application.
For me, I think there's, atleast right now, a separation
from finding the information,bringing it together, giving you
ideas of a place to jump offonto a conversation.
I'm not currently using it as away that I bake it into a core
deliverable, but I do use it asa way to better understand what
might be meaningful connectionsand correlations between what
(14:32):
they're doing, we're doing, andlogical fit, but it allows me to
focus more time on building therelationship with that person,
that buyer, in a way that the AIcan't help you at this moment.
Obviously, they're reasoning theadvantages of the LLMs on
allowing you to go much widerthan you might be able to go on
your own.
They lack in the ability toapply it to your individual
(14:53):
selling use case.
So for me, I think it's greatfor scale.
Maybe it advantages the numberof conversations that you can
prepare for per week, but Ithink it's still not going to
encroach or help you with therelationship side of it, which
is where the art of being aseller is most meaningful and
most differentiated.
I'm sure there'll probably be ablurring of the lines where
someone's gonna set it andforget it and it's gonna create
(15:14):
messages for them and roll outthroughout the day.
And there is some lead genautomation that is taking
advantage of some of thosethings now, but those messages
aren't as deep, they aren't asrich, they aren't as specific.
They're more driving indirectawareness as opposed to a really
sophisticated engagement that ata moment now where there's so
many choices for these buyers,it's going to get lost.
(15:36):
It's going to get lost.
SPEAKER_00 (15:37):
I got asked a similar-ish question around
automating SDR.
Again, for those who don't know,SDR, being a sales development
lead, somebody who's trying toget somebody interested so that
you can match them with expertsor a demo, and using tools to
write these.
I don't know about you all, butMy LinkedIn and my LinkedIn
(16:00):
messages is like grown tenfoldin the past few months.
And it's not because I'm cooleror more popular.
It's because people are usingthese Legion tools.
And then trust me, I've triedthem and used them.
And if I'm somebody trying to bein BD, I'm trying to think about
a commercial path.
I am starting to use these toolsand I am bringing them to my
(16:20):
draft board all day, every day.
And then I am making them me andmaking them personal.
But I agree with you, Brett.
For me, all the deep research isit's interesting.
People talk about writingmessages.
The deep research ofunderstanding a client, their
challenges, their pipeline, whatthey're trying to do.
Think about all the tools andsubscriptions and all the things
(16:40):
we've paid for over the yearsthat I can...
get that and get it withreferenceable data is pretty
impactful.
And so I do think that theability for people who want to
be in BD or BD now trying todifferentiate, it's still going
to be about contrasting themarket, not differentiating.
And the way to contrast is touse the tools to be more you and
(17:01):
to be more you at scale.
And for me, I think that's goingto be, I don't know, I think
it's going to be reallyimportant for the future
generation of salespeople tocontinue to stand out and solve
problems for people.
SPEAKER_01 (17:11):
I like your concept of a draft board.
I do something similarly just tomake sure I'm being as wide and
thoughtful or maybe I missedsomething and there's some value
there.
But people have a brand.
They have a way they speak.
You do, I do, and they carry itwith them and it carries with
them through their career.
And there's an authenticityabout that that it's hard to
(17:33):
describe, but it's what makesyou, your emails, your call to
action, the way you make andtake a phone call that resonates
with a buyer.
The number of times it's like,do you want to create an avatar
for yourself no i'd like to i'dlike to stay me uh and i hope i
think this is going to work soit's a it's a powerful tool i
think we still need to be us uhand i think the clients know
(17:55):
that and there's an authenticityi think that prevails
SPEAKER_00 (17:58):
yeah plus i'm still a little bit annoyed that
everybody gives the m dash youknow like wide dash they give
credit to open ai and chat gptfor that that's like my go-to
move is the m dash someone saidthat's a clear indicator of ai
and i was like no it's not it'sa clear indicator of how i
right?
Because I don't know where toput a period sometimes.
And shifting gears, talkingabout real-world evidence,
there's a key difference betweenreal-world data and real-world
(18:20):
evidence.
They're fundamentally differentterms.
They have fundamental differentuse cases.
So when you focus on real-worldevidence, right, and you really
take an RWE approach, can youtell people what is it and how
does it work?
SPEAKER_01 (18:33):
I guess kind of the more literal definition of the
usage, the benefit, and the riskof a medical product that is
acting on or informed by theanalysis of RWD.
So RWD is going to be asubstrate of RWE.
And so for me, when I think ofit, RWE is a bigger umbrella.
RWD is a component of somethingthat feeds that.
(18:54):
It can be serviced from so manydifferent variety of sources and
secondary data, claims data, EHRis just one leg of a complex
stool of a story that you needto tell about the risk benefit
of a product, the clinicalbenefit of the product, the
outcomes that are achieved overlong-term follow-up of a
product.
So for me, the RWE E is thelarger game, the larger story.
(19:15):
The RWD is a component and apiece of it underneath it.
I think that's why the market istalking about its application,
its use.
Where's it most well-placed?
How is it most well-leveraged?
But for me, it's a cleardistinction.
SPEAKER_00 (19:27):
When you think about RWE in general, I think people
sort of assume it's allpost-approval, right?
It's all sort of phase three, B4clinical trials.
Do you see RWE use movingdownstream to phase one, B2, and
three?
How should people think aboutRWE as a use case.
With your definition, This is alot of different data that's
being captured across clinicaltrial protocol phases, right?
SPEAKER_01 (19:49):
100%.
In fact, one of the more funopportunities you and I had was
early moves trying to do some ofthis in the Duchenne, the DMD
space, the Duchenne MuscularDystrophy space.
So you were out early inthinking about where are all the
other places that evidence canbe collected, right?
So for me, we're seeing a widerange of designs.
(20:09):
Yes, it's absolutely easilyapplied in post-approval, but in
some of the designs that we'reworking on right now, it being
leveraged for a more preciseunderstanding of the population
of interest for the design of aphase 2B or a 3A program,
absolutely, make it moreefficient, right site, using it
as a targeting asset to betterunderstand the cohort and the
(20:31):
protocol design on the front endand refining that.
It could be a speed play, notnecessarily a cost offset play.
The other place we're seeing it,obviously, depending on the
schedule of assessments andwhat's being captured is, again,
working backwards from theentirety story that you want to
tell.
We kind of call it parallelevidence development.
I don't really talk about phasesmuch anymore.
We know there's a lot ofdifferent stakeholders.
(20:52):
They're counting on a story atthe time of launch.
Your regulator is going to befocused on safety and the
clinical...
the safety of and the clinicalbenefit of.
If you show up to market and youare void of some long-term
follow-up data, long-term dataof exposure, you're going to
have nothing on outcomes andyou're going to try to
differentiate and you're goingto feel bad that you didn't pick
(21:14):
that up early enough.
They're going to say, how doesthis compare to others?
And if you haven't made adecision to leverage RWE in the
form of maybe some naturalhistory assessment, there's such
a utility of how it can informall the different stakeholders
that you know have have aninterest in a certain component
of that evidence.
So this idea of parallelevidence, you're responsible for
(21:35):
it.
It can either come frominterventional, observational,
pragmatic.
It can come from secondary dataclaims.
It can come from EHRs and othergenomic data.
It can come from some of thethings you know for PROs and
clinical outcomes assessmentsthat are captured in a more
decentralized way.
So the battleground now, afteryou understand exactly the
(21:55):
evidence story you want to tell,pulls down into where can I find
it?
How is it derived?
How can I bring it into my datamodel?
How can I make sense of it?
And it's coming right back tosome of those classic
disciplines of your clinicalteams and your epidemiologists
understanding how to put thatdata to work.
What's powerful right now isbecause of data proliferation
and all the different types ofdata that's available, it's
(22:16):
awesome that it's out there, butit becomes incredibly important
to understand which of the datasources are fit for purpose.
So it adds value, but it alsoadds complexity to getting those
decisions right and placing theright bets on what to acquire,
what to license, getting yourprivacy certifications that
allow that to happen, makingsure that all the different data
sources that are coming in areorganized in a way that you can
(22:39):
act on them inside youranalytics environment.
It's beautiful, but it's alsocomplicated.
SPEAKER_00 (22:46):
When it comes to EHR, EMR data source, secondary
data sources, everything in thatgroup, someone would say, why do
I want to collect that?
What's the return on investmentI get for that?
Meaning I'm going to go spend Xamount of dollars.
I'm going to go pull this datain, figure out how to tokenize
it, how to match it to aparticipant, connect it to my
data source, supplement what I'mcollecting prospectively or from
(23:07):
other forms of RWE.
So when you get a question likethat from somebody who says,
what's the return?
So I spend this money, I'm goingto get X in return What's the
answer?
SPEAKER_01 (23:17):
To be direct, we're not...
We're not currently positioningit on an ROI from a cost benefit
standpoint quite yet.
I don't know if you've hadenough studies where we can
definitively say this is Xpercent more cost effective.
There are some areas wherethere's an absolute speed
advantage.
What I would say we're seeingthe most of is hybrid, where
(23:38):
some are more traditionalsite-based.
We're working with the sites.
We're doing the abstraction.
We're paying for that work.
We've got grants to get thatdone.
And then maybe we also have anarm or a leg or an opportunity
where some of that is done morevirtually some of that is
enriched with real-world data orit's done with some type of
record retrieval or abstraction.
And then we're allowing that tobe a more flexible design to
(23:59):
allow the partners and KOLs andsites of interest that may have
kind of accumulated in theearlier stages.
We're also using it as a way totest the technologies and tools
to see if it performs as well orbetter and the effort against
that.
And then it also offers a widerdesign.
Might even, in our experience,it's allowed us to enroll a
(24:19):
little bit of a wider net andnot be constrained in certain
geographies.
And we've got a lot of thoseprograms in flight right now,
but we're not using it as a costavoidance tactic.
We're using it as flexibility,feel it out, novel design, see
what performs the best.
And then we allow to move theballast point to either the
(24:40):
sites or the more virtualenvironments that are performing
better, working alongside thosesponsors.
So we've got a couple of thosein flight right now, but we're
not currently positioning it oncost offset, cost avoidance.
The return is actually, are wegetting high quality data?
Are we getting it reliably?
Is it offering flexibility forparticipation?
And then that allows us to kindof see kind of a trade off on
(25:02):
each of those sides of thestudy.
SPEAKER_00 (25:03):
Yeah, I would assume too, it's...
When you have your rates, you'regoing to get about 70% of this
data.
You have to quantify and figureout how to power your analysis
based on the actual amount ofdata you're really going to be
able to get in these models.
For me, it was always theexchange of not the cost-benefit
analysis, but knowing I needthis data point.
(25:23):
This is a source to get the datapoint.
If I pay for this source, I'mgoing to get 70% of it.
Is that better than if I paid adifferent way, like I brought
all these people or broughtthese consultants or did all
this work and spent more to get50%.
That was really the costanalysis.
SPEAKER_01 (25:39):
Absolutely.
You don't always know the rateof return in that variable or
that field.
So for me, I don't want to callit guesswork, but as these tools
mature, you don't always knowexactly the rate of return, the
times with which that field willbe populated, where access to
that particular record, etcetera.
I 100% agree with you as you'rethinking about powering and
(26:01):
those factors.
That's why right now we're doinga lot of hybrid designs.
SPEAKER_00 (26:06):
It's complex to tell you that it's not a one size
fits all.
And I totally agree because Ithink the point we're trying to
achieve here is what's theparticular fields of data I'm
looking for and where's the bestplace to get that for the
population I'm serving andsupporting in this research.
And sometimes that's oneprovider, sometimes that's
multiple providers, sometimesit's two sources that get
(26:28):
connected together and It'scomplex.
SPEAKER_01 (26:30):
We've done some feasibility bake-offs, right?
And to test this, we don't justwant to opine and say we think
they have it or we don't.
We've done feasibility andrecognize where it's performing
well and not.
And so that's why when I saidwe're at a moment in time, it's
super exciting that we'regetting access to these data and
we're bringing them together.
We've got very, very matureprivacy policies and things like
(26:50):
that.
But the reason why I said it'sgoing to be a decade is we are
still putting recommendationsout in market that have three
different designs.
One more traditional, one thatis highly virtual highly.
And then one that's just rightup the middle.
And right now, depending on theposture of the client, we're
getting a lot of right up themiddle where they want to have a
little bit of a guarantee ofsome of those more traditional
(27:12):
methods and approaches.
But they know that the market ishere for some more interesting
ways to do the real world dataenrichment or retrieval work.
And so we're giving them thepower of optionality.
And the great thing is we're alllearning from it.
I mean, I think we need to makesure we get to a situation where
we can kind of publish and showthat and and build a
constituency base for thesedesigns.
(27:32):
But it's early.
SPEAKER_00 (27:33):
Well, and when you think about this ability to see
different models on thespectrum, right, from
traditional to the mostinnovative, it is interesting
that you're seeing a lot moreadoption or thinking or progress
in the middle.
And typically, that's what yousee, right, when you're in
challenging markets, right, isyou're forced in challenging
market to find more costeffective and ways, but you're
(27:54):
also not willing to go all theway down the right of the
innovation spectrum, because youcan't mess up what you have in
front of you.
And so the balance is usually inthe middle.
You've been 24 plus years in theindustry.
You've seen so many ups anddowns that we've had as an
industry over the years.
And right now, the market ischallenged.
It's in one of those down andmoving up periods of time.
(28:16):
And so if you're talking tosomebody, some listener that we
have that's earlier in theircareer, what advice are you
giving to them to lead throughthese challenging markets and to
continue to stand out and getthe work done and help people
innovate, but protect the workthat they're doing so that they
can get past this period oftime.
SPEAKER_01 (28:36):
Going back to what you said, I really like what you
said, which is they want to beinnovative.
They want to try something.
They want to go for it.
They feel like there's a moment.
but they can't screw it up.
And so there's this kind ofcrazy dichotomy there.
But if you're selling right nowand you're navigating these
headwinds, one of the thingsthat I think is a little bit
different now than when I wasdirectly carrying a bag is the
(28:58):
number of alternativesavailable.
So right now you need to getincredibly specific about where
you play and where you can help.
You have to be incrediblysuccinct about getting them to
understand exactly the valueyou're bringing.
So no capability speak.
We're at a point now wherethere's a lot of fantastic
organizations in the market.
They do a lot of fantasticthings.
There's even more pointsolutions that are encroaching
(29:19):
on that traditional CRO model.
So you need to be aware of wherethey play.
You need to be aware of theircompetitive value props, and you
need to be definitive on whichone's yours, which, what do you
carry?
And so I feel like it forces youto, to kind of, instead of wide
and, you know, going everywhereand sending notes to everyone,
my thought is get small, getsmart, get focused and
(29:40):
understand that as the whitespace gets a little bit more
narrow, understand how to attackthat white space.
So it's a level ofsophistication that means it's
you, it's you understanding thesales intelligence, it's you
working with the SMEs internallyto figure out if you've got it
right, it's you looking aroundand making sure that you're
using your network wisely ofpeople that maybe already trust
you, where you've already builtup a little bit of that base
(30:01):
trust with that buyer is itemnumber one.
Item number two, that's theprecise targeting, positioning,
get small, know exactly whereyou've got a right to win, don't
position on capabilities, bevery explicit on the expected
value and outcome.
Like if we do this, I candemonstrate this.
And we call it kind ofevidence-based, you know,
(30:22):
evidence-based position,evidence-based selling.
Right now, a lot of our teamsaren't, are selling just with
case studies, telling stories.
Hey, we did this, we solvedthis, we found this, this would,
you know, and it's actually funbuilding those decks because of
course you kick it off and say,you know, here's how we grew up.
Here's kind of how we built thecompany.
Here's something incrediblyspecific for your population or
your product.
(30:42):
But let me tell you a storyabout some something we did for
this population, thismanufacturer at this time, at
this juncture And I hate to haveto speak so superficially
because it would be incrediblytailored to what was going on
right there.
But it's this storytelling thatdrives believability.
I've been in your shoes.
We can carry you out of this.
We've demonstrated competenciesthere.
(31:04):
I have proof that we've done it.
That establishes trust.
Can I show you a little bit moreabout how we've done that and
introduce you to the rest ofthis team?
And so you pull them closerthrough outcomes-based
positioning, evidence of priordelivery, but an incredibly more
focused focused, concise waybecause the market narrowed down
and there's a lot of you outthere.
SPEAKER_00 (31:24):
Take that same question though.
I do hear and I think for peoplewho are in commercial or in
business development or strategygroups, when you're in a
challenging market, one of thethings when you're sort of
growing in your career, thatadvice you gave I think is
really sage and really sound.
So thank you.
When you're a leader and you'retrying to lead through these
times and you're an executive,you've done this for many years
(31:45):
and through many markets, whatadvice would you give to
somebody who needs to coachtheir team to get through
challenging markets, right?
SPEAKER_01 (31:53):
That's an interesting twist.
It's almost like, how do youmake sure you're managing that
down structure, right?
I'll just be authentic.
Number one is as a leader, getin the game.
So for me, I'm on the field,right?
If you're a leader, that meansyou've got a network.
If you've got a leader, thatmeans you have an ability to
lift up their ability to workwith the subject matter leaders
inside your company in a moreeffective way.
If you're a leader, you're goingto be able to shape what I just
(32:16):
said, which is where are thosenarrow rights-to- that you have
in your accounts with yourmessage.
So number one, get in there withthem and take the best parts of
you and give it to them.
You'll generate respect upstructure because their leader
is in them in the trenches.
It'll be a lot of fun becauseit'll remind you of things that
you were doing when you weretrying to get there.
They need your help becauseyou're unlocking quarters of the
(32:40):
business that maybe they don'talways have access to because
they're not the boss.
And you give your network valueback to them and say, how can I
help?
And so being a coach and makingsure that they are powering
through mentally and as they seefatigue of you know meetings not
getting held or they have a lossthat they were convinced they
were going to have is make suretheir make sure their mindset is
(33:02):
dialed in and that you'recoaching them in a way to to
lead them through that toughtime and then they're going to
have a breakthrough they'regoing to have a win they're
going to remember that positivecoaching and your help alongside
them that'll build loyalty onthe team and I call it kind of
the locker room the whole lockerroom huddles together and get
stronger.
So for me, it's the ultimatetest of a leader because you're
(33:26):
in it.
You have a force multiplierbecause how you coach that team
down structure and amplifies itin market, when that works, it's
a binding force for the wholeteam.
It sets an example.
The other thing is you need tomake sure this concept of we're
all in sales, every organizationis a little bit different, but
there are some that you can feelit, that they're all in it
(33:48):
together They're all rowing.
They live and breathe and die bythe pipeline and the outcomes
and how they can help.
And there are some that say,how's the sales team doing?
Whichever model you're in, youhave an opportunity to make sure
you're on the side, which iseveryone contributes and you get
the power and the center ofgravity of the medics.
(34:09):
Sales ops is looking for newviews that they can put into
your hands.
Marketing is going on blast withtheir demand gen to the right
titles and buyer personas.
It's really when, frankly, as Ithink about your question, it's
where the company's culture cancoalesce, needs to coalesce.
And it's a moment where you canelevate yourself, elevate your
(34:34):
team and elevate, frankly, thewhole P&L.
So I think it's powerful whenmarkets do this.
It's the test of the locker roomand it's the test of leadership.
It's an awesome moment.
SPEAKER_00 (34:45):
The one I really want to call out is when you say
you get in the game, right?
When you're like, hey, let's go.
Give me this thing.
Let me get in here.
To lead by example.
That's what that means.
It's Being an example and sayinglike, hey, you got this, I got
this, let's go.
We've gone for quite some timetalking about these components,
and I appreciate it.
I know our listeners do.
Hearing about businessdevelopment as a job in clinical
(35:06):
research is not something Ithink we talk enough about, so I
think it's really helpful.
You have the word hustle in yourlast name.
I mean, how aligned were yourparents when they set you in
that?
I'm really glad you didn't gothe other direction.
SPEAKER_01 (35:22):
A hundred percent.
SPEAKER_00 (35:23):
So Brett, if someone wants to connect with you,
what's the best way to reachyou?
SPEAKER_01 (35:28):
Listen, I'm always on LinkedIn.
Love to connect that way.
Love to connect with anyone thathas any other follow-up
questions, ideas, or just hadsome fun with the conversation.
So grab me on LinkedIn.
I'm a serial connector.
SPEAKER_00 (35:38):
Brett, it's great to see you.
Thanks for spending time with ustoday.
Really appreciate it.
Awesome.
Thanks, John.
And I think a lot of people misjudge the complexity
of being a seller and being aneffective seller.
It's hard.
And there's an art to getting itright.
There's an art to creatingrelationships.
There's an art to standing outand being memorable such that in
a sea of parody for a lot ofdifferent competitive offerings
that are out there is havingsomebody choose yours, choose
(00:21):
you.
SPEAKER_00 (00:35):
Who is Brett and what do you do in clinical
research?
SPEAKER_01 (00:38):
troublemaker?
Cause problems.
I figured that nice, clean,simple answer, right?
No, I fell into the sector kindof by accident.
I was thinking it was going tobe neuroscience and practice in
medicine.
And as I got further along inwhat I was studying, I liked the
business side of medicine betterthan the practice of medicine.
So when I graduated, I hadfocused kind of on the natural
sciences and neuroscience andgot a dual degree in cognitive
(01:00):
psychology and wanted to reallyfind a place for that in the
market, in the business world.
And, you know, kind of bumpedinto the CRO sector, fell in
love with it, carried it magforever loved it and
understanding how the productswere being brought to market and
the labyrinth that they had tonavigate to get that right and
that was super rewarding for thenerdy part of me as well as just
the people part of me and justmeeting awesome people along the
(01:23):
way so had some fun with that insales led sales uh you know
jumped around a little bit untili found my place where i am
right now where it's puttingthat to work in a little bit of
a different way so myresponsibility is strategy
partnership and innovation soi'm functionally responsible for
kind of understanding what'sgoing on in the market.
What are the clients that wesupport navigating to get a
(01:45):
product approved, build evidencegeneration strategies, advantage
it in market once it's there andmake sure people can get their
hands on that therapy.
And so understanding all of thatand bringing it back to my
company is figure out what partof us do we need to show them to
help advantage them and get thatdone.
There's times that's all insideour shop.
There's times that we need topartner that out and I need to
(02:07):
figure out who to I need to workwith that has an awesome
solution that's maybe outside ofwhat we do, but it's part of
that comprehensive wrap that wethink is the right way to get
that done.
And then own those relationshipsand bring those in those to
market.
The innovation side is kind ofthe most fun, kind of the most
crazy right now with all the AIgoing on, which is placing bets
on what does this look like adecade from now?
(02:28):
So just scanning the market,bringing ideas in, giving it to
the leadership team, socializingthose with clients and seeing
who gets excited about those andbuilding them.
SPEAKER_00 (02:38):
let's take the carrying a bag statement in
quotes and let's move that overbecause I want to come back to
that.
But you spent more than 24 yearsin CROs and that's like 34 in
clinical research years.
Brett, what is it about being ina CRO that motivates you and
(02:59):
keeps you being bright eyed asyou have been since I've known
you to come into work every day?
What is it that motivates youlike that?
SPEAKER_01 (03:06):
So there's, You know, we've got a little bit
here on the side of the gray dogears, I guess.
It's interesting.
A lot of people will ask, why doyou stay on the services
provider side?
There's not a right side or awrong side.
The part that I find mostexciting, I feel like I have a
front row seat, an IMAX theaterseat, and new products come to
(03:28):
market.
I happen to have chosen a sectorthat's usually unmet need,
breakthrough status, orphanpopulations.
They are the coolest thingscoming.
forward.
And so for me, being on thefront lines of when I said we
have to solve things to get themto market, they're hard solves.
And they're very commonlyproducts or populations that are
underserved, understudied.
(03:50):
There might not be a precedentout there.
There's no course.
There's no Sherpa to help you upthe mountain, right?
And so being in part of thecompanies or helping the
companies figure out how toclimb that mountain, A, it's
rewarding and challenging.
When you win, It's amazing.
It's just, I don't even know howto explain it.
It's amazing.
And then the variability of oneday it's a oncology therapy, the
(04:15):
other day it'sneurodegenerative.
And so the range of all thedifferent things you see and
have to solve for me, I don'tknow if there'd be another
sector that had that much energybreakthrough.
and satisfaction when you get itdone and you get it right.
So it's super rewarding for meand super challenging at the
same time.
SPEAKER_00 (04:35):
One of my pharma friends a couple weeks ago was
in this conversation and shementioned that she's been in
pharma her whole career.
And she said one of the things Ithought was really intriguing
and interesting about CROs isthat I've been in pharma for X
amount of years.
It was a lot.
And she said, I've only everworked on products that failed.
And I never really got a chanceto see a product finish its
(04:57):
trials, win, and then go tomarket.
I never got to follow that.
And when you think about thelifestyle and what you get to
see on CROs, like you said,you've got variability, you've
got different programs, maybedifferent therapeutic areas,
different disease states.
Probably like you, I've had thechance to work on some programs
for products that are in themarket, especially one I got to
be on that my child was taking,which was really
SPEAKER_01 (05:19):
cool.
SPEAKER_00 (05:20):
And you know, that's like as a dad, you walk in, they
prescribed it, and I was like,oh.
Yes.
You couldn't say anything, but Iwas like, yeah, like that's
where it hit home.
But also I've been on failedprograms and got to see teams
that had put six years of theirlives into something to get to a
point where it just didn't, itcouldn't get where it needed to
go.
And so I think that's superrewarding and a big benefit of
(05:41):
CROs is that open aperture andthis ability to work on
different products.
SPEAKER_01 (05:44):
My conviction is that let's say they move that
product forward, they get allthe way to phase 2B, they've got
a dose, they think it's going towork and it fails.
We've got such awesome people inthe sector that there's
components of that journey ofthat path with that drug.
It's mechanism of action,something they learn that they
reapply, repoint.
So for me, I don't think youever go back to zero.
SPEAKER_00 (06:03):
What's the next thing you want to do?
Like, is there anything elsethat Brett says, I really would
like to accomplish this, or Iwanna work on this, or there's
this thing in my career that Iactually wanna do next.
I'm just curious.
SPEAKER_01 (06:16):
So let me go to the sector on the therapeutic side
for a minute.
You mentioned working on atherapy that was personal to you
and your family, me as well.
And whether it's because of mybackground or as people are
living longer and some of theissues that are associated with
aging set in, for me, it's adeeply personal issue to work in
neurodegenerative disorders.
(06:36):
Cognitive decline, motormovement and issues that get in
the way of cognition and memory.
Alzheimer's is very personal tome.
And I hope that our marketcontinues to forge ahead with
some of these areas of hugeunmet need where some major
groups have placed bets and notpulled it over the finish line.
So one idea would be trulyhaving advanced breakthroughs in
(06:58):
neurodegenerative Alzheimer'sand Parkinson's are on my mind a
lot.
On the kind of the functionaland the career side, we're at an
awesome moment.
I'm actually excited that I'vebeen able to do what I've been
able to do from being young bagcarrier to where I am now,
trying to think about strategyand leading companies through
that with the availability ofsome of the real world data
(07:19):
sources, the ability for them toanswer different questions in
different ways, our maturity orincreased maturity in connecting
those.
Some are super wide, not asdeep, and then some are deep,
not as wide.
So then thinking through theapplications and use cases of
those advances in privacy andinteroperability and add to that
how you can analyze and act onthat through some of the more
(07:41):
advanced machine learning andAI.
We're at a moment where the techand infrastructure is there.
Now it's the application ofthat, that I think, and when I
say moment in time, I actuallymean this decade, it's not like
this year, next year, it's kindof like in the next 10 years,
that's where I see a lot of theaction.
And so being a part of this nextwave of modernized study designs
(08:02):
and how we're still gonna answercritical questions in research,
we're just gonna answer themdifferently.
We're at a pretty awesome,moment for that.
So that'll be rewarding forwriting that, watching that,
guiding that, and helping be apart of the DNA of new study
designs in the next few years.
SPEAKER_00 (08:21):
We talked about when you say the terms carrying a
bag, we mean businessdevelopment, meaning you have to
go sell things so that you canget commission to make money to
feed your family.
Brett, you've been in an accountrole in a business development
almost your whole career, andwhere a lot of people will kind
of move into it or move out ofit.
You've been there for a longtime and you started as an
(08:42):
account exec.
As you think about how many ofthe steps you've had to climb in
that ladder in businessdevelopment, from the
entry-level jobs all the way towhere you are now in the most
senior of executives in theseroles, for someone who wants to
do that with their career, whatdo you tell them?
How does somebody have thewherewithal, the grit, and the
(09:02):
focus to really walk through andtake all those steps if they
want to be successful long-termin a commercial or I'll
SPEAKER_01 (09:08):
get to an answer, but now I'm distracted by when I
got my first job.
You talk about embarrassingyourself.
I showed up with a binder, athree-ring binder of examples of
my work.
And then I even had a DVD ofdocuments they could download to
kind of show artifacts of what Icould do and how I could present
and things like that.
Of course you did.
It's exhausting when I thinkabout it.
(09:30):
Of course you did.
And nowadays, I'm not even surepeople carry bags.
They probably show up with a QRcode.
But kidding aside, and I think alot of people do, A lot of
people misjudge the complexityof being a seller and being an
effective seller.
It's hard.
And there's an art to getting itright.
There's an art to creatingrelationships.
There's an art to standing outand being memorable such that,
(09:50):
you know, in a sea of parody fora lot of different competitive
offerings that are out there ishaving somebody choose yours,
choose you and work with you.
You got to put in the work.
Nowadays, there's a lot ofdifferent sales enablement
tools, a lot of different peoplehelping you, a lot of different
demand gen and marketing insales ops, but you have to own
it yourself.
(10:11):
The amount of work you put in tounderstand your market, your
buyer, and I mean by role, bytitle, what are they responsible
for?
What are they trying to getdone?
What's in their way?
Understanding and doing thehomework on what their next
moves need to be and getting outin front of that to research it
and truly understand it so thatwhen you make your outreach,
(10:33):
it's sophisticated, it'swell-placed and well-timed based
on where that buyer most likelyis in their search, depending on
where the product is, what phaseof development, even maybe what
therapeutic area of development.
Being savvy and understandingwhat they need to solve would be
step number one.
And maximizing the toolsavailable to you or pushing your
organization to offer those toyou to be educated on your
(10:58):
outreach.
But don't let that get in theway of something that's even
more important, which isbuilding that rapport, building
trust, and understanding thebuyer through a sophisticated
kind of, you know, beinquisitive, be curious, build
the relationship, not justthrough capability speak, but
truly asking questions tounderstand if you got your
(11:19):
assumption of where they arecorrect.
And so I feel like I learnedlater in my career than I had
hoped.
I spent so much time trying tobe the smartest person about all
these moving parts that I didn'tspend as much time understanding
the relational side of my buyerand building the rapport with
them.
Because you can know everythingon a fact sheet.
But if you don't spend the timeto get alongside them, they'll
(11:41):
tell you what they need.
They'll tell you when and whereand why they're making moves.
So having a really strongbalance by being super
sophisticated and knowing whatto look for, knowing what to
research and understanding whatyou believe their pain points
are, and then having a verybalanced approach to
understanding that personthemselves, their organization
(12:04):
and where they are, and thenunderstanding how to write notes
and sync that together will makeyou stand out, right?
And then you've establishedtrust because you've offered a
credible position, a credibleunderstanding of their needs.
You've taken time to be aphenomenal listener, and then
you've connected those dots in away that stands out.
So it's hard work to get thatright, but it's time well spent.
(12:27):
And ultimately, you establish asense of loyalty where they come
back.
SPEAKER_00 (12:31):
And so when I'm on LinkedIn every day, I read like
20 to 45 articles reminding mehow AI is going to replace every
business developer.
It's replaced SDR.
It's replaced CRM.
It's replaced basicallyeverything in the sales process,
right?
You read those articles, right?
They're the ones that you justcan't avoid them.
(12:52):
And so as somebody who's beendoing it your whole career, but
also has this advantage whereyou're in innovation, you're in
product, you're in strategy, youwork with actual companies doing
actual AI use cases What do youthink the mix is going to be
between the new businessdeveloper armed with AI
supported tools?
What does that look like to you?
And again, not in the farfuture.
(13:13):
I think that's really hard topredict right now.
I don't think we should do that.
I don't think that's helpful.
But if you think about somebodywho's newer in the market or
trying to pivot their careerinto business development, how
should they be thinking about AIand how it advantages or
disadvantages them in theircareer over the next couple of
years?
SPEAKER_01 (13:30):
As far as using what it's awesome at, which is some
of the information synthesis andfact finding and collecting as
much information as you can, itcan help offer a lot of scale.
So you can, as it relates to thehomework and learning and
positioning, another thing I'veseen reps do is it gets ready
(13:50):
for an event or they'vedownloaded an attendee list for
something is they take a lookand they capture information
from the account, the product ofinterest that they're seeking,
maybe a little bit of abackground or that person and
attributes of what theircompany's product position
solution is and they say, findsynergies between these.
What do you believe is aneffective way to position it?
That's fine.
But that's just moreaggregating, collecting, and
(14:11):
maybe connecting some thingsthat's very different than
application.
For me, I think there's, atleast right now, a separation
from finding the information,bringing it together, giving you
ideas of a place to jump offonto a conversation.
I'm not currently using it as away that I bake it into a core
deliverable, but I do use it asa way to better understand what
might be meaningful connectionsand correlations between what
(14:32):
they're doing, we're doing, andlogical fit, but it allows me to
focus more time on building therelationship with that person,
that buyer, in a way that the AIcan't help you at this moment.
Obviously, they're reasoning theadvantages of the LLMs on
allowing you to go much widerthan you might be able to go on
your own.
They lack in the ability toapply it to your individual
(14:53):
selling use case.
So for me, I think it's greatfor scale.
Maybe it advantages the numberof conversations that you can
prepare for per week, but Ithink it's still not going to
encroach or help you with therelationship side of it, which
is where the art of being aseller is most meaningful and
most differentiated.
I'm sure there'll probably be ablurring of the lines where
someone's gonna set it andforget it and it's gonna create
(15:14):
messages for them and roll outthroughout the day.
And there is some lead genautomation that is taking
advantage of some of thosethings now, but those messages
aren't as deep, they aren't asrich, they aren't as specific.
They're more driving indirectawareness as opposed to a really
sophisticated engagement that ata moment now where there's so
many choices for these buyers,it's going to get lost.
(15:36):
It's going to get lost.
SPEAKER_00 (15:37):
I got asked a similar-ish question around
automating SDR.
Again, for those who don't know,SDR, being a sales development
lead, somebody who's trying toget somebody interested so that
you can match them with expertsor a demo, and using tools to
write these.
I don't know about you all, butMy LinkedIn and my LinkedIn
(16:00):
messages is like grown tenfoldin the past few months.
And it's not because I'm cooleror more popular.
It's because people are usingthese Legion tools.
And then trust me, I've triedthem and used them.
And if I'm somebody trying to bein BD, I'm trying to think about
a commercial path.
I am starting to use these toolsand I am bringing them to my
(16:20):
draft board all day, every day.
And then I am making them me andmaking them personal.
But I agree with you, Brett.
For me, all the deep research isit's interesting.
People talk about writingmessages.
The deep research ofunderstanding a client, their
challenges, their pipeline, whatthey're trying to do.
Think about all the tools andsubscriptions and all the things
(16:40):
we've paid for over the yearsthat I can...
get that and get it withreferenceable data is pretty
impactful.
And so I do think that theability for people who want to
be in BD or BD now trying todifferentiate, it's still going
to be about contrasting themarket, not differentiating.
And the way to contrast is touse the tools to be more you and
(17:01):
to be more you at scale.
And for me, I think that's goingto be, I don't know, I think
it's going to be reallyimportant for the future
generation of salespeople tocontinue to stand out and solve
problems for people.
SPEAKER_01 (17:11):
I like your concept of a draft board.
I do something similarly just tomake sure I'm being as wide and
thoughtful or maybe I missedsomething and there's some value
there.
But people have a brand.
They have a way they speak.
You do, I do, and they carry itwith them and it carries with
them through their career.
And there's an authenticityabout that that it's hard to
(17:33):
describe, but it's what makesyou, your emails, your call to
action, the way you make andtake a phone call that resonates
with a buyer.
The number of times it's like,do you want to create an avatar
for yourself no i'd like to i'dlike to stay me uh and i hope i
think this is going to work soit's a it's a powerful tool i
think we still need to be us uhand i think the clients know
(17:55):
that and there's an authenticityi think that prevails
SPEAKER_00 (17:58):
yeah plus i'm still a little bit annoyed that
everybody gives the m dash youknow like wide dash they give
credit to open ai and chat gptfor that that's like my go-to
move is the m dash someone saidthat's a clear indicator of ai
and i was like no it's not it'sa clear indicator of how i
right?
Because I don't know where toput a period sometimes.
And shifting gears, talkingabout real-world evidence,
there's a key difference betweenreal-world data and real-world
(18:20):
evidence.
They're fundamentally differentterms.
They have fundamental differentuse cases.
So when you focus on real-worldevidence, right, and you really
take an RWE approach, can youtell people what is it and how
does it work?
SPEAKER_01 (18:33):
I guess kind of the more literal definition of the
usage, the benefit, and the riskof a medical product that is
acting on or informed by theanalysis of RWD.
So RWD is going to be asubstrate of RWE.
And so for me, when I think ofit, RWE is a bigger umbrella.
RWD is a component of somethingthat feeds that.
(18:54):
It can be serviced from so manydifferent variety of sources and
secondary data, claims data, EHRis just one leg of a complex
stool of a story that you needto tell about the risk benefit
of a product, the clinicalbenefit of the product, the
outcomes that are achieved overlong-term follow-up of a
product.
So for me, the RWE E is thelarger game, the larger story.
(19:15):
The RWD is a component and apiece of it underneath it.
I think that's why the market istalking about its application,
its use.
Where's it most well-placed?
How is it most well-leveraged?
But for me, it's a cleardistinction.
SPEAKER_00 (19:27):
When you think about RWE in general, I think people
sort of assume it's allpost-approval, right?
It's all sort of phase three, B4clinical trials.
Do you see RWE use movingdownstream to phase one, B2, and
three?
How should people think aboutRWE as a use case.
With your definition, This is alot of different data that's
being captured across clinicaltrial protocol phases, right?
SPEAKER_01 (19:49):
100%.
In fact, one of the more funopportunities you and I had was
early moves trying to do some ofthis in the Duchenne, the DMD
space, the Duchenne MuscularDystrophy space.
So you were out early inthinking about where are all the
other places that evidence canbe collected, right?
So for me, we're seeing a widerange of designs.
(20:09):
Yes, it's absolutely easilyapplied in post-approval, but in
some of the designs that we'reworking on right now, it being
leveraged for a more preciseunderstanding of the population
of interest for the design of aphase 2B or a 3A program,
absolutely, make it moreefficient, right site, using it
as a targeting asset to betterunderstand the cohort and the
(20:31):
protocol design on the front endand refining that.
It could be a speed play, notnecessarily a cost offset play.
The other place we're seeing it,obviously, depending on the
schedule of assessments andwhat's being captured is, again,
working backwards from theentirety story that you want to
tell.
We kind of call it parallelevidence development.
I don't really talk about phasesmuch anymore.
We know there's a lot ofdifferent stakeholders.
(20:52):
They're counting on a story atthe time of launch.
Your regulator is going to befocused on safety and the
clinical...
the safety of and the clinicalbenefit of.
If you show up to market and youare void of some long-term
follow-up data, long-term dataof exposure, you're going to
have nothing on outcomes andyou're going to try to
differentiate and you're goingto feel bad that you didn't pick
(21:14):
that up early enough.
They're going to say, how doesthis compare to others?
And if you haven't made adecision to leverage RWE in the
form of maybe some naturalhistory assessment, there's such
a utility of how it can informall the different stakeholders
that you know have have aninterest in a certain component
of that evidence.
So this idea of parallelevidence, you're responsible for
(21:35):
it.
It can either come frominterventional, observational,
pragmatic.
It can come from secondary dataclaims.
It can come from EHRs and othergenomic data.
It can come from some of thethings you know for PROs and
clinical outcomes assessmentsthat are captured in a more
decentralized way.
So the battleground now, afteryou understand exactly the
(21:55):
evidence story you want to tell,pulls down into where can I find
it?
How is it derived?
How can I bring it into my datamodel?
How can I make sense of it?
And it's coming right back tosome of those classic
disciplines of your clinicalteams and your epidemiologists
understanding how to put thatdata to work.
What's powerful right now isbecause of data proliferation
and all the different types ofdata that's available, it's
(22:16):
awesome that it's out there, butit becomes incredibly important
to understand which of the datasources are fit for purpose.
So it adds value, but it alsoadds complexity to getting those
decisions right and placing theright bets on what to acquire,
what to license, getting yourprivacy certifications that
allow that to happen, makingsure that all the different data
sources that are coming in areorganized in a way that you can
(22:39):
act on them inside youranalytics environment.
It's beautiful, but it's alsocomplicated.
SPEAKER_00 (22:46):
When it comes to EHR, EMR data source, secondary
data sources, everything in thatgroup, someone would say, why do
I want to collect that?
What's the return on investmentI get for that?
Meaning I'm going to go spend Xamount of dollars.
I'm going to go pull this datain, figure out how to tokenize
it, how to match it to aparticipant, connect it to my
data source, supplement what I'mcollecting prospectively or from
(23:07):
other forms of RWE.
So when you get a question likethat from somebody who says,
what's the return?
So I spend this money, I'm goingto get X in return What's the
answer?
SPEAKER_01 (23:17):
To be direct, we're not...
We're not currently positioningit on an ROI from a cost benefit
standpoint quite yet.
I don't know if you've hadenough studies where we can
definitively say this is Xpercent more cost effective.
There are some areas wherethere's an absolute speed
advantage.
What I would say we're seeingthe most of is hybrid, where
(23:38):
some are more traditionalsite-based.
We're working with the sites.
We're doing the abstraction.
We're paying for that work.
We've got grants to get thatdone.
And then maybe we also have anarm or a leg or an opportunity
where some of that is done morevirtually some of that is
enriched with real-world data orit's done with some type of
record retrieval or abstraction.
And then we're allowing that tobe a more flexible design to
(23:59):
allow the partners and KOLs andsites of interest that may have
kind of accumulated in theearlier stages.
We're also using it as a way totest the technologies and tools
to see if it performs as well orbetter and the effort against
that.
And then it also offers a widerdesign.
Might even, in our experience,it's allowed us to enroll a
(24:19):
little bit of a wider net andnot be constrained in certain
geographies.
And we've got a lot of thoseprograms in flight right now,
but we're not using it as a costavoidance tactic.
We're using it as flexibility,feel it out, novel design, see
what performs the best.
And then we allow to move theballast point to either the
(24:40):
sites or the more virtualenvironments that are performing
better, working alongside thosesponsors.
So we've got a couple of thosein flight right now, but we're
not currently positioning it oncost offset, cost avoidance.
The return is actually, are wegetting high quality data?
Are we getting it reliably?
Is it offering flexibility forparticipation?
And then that allows us to kindof see kind of a trade off on
(25:02):
each of those sides of thestudy.
SPEAKER_00 (25:03):
Yeah, I would assume too, it's...
When you have your rates, you'regoing to get about 70% of this
data.
You have to quantify and figureout how to power your analysis
based on the actual amount ofdata you're really going to be
able to get in these models.
For me, it was always theexchange of not the cost-benefit
analysis, but knowing I needthis data point.
(25:23):
This is a source to get the datapoint.
If I pay for this source, I'mgoing to get 70% of it.
Is that better than if I paid adifferent way, like I brought
all these people or broughtthese consultants or did all
this work and spent more to get50%.
That was really the costanalysis.
SPEAKER_01 (25:39):
Absolutely.
You don't always know the rateof return in that variable or
that field.
So for me, I don't want to callit guesswork, but as these tools
mature, you don't always knowexactly the rate of return, the
times with which that field willbe populated, where access to
that particular record, etcetera.
I 100% agree with you as you'rethinking about powering and
(26:01):
those factors.
That's why right now we're doinga lot of hybrid designs.
SPEAKER_00 (26:06):
It's complex to tell you that it's not a one size
fits all.
And I totally agree because Ithink the point we're trying to
achieve here is what's theparticular fields of data I'm
looking for and where's the bestplace to get that for the
population I'm serving andsupporting in this research.
And sometimes that's oneprovider, sometimes that's
multiple providers, sometimesit's two sources that get
(26:28):
connected together and It'scomplex.
SPEAKER_01 (26:30):
We've done some feasibility bake-offs, right?
And to test this, we don't justwant to opine and say we think
they have it or we don't.
We've done feasibility andrecognize where it's performing
well and not.
And so that's why when I saidwe're at a moment in time, it's
super exciting that we'regetting access to these data and
we're bringing them together.
We've got very, very matureprivacy policies and things like
(26:50):
that.
But the reason why I said it'sgoing to be a decade is we are
still putting recommendationsout in market that have three
different designs.
One more traditional, one thatis highly virtual highly.
And then one that's just rightup the middle.
And right now, depending on theposture of the client, we're
getting a lot of right up themiddle where they want to have a
little bit of a guarantee ofsome of those more traditional
(27:12):
methods and approaches.
But they know that the market ishere for some more interesting
ways to do the real world dataenrichment or retrieval work.
And so we're giving them thepower of optionality.
And the great thing is we're alllearning from it.
I mean, I think we need to makesure we get to a situation where
we can kind of publish and showthat and and build a
constituency base for thesedesigns.
(27:32):
But it's early.
SPEAKER_00 (27:33):
Well, and when you think about this ability to see
different models on thespectrum, right, from
traditional to the mostinnovative, it is interesting
that you're seeing a lot moreadoption or thinking or progress
in the middle.
And typically, that's what yousee, right, when you're in
challenging markets, right, isyou're forced in challenging
market to find more costeffective and ways, but you're
(27:54):
also not willing to go all theway down the right of the
innovation spectrum, because youcan't mess up what you have in
front of you.
And so the balance is usually inthe middle.
You've been 24 plus years in theindustry.
You've seen so many ups anddowns that we've had as an
industry over the years.
And right now, the market ischallenged.
It's in one of those down andmoving up periods of time.
(28:16):
And so if you're talking tosomebody, some listener that we
have that's earlier in theircareer, what advice are you
giving to them to lead throughthese challenging markets and to
continue to stand out and getthe work done and help people
innovate, but protect the workthat they're doing so that they
can get past this period oftime.
SPEAKER_01 (28:36):
Going back to what you said, I really like what you
said, which is they want to beinnovative.
They want to try something.
They want to go for it.
They feel like there's a moment.
but they can't screw it up.
And so there's this kind ofcrazy dichotomy there.
But if you're selling right nowand you're navigating these
headwinds, one of the thingsthat I think is a little bit
different now than when I wasdirectly carrying a bag is the
(28:58):
number of alternativesavailable.
So right now you need to getincredibly specific about where
you play and where you can help.
You have to be incrediblysuccinct about getting them to
understand exactly the valueyou're bringing.
So no capability speak.
We're at a point now wherethere's a lot of fantastic
organizations in the market.
They do a lot of fantasticthings.
There's even more pointsolutions that are encroaching
(29:19):
on that traditional CRO model.
So you need to be aware of wherethey play.
You need to be aware of theircompetitive value props, and you
need to be definitive on whichone's yours, which, what do you
carry?
And so I feel like it forces youto, to kind of, instead of wide
and, you know, going everywhereand sending notes to everyone,
my thought is get small, getsmart, get focused and
(29:40):
understand that as the whitespace gets a little bit more
narrow, understand how to attackthat white space.
So it's a level ofsophistication that means it's
you, it's you understanding thesales intelligence, it's you
working with the SMEs internallyto figure out if you've got it
right, it's you looking aroundand making sure that you're
using your network wisely ofpeople that maybe already trust
you, where you've already builtup a little bit of that base
(30:01):
trust with that buyer is itemnumber one.
Item number two, that's theprecise targeting, positioning,
get small, know exactly whereyou've got a right to win, don't
position on capabilities, bevery explicit on the expected
value and outcome.
Like if we do this, I candemonstrate this.
And we call it kind ofevidence-based, you know,
(30:22):
evidence-based position,evidence-based selling.
Right now, a lot of our teamsaren't, are selling just with
case studies, telling stories.
Hey, we did this, we solvedthis, we found this, this would,
you know, and it's actually funbuilding those decks because of
course you kick it off and say,you know, here's how we grew up.
Here's kind of how we built thecompany.
Here's something incrediblyspecific for your population or
your product.
(30:42):
But let me tell you a storyabout some something we did for
this population, thismanufacturer at this time, at
this juncture And I hate to haveto speak so superficially
because it would be incrediblytailored to what was going on
right there.
But it's this storytelling thatdrives believability.
I've been in your shoes.
We can carry you out of this.
We've demonstrated competenciesthere.
(31:04):
I have proof that we've done it.
That establishes trust.
Can I show you a little bit moreabout how we've done that and
introduce you to the rest ofthis team?
And so you pull them closerthrough outcomes-based
positioning, evidence of priordelivery, but an incredibly more
focused focused, concise waybecause the market narrowed down
and there's a lot of you outthere.
SPEAKER_00 (31:24):
Take that same question though.
I do hear and I think for peoplewho are in commercial or in
business development or strategygroups, when you're in a
challenging market, one of thethings when you're sort of
growing in your career, thatadvice you gave I think is
really sage and really sound.
So thank you.
When you're a leader and you'retrying to lead through these
times and you're an executive,you've done this for many years
(31:45):
and through many markets, whatadvice would you give to
somebody who needs to coachtheir team to get through
challenging markets, right?
SPEAKER_01 (31:53):
That's an interesting twist.
It's almost like, how do youmake sure you're managing that
down structure, right?
I'll just be authentic.
Number one is as a leader, getin the game.
So for me, I'm on the field,right?
If you're a leader, that meansyou've got a network.
If you've got a leader, thatmeans you have an ability to
lift up their ability to workwith the subject matter leaders
inside your company in a moreeffective way.
If you're a leader, you're goingto be able to shape what I just
(32:16):
said, which is where are thosenarrow rights-to- that you have
in your accounts with yourmessage.
So number one, get in there withthem and take the best parts of
you and give it to them.
You'll generate respect upstructure because their leader
is in them in the trenches.
It'll be a lot of fun becauseit'll remind you of things that
you were doing when you weretrying to get there.
They need your help becauseyou're unlocking quarters of the
(32:40):
business that maybe they don'talways have access to because
they're not the boss.
And you give your network valueback to them and say, how can I
help?
And so being a coach and makingsure that they are powering
through mentally and as they seefatigue of you know meetings not
getting held or they have a lossthat they were convinced they
were going to have is make suretheir make sure their mindset is
(33:02):
dialed in and that you'recoaching them in a way to to
lead them through that toughtime and then they're going to
have a breakthrough they'regoing to have a win they're
going to remember that positivecoaching and your help alongside
them that'll build loyalty onthe team and I call it kind of
the locker room the whole lockerroom huddles together and get
stronger.
So for me, it's the ultimatetest of a leader because you're
(33:26):
in it.
You have a force multiplierbecause how you coach that team
down structure and amplifies itin market, when that works, it's
a binding force for the wholeteam.
It sets an example.
The other thing is you need tomake sure this concept of we're
all in sales, every organizationis a little bit different, but
there are some that you can feelit, that they're all in it
(33:48):
together They're all rowing.
They live and breathe and die bythe pipeline and the outcomes
and how they can help.
And there are some that say,how's the sales team doing?
Whichever model you're in, youhave an opportunity to make sure
you're on the side, which iseveryone contributes and you get
the power and the center ofgravity of the medics.
(34:09):
Sales ops is looking for newviews that they can put into
your hands.
Marketing is going on blast withtheir demand gen to the right
titles and buyer personas.
It's really when, frankly, as Ithink about your question, it's
where the company's culture cancoalesce, needs to coalesce.
And it's a moment where you canelevate yourself, elevate your
(34:34):
team and elevate, frankly, thewhole P&L.
So I think it's powerful whenmarkets do this.
It's the test of the locker roomand it's the test of leadership.
It's an awesome moment.
SPEAKER_00 (34:45):
The one I really want to call out is when you say
you get in the game, right?
When you're like, hey, let's go.
Give me this thing.
Let me get in here.
To lead by example.
That's what that means.
It's Being an example and sayinglike, hey, you got this, I got
this, let's go.
We've gone for quite some timetalking about these components,
and I appreciate it.
I know our listeners do.
Hearing about businessdevelopment as a job in clinical
(35:06):
research is not something Ithink we talk enough about, so I
think it's really helpful.
You have the word hustle in yourlast name.
I mean, how aligned were yourparents when they set you in
that?
I'm really glad you didn't gothe other direction.
SPEAKER_01 (35:22):
A hundred percent.
SPEAKER_00 (35:23):
So Brett, if someone wants to connect with you,
what's the best way to reachyou?
SPEAKER_01 (35:28):
Listen, I'm always on LinkedIn.
Love to connect that way.
Love to connect with anyone thathas any other follow-up
questions, ideas, or just hadsome fun with the conversation.
So grab me on LinkedIn.
I'm a serial connector.
SPEAKER_00 (35:38):
Brett, it's great to see you.
Thanks for spending time with ustoday.
Really appreciate it.
Awesome.
Thanks, John.
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