How to Be Chosen as a Sales Leader in Clinical Research w/ Brett Huselton

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. 

Thank you for joining Inclusion Criteria: a Clinical Research podcast hosted by me, John Reites. This is an inclusive, non-corporate podcast focused on the people and topics that matter to developing treatments for everyone. It’s my personal project intended to support you in your career, connect with industry experts and contribute to the ideas that advance clinical research.

Inclusion Criteria is the clinical research podcast exploring global clinical trials, drug development, and life‑science innovation. We cover everything clinical research to deepen your industry knowledge, further your career and help you stay current on the market responsible for the future of medicine.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

And I think a lot of people misjudge the complexity of being a seller and being an effective seller. It's hard. And there's an art to getting it right. There's an art to creating relationships. There's an art to standing out and being memorable such that in a sea of parody for a lot of different competitive offerings that are out there is having somebody choose yours, choose you.

SPEAKER_00: 0:35

Who is Brett and what do you do in clinical research?

SPEAKER_01: 0:38

troublemaker? Cause problems. I figured that nice, clean, simple answer, right? No, I fell into the sector kind of by accident. I was thinking it was going to be neuroscience and practice in medicine. And as I got further along in what I was studying, I liked the business side of medicine better than the practice of medicine. So when I graduated, I had focused kind of on the natural sciences and neuroscience and got a dual degree in cognitive psychology and wanted to really find a place for that in the market, in the business world. And, you know, kind of bumped into the CRO sector, fell in love with it, carried it mag forever loved it and understanding how the products were being brought to market and the labyrinth that they had to navigate to get that right and that was super rewarding for the nerdy part of me as well as just the people part of me and just meeting awesome people along the way so had some fun with that in sales led sales uh you know jumped around a little bit until i found my place where i am right now where it's putting that to work in a little bit of a different way so my responsibility is strategy partnership and innovation so i'm functionally responsible for kind of understanding what's going on in the market. What are the clients that we support navigating to get a product approved, build evidence generation strategies, advantage it in market once it's there and make sure people can get their hands on that therapy. And so understanding all of that and bringing it back to my company is figure out what part of us do we need to show them to help advantage them and get that done. There's times that's all inside our shop. There's times that we need to partner that out and I need to figure out who to I need to work with that has an awesome solution that's maybe outside of what we do, but it's part of that comprehensive wrap that we think is the right way to get that done. And then own those relationships and bring those in those to market. The innovation side is kind of the most fun, kind of the most crazy right now with all the AI going on, which is placing bets on what does this look like a decade from now? So just scanning the market, bringing ideas in, giving it to the leadership team, socializing those with clients and seeing who gets excited about those and building them.

SPEAKER_00: 2:38

let's take the carrying a bag statement in quotes and let's move that over because I want to come back to that. But you spent more than 24 years in CROs and that's like 34 in clinical research years. Brett, what is it about being in a CRO that motivates you and keeps you being bright eyed as you have been since I've known you to come into work every day? What is it that motivates you like that?

SPEAKER_01: 3:06

So there's, You know, we've got a little bit here on the side of the gray dog ears, I guess. It's interesting. A lot of people will ask, why do you stay on the services provider side? There's not a right side or a wrong side. The part that I find most exciting, I feel like I have a front row seat, an IMAX theater seat, and new products come to market. I happen to have chosen a sector that's usually unmet need, breakthrough status, orphan populations. They are the coolest things coming. forward. And so for me, being on the front lines of when I said we have to solve things to get them to market, they're hard solves. And they're very commonly products or populations that are underserved, understudied. There might not be a precedent out there. There's no course. There's no Sherpa to help you up the mountain, right? And so being in part of the companies or helping the companies figure out how to climb that mountain, A, it's rewarding and challenging. When you win, It's amazing. It's just, I don't even know how to explain it. It's amazing. And then the variability of one day it's a oncology therapy, the other day it's neurodegenerative. And so the range of all the different things you see and have to solve for me, I don't know if there'd be another sector that had that much energy breakthrough. and satisfaction when you get it done and you get it right. So it's super rewarding for me and super challenging at the same time.

SPEAKER_00: 4:35

One of my pharma friends a couple weeks ago was in this conversation and she mentioned that she's been in pharma her whole career. And she said one of the things I thought was really intriguing and interesting about CROs is that I've been in pharma for X amount of years. It was a lot. And she said, I've only ever worked on products that failed. And I never really got a chance to see a product finish its trials, win, and then go to market. I never got to follow that. And when you think about the lifestyle and what you get to see on CROs, like you said, you've got variability, you've got different programs, maybe different therapeutic areas, different disease states. Probably like you, I've had the chance to work on some programs for products that are in the market, especially one I got to be on that my child was taking, which was really

SPEAKER_01: 5:19

cool.

SPEAKER_00: 5:20

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 I was like, yeah, like that's where it hit home. But also I've been on failed programs and got to see teams that had put six years of their lives into something to get to a point where it just didn't, it couldn't get where it needed to go. And so I think that's super rewarding and a big benefit of CROs is that open aperture and this ability to work on different products.

SPEAKER_01: 5:44

My conviction is that let's say they move that product forward, they get all the way to phase 2B, they've got a dose, they think it's going to work and it fails. We've got such awesome people in the sector that there's components of that journey of that path with that drug. It's mechanism of action, something they learn that they reapply, repoint. So for me, I don't think you ever go back to zero.

SPEAKER_00: 6:03

What's the next thing you want to do? Like, is there anything else that Brett says, I really would like to accomplish this, or I wanna work on this, or there's this thing in my career that I actually wanna do next. I'm just curious.

SPEAKER_01: 6:16

So let me go to the sector on the therapeutic side for a minute. You mentioned working on a therapy that was personal to you and your family, me as well. And whether it's because of my background or as people are living longer and some of the issues that are associated with aging set in, for me, it's a deeply personal issue to work in neurodegenerative disorders. Cognitive decline, motor movement and issues that get in the way of cognition and memory. Alzheimer's is very personal to me. And I hope that our market continues to forge ahead with some of these areas of huge unmet need where some major groups have placed bets and not pulled it over the finish line. So one idea would be truly having advanced breakthroughs in neurodegenerative Alzheimer's and Parkinson's are on my mind a lot. On the kind of the functional and the career side, we're at an awesome moment. I'm actually excited that I've been able to do what I've been able to do from being young bag carrier to where I am now, trying to think about strategy and leading companies through that with the availability of some of the real world data sources, the ability for them to answer different questions in different ways, our maturity or increased maturity in connecting those. Some are super wide, not as deep, and then some are deep, not as wide. So then thinking through the applications and use cases of those advances in privacy and interoperability and add to that how you can analyze and act on that through some of the more advanced machine learning and AI. We're at a moment where the tech and infrastructure is there. Now it's the application of that, that I think, and when I say moment in time, I actually mean this decade, it's not like this year, next year, it's kind of like in the next 10 years, that's where I see a lot of the action. And so being a part of this next wave of modernized study designs and how we're still gonna answer critical questions in research, we're just gonna answer them differently. We're at a pretty awesome, moment for that. So that'll be rewarding for writing that, watching that, guiding that, and helping be a part of the DNA of new study designs in the next few years.

SPEAKER_00: 8:21

We talked about when you say the terms carrying a bag, we mean business development, meaning you have to go sell things so that you can get commission to make money to feed your family. Brett, you've been in an account role in a business development almost your whole career, and where a lot of people will kind of move into it or move out of it. You've been there for a long time and you started as an account exec. As you think about how many of the steps you've had to climb in that ladder in business development, from the entry-level jobs all the way to where you are now in the most senior of executives in these roles, for someone who wants to do that with their career, what do you tell them? How does somebody have the wherewithal, the grit, and the focus to really walk through and take all those steps if they want to be successful long-term in a commercial or I'll

SPEAKER_01: 9:08

get to an answer, but now I'm distracted by when I got my first job. You talk about embarrassing yourself. I showed up with a binder, a three-ring binder of examples of my work. And then I even had a DVD of documents they could download to kind of show artifacts of what I could do and how I could present and things like that. Of course you did. It's exhausting when I think about it. Of course you did. And nowadays, I'm not even sure people carry bags. They probably show up with a QR code. But kidding aside, and I think a lot of people do, A lot of people misjudge the complexity of being a seller and being an effective seller. It's hard. And there's an art to getting it right. There's an art to creating relationships. There's an art to standing out and being memorable such that, you know, in a sea of parody for a lot of different competitive offerings that are out there is having somebody choose yours, choose you and work with you. You got to put in the work. Nowadays, there's a lot of different sales enablement tools, a lot of different people helping you, a lot of different demand gen and marketing in sales ops, but you have to own it yourself. The amount of work you put in to understand your market, your buyer, and I mean by role, by title, what are they responsible for? What are they trying to get done? What's in their way? Understanding and doing the homework on what their next moves need to be and getting out in front of that to research it and truly understand it so that when you make your outreach, it's sophisticated, it's well-placed and well-timed based on where that buyer most likely is in their search, depending on where the product is, what phase of development, even maybe what therapeutic area of development. Being savvy and understanding what they need to solve would be step number one. And maximizing the tools available to you or pushing your organization to offer those to you to be educated on your outreach. But don't let that get in the way of something that's even more important, which is building that rapport, building trust, and understanding the buyer through a sophisticated kind of, you know, be inquisitive, be curious, build the relationship, not just through capability speak, but truly asking questions to understand if you got your assumption of where they are correct. And so I feel like I learned later in my career than I had hoped. I spent so much time trying to be the smartest person about all these moving parts that I didn't spend as much time understanding the relational side of my buyer and building the rapport with them. Because you can know everything on a fact sheet. But if you don't spend the time to get alongside them, they'll tell you what they need. They'll tell you when and where and why they're making moves. So having a really strong balance by being super sophisticated and knowing what to look for, knowing what to research and understanding what you believe their pain points are, and then having a very balanced approach to understanding that person themselves, their organization and where they are, and then understanding how to write notes and sync that together will make you stand out, right? And then you've established trust because you've offered a credible position, a credible understanding of their needs. You've taken time to be a phenomenal listener, and then you've connected those dots in a way that stands out. So it's hard work to get that right, but it's time well spent. And ultimately, you establish a sense 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 me how AI is going to replace every business developer. It's replaced SDR. It's replaced CRM. It's replaced basically everything in the sales process, right? You read those articles, right? They're the ones that you just can't avoid them. And so as somebody who's been doing it your whole career, but also has this advantage where you're in innovation, you're in product, you're in strategy, you work with actual companies doing actual AI use cases What do you think the mix is going to be between the new business developer armed with AI supported tools? What does that look like to you? And again, not in the far future. I think that's really hard to predict right now. I don't think we should do that. I don't think that's helpful. But if you think about somebody who's newer in the market or trying to pivot their career into business development, how should they be thinking about AI and how it advantages or disadvantages them in their career 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 and fact finding and collecting as much information as you can, it can help offer a lot of scale. So you can, as it relates to the homework and learning and positioning, another thing I've seen reps do is it gets ready for an event or they've downloaded an attendee list for something is they take a look and they capture information from the account, the product of interest that they're seeking, maybe a little bit of a background or that person and attributes of what their company's product position solution is and they say, find synergies between these. What do you believe is an effective way to position it? That's fine. But that's just more aggregating, collecting, and maybe connecting some things that's very different than application. For me, I think there's, at least right now, a separation from finding the information, bringing it together, giving you ideas of a place to jump off onto a conversation. I'm not currently using it as a way that I bake it into a core deliverable, but I do use it as a way to better understand what might be meaningful connections and correlations between what they're doing, we're doing, and logical fit, but it allows me to focus more time on building the relationship with that person, that buyer, in a way that the AI can't help you at this moment. Obviously, they're reasoning the advantages of the LLMs on allowing you to go much wider than you might be able to go on your own. They lack in the ability to apply it to your individual selling use case. So for me, I think it's great for scale. Maybe it advantages the number of conversations that you can prepare for per week, but I think it's still not going to encroach or help you with the relationship side of it, which is where the art of being a seller is most meaningful and most differentiated. I'm sure there'll probably be a blurring of the lines where someone's gonna set it and forget it and it's gonna create messages for them and roll out throughout the day. And there is some lead gen automation that is taking advantage of some of those things now, but those messages aren't as deep, they aren't as rich, they aren't as specific. They're more driving indirect awareness as opposed to a really sophisticated engagement that at a moment now where there's so many choices for these buyers, it's going to get lost. 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 to get somebody interested so that you can match them with experts or a demo, and using tools to write these. I don't know about you all, but My LinkedIn and my LinkedIn messages is like grown tenfold in the past few months. And it's not because I'm cooler or more popular. It's because people are using these Legion tools. And then trust me, I've tried them and used them. And if I'm somebody trying to be in BD, I'm trying to think about a commercial path. I am starting to use these tools and I am bringing them to my draft board all day, every day. And then I am making them me and making them personal. But I agree with you, Brett. For me, all the deep research is it's interesting. People talk about writing messages. The deep research of understanding a client, their challenges, their pipeline, what they're trying to do. Think about all the tools and subscriptions and all the things we've paid for over the years that I can... get that and get it with referenceable data is pretty impactful. And so I do think that the ability for people who want to be in BD or BD now trying to differentiate, it's still going to be about contrasting the market, not differentiating. And the way to contrast is to use the tools to be more you and to be more you at scale. And for me, I think that's going to be, I don't know, I think it's going to be really important for the future generation of salespeople to continue 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 to make sure I'm being as wide and thoughtful or maybe I missed something and there's some value there. But people have a brand. They have a way they speak. You do, I do, and they carry it with them and it carries with them through their career. And there's an authenticity about that that it's hard to describe, but it's what makes you, your emails, your call to action, the way you make and take 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'd like to stay me uh and i hope i think this is going to work so it's a it's a powerful tool i think we still need to be us uh and i think the clients know that and there's an authenticity i think that prevails

SPEAKER_00: 17:58

yeah plus i'm still a little bit annoyed that everybody gives the m dash you know like wide dash they give credit to open ai and chat gpt for that that's like my go-to move is the m dash someone said that's a clear indicator of ai and i was like no it's not it's a clear indicator of how i right? Because I don't know where to put a period sometimes. And shifting gears, talking about real-world evidence, there's a key difference between real-world data and real-world evidence. They're fundamentally different terms. They have fundamental different use cases. So when you focus on real-world evidence, right, and you really take an RWE approach, can you tell 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 risk of a medical product that is acting on or informed by the analysis of RWD. So RWD is going to be a substrate of RWE. And so for me, when I think of it, RWE is a bigger umbrella. RWD is a component of something that feeds that. It can be serviced from so many different variety of sources and secondary data, claims data, EHR is just one leg of a complex stool of a story that you need to tell about the risk benefit of a product, the clinical benefit of the product, the outcomes that are achieved over long-term follow-up of a product. So for me, the RWE E is the larger game, the larger story. The RWD is a component and a piece of it underneath it. I think that's why the market is talking about its application, its use. Where's it most well-placed? How is it most well-leveraged? But for me, it's a clear distinction.

SPEAKER_00: 19:27

When you think about RWE in general, I think people sort of assume it's all post-approval, right? It's all sort of phase three, B4 clinical trials. Do you see RWE use moving downstream to phase one, B2, and three? How should people think about RWE as a use case. With your definition, This is a lot of different data that's being captured across clinical trial protocol phases, right?

SPEAKER_01: 19:49

100%. In fact, one of the more fun opportunities you and I had was early moves trying to do some of this in the Duchenne, the DMD space, the Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy space. So you were out early in thinking about where are all the other places that evidence can be collected, right? So for me, we're seeing a wide range of designs. Yes, it's absolutely easily applied in post-approval, but in some of the designs that we're working on right now, it being leveraged for a more precise understanding of the population of interest for the design of a phase 2B or a 3A program, absolutely, make it more efficient, right site, using it as a targeting asset to better understand the cohort and the protocol design on the front end and refining that. It could be a speed play, not necessarily a cost offset play. The other place we're seeing it, obviously, depending on the schedule of assessments and what's being captured is, again, working backwards from the entirety story that you want to tell. We kind of call it parallel evidence development. I don't really talk about phases much anymore. We know there's a lot of different stakeholders. They're counting on a story at the time of launch. Your regulator is going to be focused on safety and the clinical... the safety of and the clinical benefit of. If you show up to market and you are void of some long-term follow-up data, long-term data of exposure, you're going to have nothing on outcomes and you're going to try to differentiate and you're going to feel bad that you didn't pick that up early enough. They're going to say, how does this compare to others? And if you haven't made a decision to leverage RWE in the form of maybe some natural history assessment, there's such a utility of how it can inform all the different stakeholders that you know have have an interest in a certain component of that evidence. So this idea of parallel evidence, you're responsible for it. It can either come from interventional, observational, pragmatic. It can come from secondary data claims. It can come from EHRs and other genomic data. It can come from some of the things you know for PROs and clinical outcomes assessments that are captured in a more decentralized way. So the battleground now, after you understand exactly the 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 data model? How can I make sense of it? And it's coming right back to some of those classic disciplines of your clinical teams and your epidemiologists understanding how to put that data to work. What's powerful right now is because of data proliferation and all the different types of data that's available, it's awesome that it's out there, but it becomes incredibly important to understand which of the data sources are fit for purpose. So it adds value, but it also adds complexity to getting those decisions right and placing the right bets on what to acquire, what to license, getting your privacy certifications that allow that to happen, making sure that all the different data sources that are coming in are organized in a way that you can act on them inside your analytics environment. It's beautiful, but it's also complicated.

SPEAKER_00: 22:46

When it comes to EHR, EMR data source, secondary data sources, everything in that group, someone would say, why do I want to collect that? What's the return on investment I get for that? Meaning I'm going to go spend X amount of dollars. I'm going to go pull this data in, figure out how to tokenize it, how to match it to a participant, connect it to my data source, supplement what I'm collecting prospectively or from other forms of RWE. So when you get a question like that from somebody who says, what's the return? So I spend this money, I'm going to get X in return What's the answer?

SPEAKER_01: 23:17

To be direct, we're not... We're not currently positioning it on an ROI from a cost benefit standpoint quite yet. I don't know if you've had enough studies where we can definitively say this is X percent more cost effective. There are some areas where there's an absolute speed advantage. What I would say we're seeing the most of is hybrid, where some are more traditional site-based. We're working with the sites. We're doing the abstraction. We're paying for that work. We've got grants to get that done. And then maybe we also have an arm or a leg or an opportunity where some of that is done more virtually some of that is enriched with real-world data or it's done with some type of record retrieval or abstraction. And then we're allowing that to be a more flexible design to allow the partners and KOLs and sites of interest that may have kind of accumulated in the earlier stages. We're also using it as a way to test the technologies and tools to see if it performs as well or better and the effort against that. And then it also offers a wider design. Might even, in our experience, it's allowed us to enroll a little bit of a wider net and not be constrained in certain geographies. And we've got a lot of those programs in flight right now, but we're not using it as a cost avoidance tactic. We're using it as flexibility, feel it out, novel design, see what performs the best. And then we allow to move the ballast point to either the sites or the more virtual environments that are performing better, working alongside those sponsors. So we've got a couple of those in flight right now, but we're not currently positioning it on cost offset, cost avoidance. The return is actually, are we getting high quality data? Are we getting it reliably? Is it offering flexibility for participation? And then that allows us to kind of see kind of a trade off on each of those sides of the study.

SPEAKER_00: 25:03

Yeah, I would assume too, it's... When you have your rates, you're going to get about 70% of this data. You have to quantify and figure out how to power your analysis based on the actual amount of data you're really going to be able to get in these models. For me, it was always the exchange of not the cost-benefit analysis, but knowing I need this data point. This is a source to get the data point. If I pay for this source, I'm going to get 70% of it. Is that better than if I paid a different way, like I brought all these people or brought these consultants or did all this work and spent more to get 50%. That was really the cost analysis.

SPEAKER_01: 25:39

Absolutely. You don't always know the rate of return in that variable or that field. So for me, I don't want to call it guesswork, but as these tools mature, you don't always know exactly the rate of return, the times with which that field will be populated, where access to that particular record, et cetera. I 100% agree with you as you're thinking about powering and those factors. That's why right now we're doing a 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 I think the point we're trying to achieve here is what's the particular fields of data I'm looking for and where's the best place to get that for the population I'm serving and supporting in this research. And sometimes that's one provider, sometimes that's multiple providers, sometimes it's two sources that get connected together and It's complex.

SPEAKER_01: 26:30

We've done some feasibility bake-offs, right? And to test this, we don't just want to opine and say we think they have it or we don't. We've done feasibility and recognize where it's performing well and not. And so that's why when I said we're at a moment in time, it's super exciting that we're getting access to these data and we're bringing them together. We've got very, very mature privacy policies and things like that. But the reason why I said it's going to be a decade is we are still putting recommendations out in market that have three different designs. One more traditional, one that is highly virtual highly. And then one that's just right up the middle. And right now, depending on the posture of the client, we're getting a lot of right up the middle where they want to have a little bit of a guarantee of some of those more traditional methods and approaches. But they know that the market is here for some more interesting ways to do the real world data enrichment or retrieval work. And so we're giving them the power of optionality. And the great thing is we're all learning from it. I mean, I think we need to make sure we get to a situation where we can kind of publish and show that and and build a constituency base for these designs. But it's early.

SPEAKER_00: 27:33

Well, and when you think about this ability to see different models on the spectrum, right, from traditional to the most innovative, it is interesting that you're seeing a lot more adoption or thinking or progress in the middle. And typically, that's what you see, right, when you're in challenging markets, right, is you're forced in challenging market to find more cost effective and ways, but you're also not willing to go all the way down the right of the innovation spectrum, because you can't mess up what you have in front of you. And so the balance is usually in the middle. You've been 24 plus years in the industry. You've seen so many ups and downs that we've had as an industry over the years. And right now, the market is challenged. It's in one of those down and moving up periods of time. And so if you're talking to somebody, some listener that we have that's earlier in their career, what advice are you giving to them to lead through these challenging markets and to continue to stand out and get the work done and help people innovate, but protect the work that they're doing so that they can get past this period of time.

SPEAKER_01: 28:36

Going back to what you said, I really like what you said, which is they want to be innovative. 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 of crazy dichotomy there. But if you're selling right now and you're navigating these headwinds, one of the things that I think is a little bit different now than when I was directly carrying a bag is the number of alternatives available. So right now you need to get incredibly specific about where you play and where you can help. You have to be incredibly succinct about getting them to understand exactly the value you're bringing. So no capability speak. We're at a point now where there's a lot of fantastic organizations in the market. They do a lot of fantastic things. There's even more point solutions that are encroaching on that traditional CRO model. So you need to be aware of where they play. You need to be aware of their competitive value props, and you need to be definitive on which one's yours, which, what do you carry? And so I feel like it forces you to, to kind of, instead of wide and, you know, going everywhere and sending notes to everyone, my thought is get small, get smart, get focused and understand that as the white space gets a little bit more narrow, understand how to attack that white space. So it's a level of sophistication that means it's you, it's you understanding the sales intelligence, it's you working with the SMEs internally to figure out if you've got it right, it's you looking around and making sure that you're using your network wisely of people that maybe already trust you, where you've already built up a little bit of that base trust with that buyer is item number one. Item number two, that's the precise targeting, positioning, get small, know exactly where you've got a right to win, don't position on capabilities, be very explicit on the expected value and outcome. Like if we do this, I can demonstrate this. And we call it kind of evidence-based, you know, evidence-based position, evidence-based selling. Right now, a lot of our teams aren't, are selling just with case studies, telling stories. Hey, we did this, we solved this, we found this, this would, you know, and it's actually fun building 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 the company. Here's something incredibly specific for your population or your product. But let me tell you a story about some something we did for this population, this manufacturer at this time, at this juncture And I hate to have to speak so superficially because it would be incredibly tailored to what was going on right there. But it's this storytelling that drives believability. I've been in your shoes. We can carry you out of this. We've demonstrated competencies there. I have proof that we've done it. That establishes trust. Can I show you a little bit more about how we've done that and introduce you to the rest of this team? And so you pull them closer through outcomes-based positioning, evidence of prior delivery, but an incredibly more focused focused, concise way because the market narrowed down and there's a lot of you out there.

SPEAKER_00: 31:24

Take that same question though. I do hear and I think for people who are in commercial or in business development or strategy groups, when you're in a challenging market, one of the things when you're sort of growing in your career, that advice you gave I think is really sage and really sound. So thank you. When you're a leader and you're trying to lead through these times and you're an executive, you've done this for many years and through many markets, what advice would you give to somebody who needs to coach their team to get through challenging markets, right?

SPEAKER_01: 31:53

That's an interesting twist. It's almost like, how do you make sure you're managing that down structure, right? I'll just be authentic. Number one is as a leader, get in the game. So for me, I'm on the field, right? If you're a leader, that means you've got a network. If you've got a leader, that means you have an ability to lift up their ability to work with the subject matter leaders inside your company in a more effective way. If you're a leader, you're going to be able to shape what I just said, which is where are those narrow rights-to- that you have in your accounts with your message. So number one, get in there with them and take the best parts of you and give it to them. You'll generate respect up structure because their leader is in them in the trenches. It'll be a lot of fun because it'll remind you of things that you were doing when you were trying to get there. They need your help because you're unlocking quarters of the business that maybe they don't always have access to because they're not the boss. And you give your network value back to them and say, how can I help? And so being a coach and making sure that they are powering through mentally and as they see fatigue of you know meetings not getting held or they have a loss that they were convinced they were going to have is make sure their make sure their mindset is dialed in and that you're coaching them in a way to to lead them through that tough time and then they're going to have a breakthrough they're going to have a win they're going to remember that positive coaching and your help alongside them that'll build loyalty on the team and I call it kind of the locker room the whole locker room huddles together and get stronger. So for me, it's the ultimate test of a leader because you're in it. You have a force multiplier because how you coach that team down structure and amplifies it in market, when that works, it's a binding force for the whole team. It sets an example. The other thing is you need to make sure this concept of we're all in sales, every organization is a little bit different, but there are some that you can feel it, that they're all in it together They're all rowing. They live and breathe and die by the 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, you have an opportunity to make sure you're on the side, which is everyone contributes and you get the power and the center of gravity of the medics. Sales ops is looking for new views that they can put into your hands. Marketing is going on blast with their demand gen to the right titles and buyer personas. It's really when, frankly, as I think about your question, it's where the company's culture can coalesce, needs to coalesce. And it's a moment where you can elevate yourself, elevate your team and elevate, frankly, the whole P&L. So I think it's powerful when markets do this. It's the test of the locker room and 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 saying like, hey, you got this, I got this, let's go. We've gone for quite some time talking about these components, and I appreciate it. I know our listeners do. Hearing about business development as a job in clinical research is not something I think we talk enough about, so I think it's really helpful. You have the word hustle in your last name. I mean, how aligned were your parents when they set you in that? I'm really glad you didn't go the 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 reach you?

SPEAKER_01: 35:28

Listen, I'm always on LinkedIn. Love to connect that way. Love to connect with anyone that has any other follow-up questions, ideas, or just had some 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 us today. Really appreciate it. Awesome. Thanks, John.