How Bruker Biospin uses Monocl ExpertInsight

Absolutely nothing beats picking up the phone or dialing into a video conference with a customer to hear how they use your product, get their frank assessment and learn which features they like and which ones they are missing.

We heeded our own advice and caught up with Ángel Noguera Cámara, Head of Global Relationship Marketing at Bruker Biospin Group and Scott Ireland, Sales Manager for Latin America and Canada at Bruker Biospin, Preclinical Imaging Division, to discuss how they used Monocl ExpertInsight initially, how their use of the product has evolved over time and what their main areas of application are.

Here we share the most interesting and relevant points from this discussion. 

 

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Monocl ExpertInsight use cases

 

Bruker initially accessed Monocl ExpertInsight exclusively for market research, they specifically used the database of several million scientists, researchers, experts and healthcare professionals to identify academic key opinion leaders in their target market segments.

Bruker quickly began to expand their use of Monocl ExpertInsight beyond this initial application and gave more users access to the information through the Monocl Connect Salesforce application. Now, Monocl is routinely used for the following use cases:

• Targeted outreach to leads

Bruker has a very large product offering that can be confusing to potential customers. Often early leads that interact with the website or visited a conference booth have no clear idea which of the many Bruker products would be most suited for them. Likewise, the team at Bruker cannot suggest the most appropriate solution without first getting additional information about the lead’s work, techniques and interests. In the past this information deficit kicked-off a lengthy fact-finding mission that started with a generic “Thank-you-for-your-interest” email and involved several rounds of back and forth information exchange.

With Monocl, this process can be streamlined: the Monocl database provides a comprehensive profile as well as a picture of the lead’s most recent activities, e.g. relevant publications. Based on that knowledge Scott can now send the lead a highly targeted message including a reference to, e.g. a recent paper and suggest an appropriate Bruker solution.

“Every person I send such a targeted email instead of a generic ‘thanks for stopping by’ mail, I get a response from.” 

Scott Ireland 

This approach of finding out what the customer is doing, understanding their needs and pain points and then suggesting a solution works well for Bruker’s complex products and the resulting complex customer journey of their mostly academic customers.

Showing this level of knowledge also overcomes the credibility hurdle that sales team members often face: referencing a scientific publication and suggesting a targeted solution shows the scientists that they are interacting with a highly knowledgeable counterpart they can have meaningful discussions with.

• Leverage networks and grant information

Academic research as a whole is very large, however, a lot of small subgroups and - specialties exist that are highly networked. In these specialty domains, everybody knows everybody else – a characteristic that can be leveraged when networking into these tightly-knit groups.

When approaching leads in such subgroups, the sales team at Bruker now uses the Collaborator feature in Monocl ExpertInsight to uncover close working relationships. Almost always they find an existing Bruker customer that is closely associated with the lead and can be used as a reference. This approach can open doors that otherwise would have been difficult to open.

For background Scott uses information about recent grants a lead has received. This further informs this approach and provides valuable input on the type - and cost - of the solution he proposes to the lead.

• Speed up the discovery phase

Following up with website or conference leads can be very time consuming: several rounds of back and forth emails are required to establish the lead’s interests and needs, the focus of their work and the applications they need a solution for. The information contained in Monocl ExpertInsight can short-cut this process and save time: it enables sales professionals to do their own research about the lead before engaging them, cutting out three or four rounds of email exchanges. This approach shortens the conversation needed to find out whether or not a lead is a viable candidate and therefore, ultimately, shortens the sales cycle.

“Monocl definitely speeds up discovery phase. You can get to the point more quickly.” 

Ángel Noguera Cámara

• Generate your own leads

Meetings, conferences and trade shows used to be a reliable source of leads. In the current virtual environment this lead source hasn’t dried up completely – virtual conferences do result in some leads - but has reduced to a trickle. To make up for this shortfall Scott is using Monocl ExpertInsight to generate his own leads.

He gives the following example: Bruker published a paper on COVID-19 which is highly relevant for researchers in the field of pulmonary obstruction. Using Monocl ExpertInsight he identified 600 relevant researchers in Canada and send them a targeted email about this publication. Carefully customizing the email to this specific target group paid off with above average email open and click-through rates.

“I am now generating my own leads instead of waiting for somebody else to hand them to me.” 

Scott Ireland

• Find all users, not just owners

Over the last five years two of Bruker’s competitors went out of business. The instruments they sold are now approaching obsolescence and will need to be replaced. While Bruker knows who bought a large percentage of these instruments they did not know all the users who utilize these instruments, e.g. in a core lab. However, searching Monocl ExpertInsight with the instrumentation name/model returns all users who mention that instrument in the Materials and Methods sections of a publication thus allowing them to compile a comprehensive list of users who might be leads for a replacement system.

“This is an important point when selling complex systems, they are not just used by one person but by several and finding those other users is very helpful.” 

Ángel Noguera Cámara

Starting with a small number of licenses Bruker Biospin has now enabled all members of their academic sales team by adopting Monocl Connect. This application allows team members to add Monocl profile information directly to their leads or customers in Salesforce giving them all the information they need in one platform.

For Scott, this is a welcome relief: before everybody had access to Monocl Connect, he effectively became the go-to person for his colleagues who frequently asked him to “quickly run a Monocl report” for them. Now, everybody can access the information themselves. “That’s nice” he quips “I really didn’t want to be everybody’s data assistant.”

If you would like to explore how Monocl ExpertInsight and Monocl Connect can support your market research and lead generation as well as help you shorten the customer journey by actively engaging your leads and prospects with information tailored to their needs, please schedule some time with one of our experts.