A couple of things have me thinking about differentiation this week. First, there is the survey presented by the eClinical Forum about clinical sites’ satisfaction with EDC technology and the many articles spawned from this research and other ad hoc sources. Then there are some recent thoughts I’ve read from Jaynie Smith on building competitive advantage (see her book “Creating Competitive Advantage”).
When I was at an eClinical technology company during their rapid growth stage, we spent a lot of time in the sales and marketing departments focusing on differentiation. We started out talking about the fact that we were the only eClinical technology that had integrated EDC (electronic data capture) with eDiaries (for patient reported outcomes) and IVR (interactive voice response) technology to provide a complete set of patient clinical data. When this competitive advantage began to fade, as all competitive advantages eventually do, we had to focus on something different, so we did market research and discovered that ease of use was a competitive advantage. We coined the tagline, “Making eClinical Easy.”
But creating a tagline is the easy part, creating true competitive advantage is how great companies are built. For us, ease of use meant more than just having technology that was easy, it meant that every interaction the customer had with us needed to be easy. From contracts to support to implementation. We did this specifically because our research had told us the importance of the clinical site in the value chain between the sponsor (drug company), the CRO (contract research organization), and all the other outsourced vendors. Our theory was that if the clinical site was happy, the sponsor would be happy.
Once we had identified that competitive advantage, we started to look at every process in our organization to identify how we could make things smoother for our clients, but specifically for the clinical site.
I thought of this experience in light of the recent articles on clinical sites having trouble with EDC technology. This a full five years after we had identified it as a competitive advantage. I wondered if no one else had identified it as a competitive advantage, or if it is just too hard to focus a company around creating true differentiation.
In my experience, there are few companies that do a really good job of creating differentiation. This is perhaps more true among CROs than in just about any other industry segment I’ve consulted with over the years. Look at the marketing material from ten mid-tier CROs and you’ll see the exact same words used over and over again. And while it is perhaps worse in this segment of the life sciences, it is true of almost every industry I’ve consulted in. Executives, by and large, don’t understand the link between marketing messages, brand, positioning, and actions. And they really don’t understand just how important this differentiation is to closing sales. A salesperson that can clearly articulate his company’s differentiation is twenty times more effective than a salesperson that doesn’t have differentiation (or can’t articulate it).
One CRO/technology company that has done this better than most is Clinipace. I’ve had several discussions with their CEO about differentiation and while I didn’t always like their emphasis on price as a differentiator, what they figured out was that the clients who fit their ideal customer profile actually prefer transparency in pricing. So they used that effectively and are now figuring out other ways to differentiate. Must be working because they were recently named to a list of companies to watch in our region.
I came across another life sciences company recently that has a ton of potential. They’ve also been named one of the up and coming companies in our region. And yet, they haven’t spent time working on how to clearly articulate their competitive advantages. Their technology is excellent, but it is a relatively new approach. That means they have to educate the market to a degree, because prospects aren’t used to solving the problems they have with this type of technology. In that type of a go-to-market scenario, it is exceedingly important that the company can clearly articulate its advantages over the status quo. Yet, as I looked through their marketing material, I found five different tag lines in use below their logo. If they don’t know who they are or what their competitive advantage is, how will their prospects?
Companies that have a clear competitive advantage and can articulate that effectively through their marketing and sales, tend to rise to the top in market share. Interestingly, the competitive advantage doesn’t have to be one thing, it can be several things.
A few years ago, I was working with a company in the education space that brought teachers from around the world to lead K-12 classrooms. We weren’t the only company that brought in teachers from other countries. In fact, there were other companies that had more teachers for critical shortage classrooms like math and science. We had some of those math and science teachers, but we also brought in teachers in less needed subject areas like English, Social Studies, History and Art. In the last year I worked with them, we had over 1700 teachers in the US, more than three times our nearest competitor.
The reason for our competitive advantage wasn’t just that we were highly selective and only brought in less than 5% of the teachers that applied to our program. Yes, quality of the teachers mattered, but it was only one of our competitive advantages. You see, we also made sure that we had a complete turnkey service. We actually trained the teachers how to drive in the U.S. We leased them cars. We provided them with health insurance. We taught them how to handle the discipline and administrative functions that are unique to U.S. school systems. It was this combination of services that provided us with the competitive advantage that led us to be market leaders. We made it simple for school districts to hire our teachers.
Competitive advantage is an area that too many companies ignore at their own peril. As we always say in marketing, if you don’t define who you are, your competitors will do it for you. For those of you who think you don’t have any competition, you aren’t looking hard enough. Building competitive advantage is a trait that executives should ingrain in their teams, not just in the sales and marketing areas, but in the entire company.