Yesterday at 4:00 PM I accepted, on behalf of the entire Prolifiq team, the Audience Choice award from Venture NW. This award recognizes Prolifiq for the success of our business and for our presentation.

While I am the public face of the company and was the person chosen to present, and subsequently accept the award, this award belongs to ALL of Prolifiq – our employees, our directors and our shareholders. Without the commitment of the team, the leadership of the Board and the faith of our shareholders – we would never have come this far.

So, I thank each and every one of you for your commitment to our mission and for all of your hard work. You have earned this award – enjoy!

Thursday this week, I present at Venture NW and I get to tell Prolifiq’s story in 10 minutes or less (see: Put Me in Coach). Our message, of course, will be heavily weighted to our Life Sciences initiative.

One of the messages I will deliver to this institutional investor conference is the wealth destroying effects of an FDA complaint letter. On average, a Life Sciences company that receives an FDA complaint letter for fraudulent marketing practices suffers a 1% decline in market capitalization. This translates to a median drop of $86 million. (See the study here: http://www.atypon-link.com/AMA/doi/abs/10.1509/jmkg.73.6.227?cookieSet=1&journalCode=jmkg).

I recently outlined Prolifiq’s value proposition in the vernacular commonly used by venture capitalists.  The “Are you a vitamin or an aspirin?” question measures a company by its ability to deliver value based on its impact.   (see: Vitamin. Vicodin®. Vaccine. ).  Prolifiq passes the test given our ability to prevent compliance missteps.    
I don’t know about you, but $86 million is a lot of money--especially when it can be wiped out with the receipt of one letter.

Operators are standing by……

I’m ready to play – next Thursday. I write this having just returned from a presentation coaching session with members of the selection and coaching committees of Venture NW. Venture NW is held by the Oregon Entrepreneur’s Network (OEN) and is an annual confab where promising companies are showcased to the local investment and business community.

Prolifiq is honored to have been chosen by the committee to present this year and today’s session was to help me prepare for my 10 minutes of fame. I get to tell the Prolifiq story in 10 minutes; stopwatch says I did it in 7. The brevity is a testament to how well Jim, Lisa and Neil had me prepared and the committee actually suggested I add 2 slides. This is a first – usually I am told to cut 20.

The committee was very direct and candid; they provided excellent suggestions to enhance, what they said, was a very good presentation. It’s their job to make all presenters excellent. On Thursday I plan to be just that. Looks like Dylan now has a week-end project filming me, so that I can work on the physical presentation as well.

So, put me in coach(es);  I’m ready to play. Thanks OEN for all you do for our community.

There is a scene in the Rodney Dangerfield classic “Back to School” where Sally Kellerman repeatedly rebuffs Dangerfield’s romantic advances by saying “I’ve got class”. Dangerfield responds with: “Well, call me when you got no class.”

Last Thursday, I got class. Prolifiq Director Dan Brody is an adjunct professor at the University of Virginia and this semester is teaching an undergraduate entrepreneurial class entitled: Communication Skills for Engineers. Dan asked me to be a guest speaker, and I readily accepted. This brought full circle a relationship that began 29 years ago as, shortly after we met, Dan asked me to speak at his class at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) about selling.

For an hour and fifteen minutes, I got to wax poetic about what it’s like to be an entrepreneur and businessman who deals with a lot of engineers and technical types and what makes a technical person successful in business. I started off by telling the 30+ attendees that they had a leg up in life. First off, they are at a respected institution and they are in the engineering program. Secondly, they self-selected into the entrepreneur program. And third, they actually signed up for a class to teach engineers how to better communicate. (There is an old joke that says you know you have gotten engineers to communicate when they stop looking at their shoes when they talk and start looking at yours.)

In all seriousness, this is a very important topic. Engineering is a very left-brain discipline, and it attracts left-brained people. Not all people are left-brained and there can be very difficult conversations when left-brainers and right-brainers try to communicate. This is the gap Dan is trying to bridge.

With his permission, I was able to use some of Daniel Pink’s work from “A Whole New Mind” regarding how left-brainers can adapt for the new world by learning and mastering right brain activities. I used case studies of three engineers whom I worked with who successfully mastered these right-brain traits and became highly successful marketers. I also shared with the class some of the insights from Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” including the concept of 10,000 hours, the cultural distance index (CDI) and the fact that self-made people rarely are.

Other than embarrassing myself – and in the process realizing just how old I am – by asking the students if they remembered the Challenger explosion (they were all born 2 years after the explosion), I had a really good time. I especially enjoyed the interaction while describing for the students Prolifiq’s interview and hiring process. One of the students asked: “Are all interviews like yours?” My response: “Prepare like they are, and hope I am wrong.”

All in all, this was a major highlight of what was an exceptional 10 day road trip. And yes, Cavaliers Class of 2012 – you’ve got class!

Wikipedia defines collaboration as: a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together in an intersection of common goals — for example, an intellectual endeavor that is creative in nature—by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus.

Yesterday, Prolifiq announced a “partnership” with Portland, OR based EthicsPoint software (see press release here). This partnership is driven by our desire to address the compliance requirements associated with the dissemination of scientific, educational and promotional material by the sales forces of Life Sciences companies.

Epstein Becker & Green partner Steve Skwara has analyzed the corporate integrity agreements (CIAs) between Life Science companies and the Federal Government and has made the following conclusion:

“Specifically, the CIAs require policies and procedures that include a process whereby an alert is triggered when certain systematic threshold of sales representative facilitated medical information requests are exceeded.  These thresholds can include, for example, an inordinate number of requests for “off-label” information from a particular sales representative.  They might also include other indicia of potentially improper conduct.”

Skwara’s full analysis of the implications of these CIAs is discussed in his whitepaper which can be found here.

Prolifiq and EthicsPoint decided to collaborate in order to address these requirements and to provide Life Science companies a means to “inoculate” themselves through the use of pro-active policies and procedures. Prolifiq manages the process whereby salespeople disseminate information. Should salespeople exceed “thresholds”, Prolifiq will “trigger” an alert to a company’s EthicsPoint application. The compliance officers then have a means to monitor, investigate and resolve potential compliance violations in real time.

This relationship recognizes the strength of both companies’ products and people, and provides a way to address these stringent regulatory requirements in a very forward-looking way. Vaccination is always a good thing (see: Vitamin. Vicodin. Vaccine).

One of the key questions institutional investors (venture capitalists, private equity firms, investment bankers, etc.) ask during due diligence process is: “Are you a vitamin or an aspirin?” The distinction is important – vitamins are “nice to haves” as they help people develop and function. But people can live without vitamins. Pain killers are “must haves” even though they are only treating the pain symptoms of conditions that already exist. And, people pay lots more for immediate pain relief than they do for hopeful future development.

Vaccines are a whole different breed – they inoculate; they help prevent really bad things from happening to large populations of people. They command attention and garner significant budget (witness the H1N1 effort). Technology products that fit the vaccine category include: firewalls, anti-virus software, intrusion detection software, etc. Imagine the corporate havoc that would ensue if companies didn’t employ such products.

So, where does Prolifiq fit in the Life Sciences industry? Prolifiq is a vaccine; Prolifiq is a pain killer; Prolifiq is a vitamin. It all depends on the use case.

Prolifiq is a vaccine for Life Sciences. In his recent whitepaper, Steve Skwara, Epstein Becker & Green Partner, examines recent Corporate Integrity Agreements (CIAs) between Life Sciences companies and Federal agencies to provide guidance on how firms can avoid the tremendous costs of defending their sales and marketing practices. These CIAs require certain behavior by Life Sciences firms regarding how they disseminate medical and product information. Skwara believes that these practices can help a company, as part of a broader compliance program, to help inoculate itself. The “vaccine” is work rules that manage how the salespeople interact with their customers and disseminate content; the vaccine is the Communications History Record (CHR) that captures the: who, what, when, why, and how of these information dissemination requests. The “vaccine” IS Prolifiq for Life Sciences.

Prolifiq is a painkiller for Life Sciences. Life Sciences companies spend millions annually producing and distributing scientific, educational and promotional material to inform and educate healthcare providers about their products. There is significant pain in these processes as salespeople spend countless “after hours” time fulfilling these requests; marketers must constantly worry the reps are using the right material; and physically moving this information takes time and money. Prolifiq Life Sciences customers routinely report 4X returns (twice the materials distributed at half the cost) from using the platform—that spells pain relief.

Prolifiq is a Vitamin for Life Sciences. Most Life Sciences companies have constructed systems and processes for their sales reps to communicate with their customers. However, these systems are often cumbersome for the reps and they tend not to use them. Prolifiq simplifies this process making it simple and easy for the reps to find the content they need, send it to their customer, and to know how their customers respond. Prolifiq helps Life Sciences sales representatives be better, faster, and smarter.

So, the challenge Maureen, Neil and Lisa have is how to market this multi-faceted application to the Life Sciences industry – it is something different to different people. Persona-based marketing is the answer. You’ll hear it in what we say, you’ll see it in what we do, and you’ll feel it in how you use the app. And using our app you’ll make your company better, you’ll feel less pain, and you can prevent bad things from happening.


Vicodin® is a registered trademark of Abbott Laboratories – the reference here is used for illustrative purposes only.

Sometimes the most life changing technologies are often very obvious. Think of how much time and money has been saved by the very simple concept of bar codes. The retail industry has gained tremendous efficiencies by implementing the technology.

Sitting next to my telephone, I have some 500 or so business cards I have collected within the last six months. These are on top of the 4 boxes of business cards I have in my desk drawer that I have collected in the last 3 years. Some of these get loaded into my Outlook® contacts file; most do not. The reason – I’m too damned lazy – and I suspect you are as well. I also cannot see having an admin or an intern do this as it is pretty demeaning and mindless work.

Sure, there is CardScan® technology. Only problem, it is not 100% accurate. I know; I’ve tried. I found I spent as much time editing the results of the scan as I would have spent typing the data in manually.

So about 4 years ago, at my insistence, we adopted a simple yet radical idea – we encoded all of our contact information into a 2-D bar code and printed it on the back of all of our business cards. The idea is that an optical mouse and a bar-code reader are made of the same basic technology elements. Imagine how much time and effort would be saved if EVERY business adopted this strategy. You give me your business card, I pass it under my mouse, and voila – I have your contact information digitally and 100% accurately. It is pretty obvious. Here is my business card:

 

So, today I launched my browser and up came Google’s home page with the following treatment of their logo:

How radically novel! Way to go – too bad it is just for show and not for function.

Now, if we can get Google, Microsoft, Logitech, and all of the other device manufacturers to adopt this strategy, imagine how much time and effort can be saved with the necessary, however mundane, task of capturing contact information from business cards.

It’s so obvious, why hasn’t it happened yet?

Every rock band, at some point in their career, writes a ballad to that special someone in their past. Well Prolifiq is not a rock band; however, Isabella Wong (aka: ‘Bella) is that special someone to us as a company.

Isabella (also a Beaver) is a brave soul – she was the first woman to join the merry band of founders (see: “A Duck, a Beaver and a Pilot”) and she remained the first and only for several years. She endured the very, very, very  early days of cramped quarters, massive caffeine, Ramen and incessant discussions about fantasy football and the Trailblazers. This is not for the faint of heart.

Bella is anything but “one of the guys”, so for her to be accepted – let alone be welcomed – into the inner circle, she had to know her stuff and carry her own weight. She does in spades. A unique chemistry exists within our dev team and ‘Bella is the catalyst.

Some number of years ago, I was in Seattle and invited ‘Bella to breakfast. I asked her what her career plans were, what runway she would like to see in front of her, etc. As a result, we ended up asking ‘Bella to coordinate and lead the dev team. So, think about this – we have a first-wave employee leading a dev team that includes two founders of the company. This should tell you a lot about her, her management style and her interpersonal skills.

So, if I were Bernie Taupin and was truly writing the Ballad of ‘Bella, it would surely include the line “…seamstress for the band” because of her ability to weave the fabric of our team and their talents.

So, ‘Bella, when are we releasing Build 15?

Susie is our marketing intern. She recently completed an undergraduate degree in International  Studies at the University of Oregon (another Duck) and is on a path to law school. We hired her because she “sold” her way into the internship through her persistence, polish, and presentation skills.

Yesterday we sponsored a webinar entitled: “Navigating the Compliance Challenges of Product-Related Communications” and it was a major success and that had a lot to do with Susie.

We have very specific expectations of how our people interact with customers and prospects (see: related post) and on Monday of this week, Susie began a telephone and Prolifiq message outreach effort to convert suspects into attendees to the event. And she was highly successful.

I did some coaching for what she could expect from people as she “interrupted” their day with a solicitation call. We role played; she refined her script; she practiced smiling (not hard for her); and she tempered her stage fright. And of course, it happened.

On her very first call, Susie got the hostile, angry person who did not want to hear anything she said. Susie was rattled and a little flustered. She stood up, vented her emotions, and took a deep breath. I told her, “well, that was bound to happen – you’ve gotten it out of the way.” This is the old sales adage that every “no” puts you that much closer to a “yes”.

Susie went right back at it and every call got easier. On the second day of calling she said: “I really enjoyed this.” Great attitude Susie; it will take you far in life.

While cold calling is not for everyone, I believe everyone should experience it. It is a skill that can be used in many aspects of life – and it helps one appreciate a day in the life.