The Funnel is actually The Tube - Part 1
The Funnel
If you have set up some KPIs around driving new leads into deal opportunities – MQLs, SQLs, etc. – you’ll inevitably have done so with a classic funnel-shape ratio in mind. The size of the biopharma industry doesn’t align with this shape, however. The Funnel is a great shape for a horizontal business, one where you can sell your product(s) to just about anyone in any vertical.
In the biopharma vertical, however, there just aren’t that many buyers out there. Some stats:
There are only 6,000 companies with active R&D pipelines…worldwide
In the US, there are just 2,655
Only a smidge more than 500 companies total who have at least one approved, commercial product
These are intimidating stats when setting up The Funnel. The reassuring news is that this is a vertical whose buyers tend to be in charge of a much larger budget. The top 30 global pharma companies have revenue the size of some European country GDPs! So the way to think about these TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU metrics should start with a realistic volume of impressions generated, contacts added to the CRM, and opportunities qualified, but making sure these are all high quality.
The Tube
A realistic understanding of the size of your addressable market should drive your entire go-to-market strategy through The Tube instead. In short, by recognizing the small volume of potential buyers at the top, The Tube should hone your market and sales efforts by:
Treating every potential account with focus and individual care
Understanding that you are people selling to people (not generic brands selling to other generic brands)...so you need to go out and engage with the humans
Orienting your business to thrive on larger deal sizes rather than volume of wins
Focus on every opportunity to improve success rates throughout The Tube
Veeva has built its empire masterfully with an understanding of The Tube, having been clear-eyed from the beginning that they need to engage this small-yet-deep-pocketed industry with individual account and stakeholder attention.
We’ll talk more about this last point and increasing success rates in Part 2, coming soon…
