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Highlights

• [00:47] - The journey to being a scientist who works in a business development and sales role.
• [06:27] - Following his gut in moving from the technical side of the business to the sales leadership side.
• [11:18] - How he worked on improving the performance of every business developer in his team.
• [16:07] - The value of ensuring sales team members are constantly in communication with each other and collaborating.
• [19:02] - Why sales leaders should embrace and encourage their team members being better in sales than they are.
• [23:27] - His pride and joy: Seeing drugs he worked on hit the market and impact people’s lives.

In this episode of the Transformed Sales Podcast, I had a chat with Dr. Chad Briscoe, the Vice President of Business Development- Europe for BioAgilytix, a leading provider of contract bioanalytical testing services with specialization in large molecule bioanalysis. Dr. Briscoe is a seasoned scientific executive with nearly 25 years of experience leading operational and scientific innovation in the bioanalytical and biomarker segments of the pharmaceutical industry. Prior to joining BioAgilytix, Dr. Briscoe was executive director of global bioanalytical science for a large contract research organization, where he was responsible for global laboratory scientific strategy including team leadership and key client relationship oversight. 

Today he is a recognized global expert and thought leader in areas including regulated bioanalysis, analytical instrument qualification, and biomarker analysis with immunoassays, flow cytometry, and genomics techniques. Dr. Briscoe is also a sought-after speaker at industry events such as WRIB, the Global CRO Council, Land O’ Lakes, Global Bioanalysis Consortium, APA, APS, CPSA, and ASMS, and is often requested to participate in industry forums as a collaborator and mentor.

Dr. Briscoe has had a very interesting career. He went from a bench chemist, to overseeing a lab, to going to Europe to become a sales leader. He will share his years of experience and insights on what it takes to be an effective sales leader. Dr. Briscoe will also somehow debunk one of my many sales tips, so this is one episode you’ll definitely enjoy and learn tons from. Stay tuned for more!

Quotes

“In sales, you’ve gotta give people time” - Chad Briscoe

“If it’s fighting the battles for your team, or for the customers, or for the operations team that needs to deliver, you can’t hang them out to dry when things don’t go perfectly with the customers” - Chad Briscoe

“If somebody comes in that’s not a fit, I think you’re doing a favor for yourself and your organization when you make changes that need to happen so people can find the right fit for them” - Chad Briscoe

Learn More About Chad Briscoe in the Links Below:

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chadbriscoe/

Connect with Wesleyne Greer:

• Wesleyne’s Website - https://transformedsales.com/
• Wesleyne on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wesleynegreer/
• Wesleyne on Facebook - https://web.facebook.com/wesleynegreer
• Wesleyne on Twitter - https://twitter.com/wesleynegreer
• Email Her at wesleyne@transformedsales.com

Hello and welcome to another episode of

the transform sales podcast today. I am so excited to have

Chad Briscoe with me here. How are you?

I am doing great. Thanks Wesleyne.

Let me tell you guys a little bit about Chad,

Dr. Briscoe. So I'm sorry, I should have introduced us Dr.

Chad Resco. No worries. He's an innovative solutions focused bio

analytical thought leader with over 25 years of experience

working with pharma partners every single day to bring new

drugs to the market faster. And bio Analytics is a bio

analytical contract research testing organization. I'm so

excited to hear how you got from starting your career deciding

that you want to get a PhD to moving into this world today.

Give us the rundown. You bet. I'm

glad to do that. And it's it's been an

interesting and crazy story as some of the elements of my of my

life. So I'm a career scientist. And I started in the industry in

the contract research industry back in 97, after I finished my

master's degree, I was at a contract research organization

in Lincoln, Nebraska. And about three years into that

experience. I was I was working at the bench scientist as saying

samples running instruments mass spectrometry is my area of

expertise. And I was looking at how to develop in my career, I

was in the pharmaceutical space. And so I was it was a career

development conversation with with my my boss at the time to

try and pursue my PhD. And the deal was they supported me. But

monetarily Thank you very much to the company, but not as much

in time a bit of flexibility. So I pursued my PhD simultaneously

while working in the laboratory. So the next 10 years of my life

were quite interesting. I went from working at the bench in the

lab to running the laboratory being laboratory director. And

at the same time I went from one kid and zero dogs to four kids

and four dogs. So it was quite a busy time in my life, thanks a

million times over to my wife who supported me through that

and was organizing the chaos for us. But so I had a fantastic

career that was a company called MDS loved it, the company is

kind of broken up and sold off the pieces and doesn't exist

anymore since about 2010. But when I left in 2010, I left for

a challenge with a new company, contract research organization,

again, in the bio analytical space. And the challenge, this

time around was to build new labs. So they wanted to

Greenfield a lab in the US they had a laboratory in Europe, and

they wanted to Greenfield a lab in the US. And so took my skill

set running an organization of about 140 people at the time and

started out back at one person but in kind of a comfortable

spot where I could be entrepreneurial, but have a

little bit of the safety net of a big company behind me, you

know, again, with a with a family of four, you're kind of

you know, it's a tough call to say I'm gonna go out on my own

and in startup something but give me a really nice

opportunity to be entrepreneurial. We built that

laboratory quite nicely over the next 10 years. This is in Kansas

City, and it grew well. And then you know, I kind of started

looking at what I want to do next. And partway through that

experience. I had moved from an operational leadership role to a

scientific leadership role where I was leading our you could call

it a Scientific Affairs or a scientific office for the

organization globally, where we would interface with customers

to help bring the solutions to reality right. So the solutions

that our business development team would sell, it was our job

to help make that interface between the customers and the in

the challenging science and make sure it was able to be

operationalized back into the operations make sure projects

would happen smoothly within the operations when they kicked off.

And that kind of just keep everything going that way. And

so when I decided to make a change to the current

organization, and with bioanalytics I joined the

company as chief scientific officer and was in that role for

a while I was originally given a specific challenge to help

support our Hamburg laboratory. I had been working in Europe off

and on over the years. And so I was in Hamburg for about three

four months and back and forth and then I don't know if you've

heard of this thing there's this COVID pandemic popped up and I

was sitting in Sweden and you know all of a sudden we started

hearing this panic announcements from our president that they

might be closed and air travel so I got on the next flight out

of Copenhagen to come back to the US and and then started

focusing still looking at Homburg How can I help support

them but also you know more of a taken more Have a global view

then. And yeah, so about eight months went by and our Chief

Commercial Officer at the time had been looking for ways to

expand our leadership team in Europe for the business

development role. He was really looking for a leader for the

business development role in Europe. And I got a call one day

in early January of 2020. And he said, Hey, Chad, you know, I

know you've always been a scientist, he's always said you

wouldn't join the sales and business development side of the

organization. But what do you say, give it a shot, you know,

take on Europe, I've had this need, that could be a good

challenge for you, it'd be a nice new direction for your

career, and just something to see if you're interested in it.

And I surprise myself, sometimes we surprise ourselves when just

Yes, comes out. Right? And it's like, yes. But the only

qualification is we got to figure out the details, right?

It's like, I know, we will. But let's do it. It just something

caught me I like to tell everybody to I was I was

literally sitting on a chairlift at Copper Mountain skiing. And I

was like, I'll just take the call, see what he wants, you

know, and then. So that's how I actually formally got into

business development sales role. So I know a lot of the people in

at least in the CRO world don't like calling it sales, right?

They call it business development. So but yeah, that's

it. So that's how I got from, you know, master's degree at

University of Michigan all the way kind of the short version of

all the way through to where I sit now is VP of sales, VP of

Business Development for our European division.

So wow, this is? Yeah, you went from being a

bench chemist to overseeing a lab, working with a team in

Europe, going to become a sales leader and managing a team in

Europe. So first, I really want to dig into when you were asked

to move from the technical side of the business to the

commercial side of the business, what were some of the thoughts

going through your head? And how did you make that decision?

Yeah, so I made that decision. I make a lot of

my best decisions. And it's just my gut. And that's always how

I've been, is, when I know something's right. I do it,

right. So there's certainly some times where it makes sense to

sit down and be analytical and look at the numbers and, and

make a plan. But there's other times when you know what the

right answer is, and somehow you don't even need to think about

it very long. And that was one of those decisions. Like I say,

I was sitting on a chairlift, right? So maybe maximum three

minutes, you know, to actually have this whole conversation

about changing the whole direction of my career. And,

yeah, that's about what it took. And I said, Yep, and then it was

kind of like, but I gotta go, because, you know, tips up, I

gotta get off this chairlift.

So it seems like you it didn't take a lot for you

to make that decision to say, Hey, I've done this for many

decades in my career. But now it's time for change. Now, I am

ready to make a move. So tell us how the transition was for you

going from being very technical to stepping into that sales

leadership role?

Yeah. So initially, we had a lot of work

to do, right. So as happens when you get a lot of new projects,

you're able to bury yourself in it so much, you're not even sure

what the challenges are, you don't have time to sort of take

in the emotions of what kind of a transition did I make? What's

this mean? For me longer term, you just say there's a problem

to solve here. There's some challenges the organization

needs you to address. And so you dive into it. So I'd say

initially, it was much more about lining up the what's the

strategy, right. So working with working with my boss, at that

time, it's still my boss, working with Marasca to outline

the strategy. And then let's just build out the tactics,

right. So you make this laundry list of things you need to do,

the first thing we needed to do is build the team, right? So

build a strong team get stability within the team, so

that we're not having the turnover, we are having the

turnover every three to six months with business developers.

And when you don't have any time to gain momentum, we know that

that's really challenging in the business development world. It

takes months and years, right and in my business to really

start seeing the success. So stability within the team. And

then what do we need for particular processes in Europe?

How are we going to interact with the operations team and so

started getting all those pieces in place and just moving a

million miles an hour. And then it's probably not until six

months to a year later that I started sitting down and talking

to Nick and thinking to myself about, you know, what does this

really mean for me? How is it being in a business development

role, right? I always was in a spot in operations where I could

solve the problems hands on and it is a business developer, you

can solve your own problems. You can help improve sales, you can

make the strategies and things like that, but you're not in

operations, fixing the challenges, you're able to

influence things but you can't hands on fix those things. And

that's been sort of the hallmark of my career outside of business

development is I had a lot of customers come Under BSA, Chad,

we like working with your company, because you always make

it happen. We don't you're not in every conversation, but when

we really need it to happen, we give you a call. And so that's

been a bit of a transition. How do you do that, as a business

development? VP, or you know, anywhere from within the

business development organization, it's a different

challenge. And I've had to get comfortable with that and

comfortable with this different role. And then you start looking

at, geez, you know, what's next? I'm not ready to jump out of

this job, right. But you are kind of thinking down the road,

like, I'm just turning 50 and just shy of 50? And what am I

going to be doing when I'm 60? You know, am I going to be in

this space? You know, what do I think it might gonna be? I don't

know, you know, so there's all these thoughts and emotions that

have been going through my head for the last four to six months

now that I've settled into the role. And we're still very

successful, we're still doing well, I love my team that I

built. So if they're listening, I don't want them to think I'm

going anywhere, right. But you did. It's just a different

position to be in. So it's a bit exciting still,

ah, I can really understand and I can empathize

with that high turnover in this technical sales field, one of

the things that tends to happen is we hire either really smart

people, or we hire people who we think will fit the role, but

they're not quite equipped for a job in sales. Right. So how were

you able to really stabilize your team? How were you able to

get that team? You said it was like, every three months, you

guys went over business developers, which is pretty

quick. How did you stabilize it? Yeah. And

so some of the turnover was regrettable. And

some of it was not as regrettable, right? As we also

see, right? Somebody comes in, it's not a fit, I think you're

doing a favor for yourself in the organization when you make

changes that need to happen so people can find the right fit

for them. But yeah, it depends on the different individuals of

what the approach is, I'm very fortunate that I had one

individual that was a very seasoned, very seasoned business

developer, very committed to the organization. So partnering

closely with him. And then as we look to build the other pieces

of the team and fill the other roles, you know, we focused on

having good experienced, seasoned people who were more

likely, I think, to join an organization that looked like it

was moving in a direction of stability. I was the first

business development leader in Europe for our organization. So

part of this was our organization growing and saying,

Hey, we're gonna have a dedicated European sales team.

So people like when they're joining a team and being part of

something, and I think, especially in Europe, they were

joining the European team, but still sort of part of the US

team. And I think it was, maybe that was a little bit

challenging. It lost a little bit of focus. There's all sorts

of elements. I hired a woman that had worked with me in the

past. So I reached out to my network of people that would

connect with me and work well with me and I think be loyal. I

would say beyond just the company, I would hope be loyal

to me. I mean, I think it goes both ways, right? You need

people loyalty, you and the company. And I try to talk to

them all the time, right? Take care of the team, keep them

motivated, buy in on what's going on I'll last week, and

they want to unpack other aspects of this. But last week

was our global sales meeting in San Diego, and only one of the

team meetings got champagne, when we had our breakout

sessions. So yes, a little you know, little things like that,

like, hey, you know, it's four o'clock in the afternoon, we're

gonna have champagne and our meeting and celebrate successes,

right? Do some of these little things. And yeah, so that's, you

know, hope if my team would hear this, they'd agree with

everything I'm saying. But I, it'd be interesting in this

situation to get their feedback as well.

What were some of the challenges that you had

and rebuilding your team?

Yeah. So I'd say the first challenge is, anytime

you bring in new business developers, they have to build

the relationships, they have to build the territory, the way

we're broken down in Europe is pretty straightforward. We have

a guy in the UK, we have a guy in southern Europe, one in sort

of northern Europe, Germany, Netherlands, and the woman I

mentioned for us and Scandinavia. So it's broken down

pretty cleanly in Europe. But in most of those regions, we were

really trying to build out the region. So you're hiring

somebody, you're saying, hey, you know, you need to take on

this region, it's a great opportunity, right? Because you

can build it up. But at the same time, you're not walking in, you

know, you're not walking into $10 million in sales off the

bat. So that's probably the first challenge is getting

everyone to have patience, then also getting the organization to

have patience with the delivery of the business developers. And

we ran a lot of statistics looking at the different

individuals who had been with the organization for different

amounts of time. And there was a clear correlation in the data.

Before I said, I'm gut feel I love data. Also, it's a matter

of when you use data versus when when you make that quick split

second decision, but we looked at a lot of data and it was

clear that you got to give people time, right, and we're

seeing that now if I look at the order in which I brought on

these four business developers As the performance is directly

proportional to how long they've been there, so the guy has been

there the longest has the has the best sales this year. And

number two is the guy who is the second longest, and then and

then three and four follow right behind. So there's no mystery

and in the challenge there, so yeah,

yeah, I think that a lot of times within

organizations, what, what people tend to do is they expect to

hire someone, and they expect them to just ramp up by

themselves, like someone's like, oh, yeah, you're a great person,

you're just gonna get out there and sell our products, you may

have been selling the competitors products, or maybe

you just understand the science, but really allowing people to

come into their own and give them the time to get up to speed

and develop and then as a leader, having those

expectations that are set, right. So really listening to

you. It's like, okay, the person who has been here the longest, I

expect them to have the most growth, I expect them to be the

ones who's at the top of the leaderboard, and based on the

metrics that I've seen this person give me the thing that

this person has done. I expect other people to kind of come

along.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think you said it better

than I did without a doubt. But one of the things that I've also

done is connected my people right, I think that's a common

certainly it's common, the other BD like to reach out to the

teammates, and I really encouraged him to do that to

make those connections so that they feel that true team

camaraderie, you know, have one on ones with each other. Just

don't don't just have the one on ones with me or, Hey, if you've

got a challenge, you know, maybe this guy is better to solve that

challenge than I am because hey, this team has all been in sales

for 10 to 25 years. I'm only a year and a half in I don't have

all the sales numbers. I don't you can tell I don't speak all

the jargon. I'm learning it I haven't read all the books. I'm

starting to listen to your podcast and learn a lot there.

But but as far as really sales go, man, I I'm new to this gig.

I mean, I've been selling through influence and just

selling because a nice guy as a scientist for years, but I'm not

the guy that knows how, you know, I don't I'm not the expert

in the in the, you know, Miller Heiman techniques and all you

know, all these different, you know, all these different things

I'm learning all right, I'm excited to learn, but I need to

rely on other folks. Again, my current boss has been extremely

supportive. He's, uh, you know, I mean, he's a career exemplary

career sales professional, my counterpart in the US has been

tremendously helpful just to give, you know, make a call and

say, Hey, what, you know, what would you do in this situation?

How have you led in this way, and when you had these kinds of

challenges, and so I'm a big promoter in relying on your

colleagues talking to colleagues go into your external network,

I've called folks outside of my company to ask for advice

multiple times. Because I'm learned, which is, it's probably

the part I didn't really think I embrace as much, right? It's

like, Hey, I'm really trying to learn the craft. I'm a pretty

good scientist, and I'm really trying to learn the craft of

sales is is I've been really successful in the last year and

a half. So I'm looking forward to seeing how well can I do want

to actually feel like I know what I'm doing, if I ever get

there.

So really, what I love that you said is, hey, I

have people who understand sales better than I do, and I'm not

threatened by them, which so many leaders tend to be

threatened by, you know, sales people that may want to climb up

above them, or, you know, say, Well, I want your job one day,

or I may want to be your boss one day. And I think a sign of

true leadership is really having that confidence in yourself

that, hey, my people should be better than I am. And that is

actually a check mark, that you are a good leader when you can

develop people that exceed you that do more than you ever have

come to do. And so you're saying, Well, I'm not the

greatest in sales, but I'm a good leader. And I know this and

I know that and they helped me with the sales and I helped lead

them.

Yeah, I think I know what customers want. Right?

And that's that I think I know what customers want i i

understand people pretty well, you know, I love working with

people. I love to facilitate solutions. Just hang on. I've

been accused in a I don't want to say negative way, but maybe

in a coaching way of being too much of a pleaser sometimes. But

I think I think we take our you know, we got to take some of

these things and make them strikes, right? So if I'm too

much of a pleaser, then let's figure out how we can turn that

into a strength right? Let's use it to focus on customer

satisfaction. Let's use it to focus on employee satisfaction,

bringing the team together, motivating people that don't let

it get in the way of making hard decisions that need to be made

occasionally, that's that's when some of those challenges become

negatives, or I should say those those those Yeah, those

challenges become negatives. Yeah. So

So you are going to be the first person on the

podcast that He's gonna debunk Wesleyne Swag. How Wesleyne isms

are Wesleyne wisdom? Oh, boy that in order to be a good sales

leader, you must be good in sales. Tell me what do you think

about that statement?

You know, I would say that I don't have a clue if

I'm any good at sales. Because I've never really sold, which I

think a lot of the I would guess a lot of the business developers

that I've worked with over the years would say, Chad, you're

fantastic. And sales, right? I think they would say, you know,

this position has been waiting for you. It's just been a matter

of when you would actually move into it. You've always been

selling, you're really good at sales. But the reality is, until

a year and a half ago, I never worked against an individual

sales target or had a territory or any of that. So am I good at

sales? I don't really know. I think I'm a pretty good sales

leader. The numbers say I'm a pretty good sales leader. So

sometimes nothing else matters. Right? So yeah, so did I debunk

it? Or did I agree with you? I'm not sure.

You know, you're kind of showing the sense. I

thought you were gonna say yes, firstly, I am good sales leader.

And I've never sold anything ever. Yeah. And I beg to say

that, really, in listening to your story and the way that

you've gone through your career and your path. You never were,

as you said, I've never been classically sales trainings,

which most people haven't. They're just doing whatever they

want to, but not having sold, but you're still able to lead a

sales team. And I think what you've taught me and I am humble

enough to say when I'm learning something new, is that it is

more important to be a good leader. And the sales part of

that is coming along the way, right? Like when you came into

the position, you said, Okay, turnover is high, you don't need

to have known anything about sales to understand how to fix

turnover, how to fix company culture, how to stabilize how to

rearrange territories, how to onboard. And so really, I think

that one of the things that I am actually leaning into these days

when I'm talking to people is they tend to promote the top

salesperson. And that top salesperson is for sure. Not

always a good leader. And so really switching the paradigm

and thinking about, Okay, let's get a strong leader from outside

of our industry, or strong leader who it may not

necessarily have done classic sales, but his sales minded,

like you said, I was customer facing, I was always having to

focus on the customer. Right. So I think that yes, you did debunk

the myth. All right. I

love fighting the battles, right. When as you're

talking, I'm thinking, you know, if it's fighting the battles for

my team, or if it's fighting battles for the customers, or

sometimes you're fighting the battles for the operations team

that needs to deliver, right, I mean, we don't want to leave

them, we don't want to hang them up to dry. And, you know, when

things don't go perfectly with the customer, it's not always on

them, right. And so they need us to fight the battles along with

them for the customer. So I just like getting in there and making

things happen. Again, whether it's sales or lead and

operations are in the scientific leadership roles. And I do think

that piece resonates with my team, as they know, I'm always

going to fight the battles for him. I hope they feel that way

anyways,

yes, yes, I would definitely say that if you

during this difficult two year period where we've been in this

pandemic, you've been able to retain the year people joined

you during this time. I would say that that is definitely

definitely the sign of a strong leader. Yeah. So I'm curious,

you've had a very diverse career, you've done a lot of

amazing things. What is one thing that you would say you are

most excited about having accomplished?

Yeah, I think the most exciting career opportunity

or not career opportunity, the probably the most exciting thing

that I accomplished was the first drug because I'm in the

pharmaceutical space, the first drug that I saw, from pretty

early in the process all the way through to approval, and I've

seen others since then. But the very first one, it was a, I

can't disclose the name of the company. But I was in this case,

I was literally working on the bench and developing the assays

and doing all the science for it. And then I progressed the

project management role. And then ultimately, when this drug

was approved, because it takes years and you know, it takes

years for the career develop and takes years for the drug to get

approved. But I watched this drug go all the way through my

lab, and through my organization to be on the market. And if you

work in the pharmaceutical development space, that is what

it's all about. Right? It's about seeing drugs go to market.

And since then, every time I see a drug that I touch that's on

the market, or in one case, just recently, there was a drug that

I knew that I had worked on, that was a fairly unusual drug

that my wife was prescribed. And she's like, what, you know, it's

for, you know, it's not something you see all the time.

She's like, What is this? You know, what is this drug and I

looked at the label and went, Hey, I worked on that back in

2006 when it was like, you know, really early in development, and

then you know, and so you see that direct impact on people

that are close. was to use and that is by far and away the

biggest hit in my career, right? It's kind of not, I love what

I've done, I love all the different things I've done. But

when you can actually have an impact on so many other people

that's by far and away at the top of the list. Hmm,

I love that. And that chat is why you are a good

leader. It's not about you know, well, I made all this money or I

did this or I did that it's I made this drug and knowing how

this drug is impacting not just one person or 10 people, but

1000s, and maybe even millions of people, right, and saying

like, that is what I hang my hat on that very first drug and even

to see today, something that you worked on a whole decade ago, to

almost two decades. Oh, is impacting lives today.

Yeah, cuz I think that I think that program

started in maybe 99. And then it was probably approved in

2006 2007, something like that. So yes, I really that first

company I was with, I really saw the progression through my

career. And yeah, and you know, drugs sell on the market today.

And it's still helping people. So very exciting. Yeah,

that is awesome. Dr. Chad Briscoe, you have given

us a lot of amazing gems. And really, as I said, and it's very

hard to change my very strong opinions. You're tilting me on

that side, you are tilting me on that side? If people are

interested in getting in contact with you? What is the one best

way?

Yeah, probably the best way is to look me up on

LinkedIn and send me a LinkedIn message. I can put my email out

there, which would be fine or whatever. But you can find me on

LinkedIn really easily. I'm always chatting with people on

LinkedIn messenger. And so look me up on LinkedIn, I'd love to

talk about anything, right? I mean, anywhere from sales

strategy, how I did it, too. If you want to be a customer, we'd

love to talk to you about that as well, of course, so and

anywhere in between connecting with old friends, right? I mean,

I all sorts of things we do through LinkedIn nowadays. So it

is

an amazing plan. Be sure to connect with Chad on

LinkedIn. And thank you so much for sharing your time, your

talent and your expertise with us today.

Thank you for the opportunity. I really I really

enjoyed it a great conversation, and I'm enjoying your podcast.

So hope to hear many more from you. It's on my list probably

top five rotation right now. So yeah, so

happy to hear that because you know, everyone

knows that isn't podcast host that it is a labor of love. And

so the more lives that I can impact the better that makes me

feel You bet. Thanks so much. And that was another episode of

the transform sales podcast. Remember in everything that you

do, and all that you are each and every day transform your