Intro - 00:00:06: Welcome to The Biotech Startups Podcast by Excedr. Join us as we speak with first-time founders, serial entrepreneurs, and experienced investors about the challenges and triumphs of running a biotech startup from pre-seed to IPO with your host, Jon Chee. Last time, Leslie took us from her Indiana upbringing through the decision to study English and become a teacher. If you missed it, start with part one. In part two, Leslie steps out of the classroom and into pharmaceutical sales. She talks about the culture shock of moving from teaching to a territory-based sales role, the lessons she carried from Takeda into health care sales training, and the difference between selling to individual providers and working with large laboratory and hospital systems.
Leslie Loveless - 00:01:06: Some people that I knew from growing up had gone in that direction. My brother-in-law was actually in pharmaceutical sales. And, you know, of course, I talked to my dad about it because those reps were coming in and calling on him in the pharmacy. That period, this was in 1999. That was during the payday, I guess, of being in that industry. The industry has changed a lot, and I think it probably needed to. But, I mean, it was a very coveted type of role back then, and it was fun. It was a fun job.
Jon Chee - 00:01:41: Talk a little bit about where you ended up and kind of what it was like early days of, like, that transition. I'm gonna imagine there's a bit of, like, culture shock from, like, being in, like, a classroom all day to not being in a classroom all day.
Leslie Loveless - 00:01:56: Yeah. So it definitely was odd to make that shift. So it's kind of humorous to me now when I think back on getting that first job, and it was very hard to get that first job because no one looks at a teacher's resume and thinks they can go sell. That was very hard to accomplish, but at least this is how it was done back then. You go straight from being hired to being in class and learning about yeah. I went to Chicago, and I was up in Chicago for two straight weeks in a hotel room where they had conference rooms, and we were in classes, and we were learning and taking tests about the new drug that was coming out that we were launching and those sorts of things. And so, initially, it was like, oh, I know how to do this. I'm gonna sit in class.
Jon Chee - 00:02:48: Yeah. I'm in my element. Yeah.
Leslie Loveless - 00:02:50: I'm in my element. And, of course, everyone in the class was experienced pharmaceutical sales rep. So they've done this drill. I'm sure they probably thought I was a big dork because I'm a, you know, a teacher. I'm very serious about the assignments and the tests and getting an A on the test. And, you know, I was super serious about the class and make sure that I did a great job in the class. And I think everyone else, it was like, you know, this is just sales training. It kind of thing. So that initial part was pretty normal for me being in class. But then once the class part was over and you're out all day, all you're doing is driving from one provider's office to another. That's you have a territory and you cover it, and that's all you do all day. So that part of just the freedom, I'm actually in my car during...
Jon Chee - 00:03:45: Yeah.
Leslie Loveless - 00:03:45: So I'm driving around, and, oh my god, I can stop and get lunch if I want to. Like, how weird is that? I can meet someone for lunch and sit at a restaurant.
Jon Chee - 00:03:56: Yeah. Yeah.
Leslie Loveless - 00:03:57: And, I mean, the things that when you're a teacher and in that school building the whole day, you almost forget that life is going on outside. And now I was part of, you know, the life that was going on outside.
Jon Chee - 00:04:11: I love that. That's amazing. I guess, like, question for you. Like, you basically do this, like, crash course couple weeks. Did you find that you were using those skills in that two-week crash course or was everything just like, oh, actually, I'm just, like, learning on the fly by, like, actually, like, interfacing with customers?
Leslie Loveless - 00:04:30: So there was a lot of role playing in the court work. And so I think where there was some translatable experience was I was used to standing up and talking all day in front of people, not just one to one with a doctor. I was used to that intensity of being a performer all day. You know? And so I think that did help me during the crash course and the role playing because, I mean, that was performing. You were standing up in front of a group of people and, you know, detailing a doctor. And so I think just the experience of not being afraid of public speaking was probably helpful to me. Otherwise, that might have been a little scarier.
Jon Chee - 00:05:13: When you were interfacing with a customer, like, how big were those rooms? Like, 38 large, like a classroom?
Leslie Loveless - 00:05:19: Do you mean when I was at training?
Jon Chee - 00:05:21: Or when you're actually going and meeting customers.
Leslie Loveless - 00:05:24: That usually was just standing in the hallway outside of patient rooms talking one to one with the doctor. Okay.
Jon Chee - 00:05:31: Got it. Got it.
Leslie Loveless - 00:05:31: Got it. Yeah. We would do events where there was a presenter, but that wasn't, I mean, I would introduce a presenter, but I was not the expert that was coming to talk to doctors about the product that was a doctor.
Jon Chee - 00:05:45: Yeah. When I think about, like, skills that are transferable and in so many ways, I always come back to selling, like, always. Even in scientific companies, you're still selling. Like, as much as, like, for me, it was always a not a natural muscle to, like, flex and, like, learn how to use. It's kind of this thing where I'm like, yeah. The product's good enough. They'll come find me. Not the case. Like, even Anthropic has a Salesforce, like and that thing sells itself. Like but they still have a Salesforce and they're pushing hard.
So I've, like, always thought it's, like, you know, whether you're hiring, you got to sell the candidate on the opportunity. They can't come away from that meeting being like, I wanna join this org or, like, fundraising, like, you gotta sell them on giving you money. You gotta, like, sell everything. And I think, at least in science, like, people put up, like, sales, like, icky. It doesn't have to be icky. Like, it's mostly listening. Like, it's mostly listening.
Leslie Loveless - 00:06:49: It is mostly listening. That is a 100% correct.
Jon Chee - 00:06:52: And you were at Takeda. Right?
Leslie Loveless - 00:06:53: Mhmm. Yeah.
Jon Chee - 00:06:54: Talk a little bit about just, like, those early years of, like, getting your reps in with these physicians and pharmacists. What was that experience like? Outside, obviously, liberating, it sounds like. Well, I think you're like, I can I'm free now, but just talk about those experiences for the first couple years there.
Leslie Loveless - 00:07:09: It wasn't what I expected in the sense that it was so hard for me to get that first job because I just kept getting the same response of you don't have any sales experience. And so I was thinking this is going to be a hard job because I it was so hard for me to get the job. This must be really hard. Ultimately, you know, having a good product, that matters a lot. Right?
But having good partners that are your peers, and at the time, we had a partnership with Eli Lilly, which in Indiana, you can appreciate that's the gold standard. Right? And so that was really good. But I would describe the experience of being a pharmaceutical sales rep as being a very fun experience. It was a fun job. And, again, I'm in my twenties, and so I'm constantly out talking to people, meeting people, talking about a product that is doing well in the market, working with partner reps that I enjoyed that were great at what they did, and we had a good team. And I was at Takeda for two years, and I won president's club both years.
Jon Chee - 00:08:20: Hell, yeah. With no sales experience?
Leslie Loveless - 00:08:22: Yeah. But, again, I think that this is where it's the skills. It is the transfer of skills, and I'm not sure that anyone that was looking at my resume when I was trying to get a sales job could appreciate how those skills would transfer because none of them had stood in front of a classroom of 30 kids trying to hold their attention for seven hours a day. No one had that experience that was looking at my resume. They could just see that I didn't have sales on my resume. So you live and learn.
Jon Chee - 00:08:53: That's awesome, by the way. That's, like, super awesome because, like, I think the easy thing to do is, okay, person has lots of sales experience. That path is, like, makes sense to me. But when you wanna get, like, president's club performance in your first, like, year or two of sales, typically, that's coming from, like, some orthogonal experience that, like I think people don't truly appreciate how cross-disciplinary experiences get you, like, one plus one equals five outcomes. Like and it's just like it's just a convenience to just be able to look at a resume and be like, oh, they worked at Salesforce or Oracle. They know how to sell. Like, that's, like, convenient, but not necessarily you're not gonna find someone, like, kind of, like, exactly what you described. Like, being in front of a classroom for seven hours a day holding someone's attention, that's like you know, you have to think orthogonally about it.
And, also, something that, like, stood out to me too, I think, most of my careers in, like, preclinical work, and then you have on the other side pharmaceutical sales, which is, like, approved, commercializing. Right? It's sometimes hard to make the connection between the two because it's so far downstream, but it has so much impact on what you're working on in the earliest days that people don't truly appreciate. It's kind of this thing, like, like, I always go back to, like, the mongerism of, like, always invert. And, like, you gotta work backwards from this thing because, like, a thing that you're working on now and, like, for me, I'm just, like, so fascinated by the preclinical, like, I'm the dude in the pipetting. I don't even think about what the downstream effects are because it's, like, it's so foreign to me and so far out. But if you wanna, like, think about whatever successful assay that you're running or target, whatever it may be, you've got to make sure that on the other side, this can be commercially successful or else you're not gonna be able to garner the resources to get you there.
Leslie Loveless - 00:10:45: Absolutely.
Jon Chee - 00:10:46: Which people just like and I get it. The problems are hard enough in your own lane. Like, it's a whole thing to be like, alright. Like, is it gonna clear the market? The things that are kinda make me sad is when all this hard work in, like, preclinical, clinical trials, everything, only to flop in the ability to sell the thing. It so many ripple effects. Like, if there's a bad commercial outcome on this side, it just kills everything upstream of it. And I realized that's very big high-level thought for someone who might be just like, I'm focused on trying to figure out this mechanism of action. Okay? Like, I I can't be thinking about that. But it is important, especially if you're, like, in a startup. It's not too early to start thinking about that.
Leslie Loveless - 00:11:25: Well, you don't get the money that you need to further the company if you're not thinking about that, and you can't speak to that. Right? So you you have to. And I think that is one of the things that is hard for scientists. They love the science, and they believe in the science and doing those sort of continuous reality checks on what's happening in the market and what is investor sentiment around a particular product or mechanism of action or modality. Like, these are all real things. And, you know, if I'm a scientist that loves the science, like, that's not the most fun thing for me to be spending my time on. I wanna focus on the science, and so it's a tough thing.
Jon Chee - 00:12:08: Yep. And I think too, because science is, like, very much driven by, like, academic research usually, it's kind of like that thing where it's like, in academia, you did not have to worry about that. Like, why would you? We have this academic realm of just, like, basic research, which is super important, like, super important. But if it's gonna ultimately get to patients, you gotta connect the dots. And so you're wrapping up you're, like, grand slamming. Like, you're just, like, hitting president's club the first couple years. When did you know it was time to make a change?
Leslie Loveless - 00:12:41: So I actually got a call from Adam Slone. This is how I first ended up meeting him, and and this is how it works in recruiting a phone call from him. It was the first time I'd ever been called by a recruiter, and it was Adam Slone. And I can remember driving down the road. And to this day, I actually have no idea how he got my phone number because back then, you know, you didn't have all the tools that you have now to be able to find people. But it was that phone call that was kind of a trigger for me thinking about, well, maybe I should talk to recruiters because then you're a salesperson and you've got two presidents clubs, and people are gonna start calling. That was sort of the catalyst, I think, for just having a conversation that led to the next thing and the next thing and yeah. So
Jon Chee - 00:13:30: That's super rad. That's super rad. And also just like it's like full circle. So how did that first conversation go? What opportunity or opportunities plural that you kinda like lay out?
Leslie Loveless - 00:13:41: So the strange thing about that call is that I actually don't remember
Jon Chee - 00:13:46: Yeah.
Leslie Loveless - 00:13:46: What the first call was about.
Jon Chee - 00:13:48: Yeah.
Leslie Loveless - 00:13:48: He was calling me about a job, but I don't even know because this was, like, in the very early days of Slone Partners existing where Adam was sort of a one-man band kind of thing, just getting the business off the ground. I don't even remember what that first conversation was about, but he has told me since then that he remembered liking the conversation with me, and so he hung on to my information to call me back at another time, which he did end up doing, and that's how I ended up at Quest Diagnostics. So it was the second time he called me about a job that I actually made a move through him, and that's how I ended up at Quest. And that's at the point when I sort of transitioned into doing sales training instead of doing sales. And so that's how that all sort of went down.
Jon Chee - 00:14:40: That's awesome. One of our early clients was a Quest subsidiary, so close to home for me. Talk a little bit about the transition from being an individual seller to being a sales training manager, like, nationally.
Leslie Loveless - 00:14:55: It was very, very odd how this all happened and not without controversy. So when I joined Quest, they had this training program where it was divided into two weeks and two weeks, a total of four weeks of training. And you went two weeks to the West Coast, and then you were back home for a while, and then you went two weeks to the East Coast. And because they had two, what they called Nichols Institutes, which were, like, centers of excellence for testing, one out in California and one in the DC area. And so they split up the training that way.
And what ended up happening is that I went out to the first two weeks West Coast. I didn't know it until I got there, but the sales training role was vacant. And so the person that was leading sales training because there was no sales trainer was the VP of marketing. And so I was going through the class, and I can't remember exactly how it all happened. But at some point, they started talking to me about the sales training role while I was at the sales training class.
Jon Chee - 00:16:08: Wow. Okay.
Leslie Loveless - 00:16:10: So I actually went back home, and I was only in a sales role with Quest for a couple of months. It happened very fast, and then I ended up getting invited to take that sales training role. And so by the time it was time to go to the East Coast class, I was the trainer instead of in the class. That's how that all happened. And I will admit, I absolutely loved that job. And I wasn't sure I would because I I mean, that meant that I was traveling a lot because every time there was a class, then I was out west for two weeks and then back home, and then I would go East for two weeks. But I did really love it. I absolutely loved that job. And so that was the first position that I was placed in by Adam, and that's the genesis of that relationship.
Jon Chee - 00:17:02: That's so cool. Also, I see a true line, you're an educator. Like, that's so rad. I'm very curious. So Quest being a diagnostic company, was the framework for that type of sales motion very different than a pharma sales? I know, obviously, there's, like, reimbursement considerations that are different and, like, regulatory considerations. Just talk a little bit about the shift or change of environment and, like, what that mean to how you train sales, how it was different than your pharma experience.
Leslie Loveless - 00:17:31: Completely different.
Jon Chee - 00:17:32: Okay.
Leslie Loveless - 00:17:32: Completely different. First of all, the division that I was in for Quest was the hospital sales division. So I was not in a role where the focus was calling on the individual doctor's offices. It was calling on big health systems and independent hospitals. And so if you think about the practice of getting a single doctor to write a prescription, that is a very different thing than getting an entire hospital or health system to change their primary lab services provider where you have to get buy-in from all different kinds of stakeholders. And, oh, by the way, there are GPOs that have contracts where if you're not part of that, you can almost forget it. And so it's a massive move for a hospital or health system to change their primary lab services provider. It's not a single doctor making that decision. Now when a hospital changes a lab service provider, certainly, there's probably a pathologist, medical director, chief medical officer, or something that is involved in that decision, but that's one stakeholder. You have supply chain and procurement and the CFO and the VP of lab services. And, like, you're trying to get all of these people on board. And if they don't have a reason to make a change, why? If it's not broken, what are you fixing? It is a massive undertaking, So a very different approach to selling.
Jon Chee - 00:19:09: Yeah. It sounds like a proper enterprise motion.
Leslie Loveless - 00:19:13: It's a very much an enterprise sale. Yes.
Jon Chee - 00:19:15: Yeah. I have colleagues who are not in biotech, but just, like, software sales, and they describe their kind of, like yeah. Like, selling into Walmart is a completely different beast. Like and also, like, I would imagine, like, ripping out an existing solution. It's like it's one thing if they don't have something in place, but, like, you have to rip out the incumbent. Like, that must be so hard. Like, when you think about these, like, enterprise sales motions, like, what is the key to success? Because, like, here's the thing. Like, I think there's a lot of innovators and entrepreneurs out there who dream of being able to sell into big orgs, but don't truly appreciate the nuances and the difficulty, and also the time scale. I know when they go to their board, they're like, oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The market's massive. There's all these people that have a demand for our product, and we're gonna get this done super quick. It's never as fast as you think. What are the core ingredients to a successful enterprise sales motion and team?
Leslie Loveless - 00:20:09: Great question. I think, first of all, service. I mean, in the world of laboratory medicine, you can't have mistakes and lost specimens, and people are waiting on diagnosis. It impacts the treatment decision. Like, you have to be very good at servicing the client. I mean, first and foremost, that is clear. But you can't talk about, uh, enterprise sale and laboratory medicine without recognizing that the economics of it matter. They just do. And the reason is obvious. Like, we have all kinds of financial challenges in our health care system and reimbursement issues and contracting issues, and hospitals have real challenges in figuring out how to manage their budgets and to eke out any kind of positive on the balance sheet. Right? I mean, it is very hard. And so I think it is making sure that you have a quality service that is delivering the right results on time and that there are as few problems as you can possibly have. That's the first thing. And the second thing is you have to be able to couple that with an economic value proposition because when you're dealing with supply chain procurement CFO, like, they have to look at that. They have to consider that. And any notion that they're not taking that into consideration as part of the decision is just kind of silliness, they have to. And so I think it's those two big things that really drive decision making.
Jon Chee - 00:21:50: That makes a lot of sense. I think sometimes entrepreneurs think the innovation's enough. It's, again, it's, like, necessary but not sufficient to get it done. A close friend of ours is a finance leader at City of Hope, and the financial considerations are massive, like, super massive, and, like, it's hard. Like, it it really is hard to run a health system that's cash flowing and, like, sustainable. The economics make it difficult. So, again, it's kind of this, like, downstream consideration that anyone who's, like, trying to get a drug to market or a diagnostic kit approved got to think about the economics of it. Like, I know when we're working with some customers in the diagnostic space, just, like, also, like, getting this thing, like, reimbursable by the right insurance carriers as a private insurer or do you get it to, like, Medicare, like, so freaking massive and I think slept on. Like, designing this from, like, first principles, like and to touch on the service component too, it's like exactly what we said. Like, specimens cannot just, like, go missing.
Like, for example, I had a this client that was a good subsidiary, Quest. By the way, that really resonates with me that, like, service there can't be downtime. Like, there really can't be. So this lab in New Jersey, we basically outfitted them with, like, a fully robotic, like, multiple rooms of robotic liquid handlers to run the kids. This was actually, like, one of the early deals, like, I did maybe back, like, in 2013 or something. So it's, like, a long time. It's, like, over a decade ago. And I was, like, kind of just, like, you know, when Slone Partners was just Adam. Like, at a certain point in time, it was, like, mostly just me at Excedr. But when I outfitted this lab, everything broke, and they were running like patient specimen through them. Everything broke. I thought it was over for me. Like I proper thought I'm cooked. I'm never gonna be in the industry ever again. Like, this is bad.
That was like a very like visceral lesson. And one thing that's different about what we do as a leasing company is that we cover all repairs and maintenance for the equipment. That was, like, oh, like, if I did not plan for that, it would have been over for me. It was one of the most, probably, two weeks most stressful operational experiences for me as a but I learned it was trial by fire. We, like, spoiler, we got the equipment back up and running. Everyone was on deck. It wasn't just, like, us, but it was also, like, the robotics, like, manufacturer came in. We, like, got everything going because, like, we had all the specimen in the freezer, but it can only last so long. And these are patients, like, who are counting on this thing. So, like, exactly like, I felt it firsthand. I could feel the intensity of, like, the service requirements. Like, you must like, there is no option for this not be perfect. And so we got it done, but absolutely, I think sometimes early entrepreneurs who are building out a lab infrastructure, they're like it's kind of like you want an umbrella when it's raining, but you don't wanna, like, carry it around. Right? So it's kind of this thing where it's like, to have maximal uptime and service experience, you've got to prepare for these, like, rainy days, like, no matter what. And I would imagine for a large enterprise like a health care system, you've gotta have, like, this guaranteed uptime. Like, you cannot say, like, yeah, it works, like, whatever, like, 90% of the time, like, not good enough.
Leslie Loveless - 00:24:59: Not good enough. Right.
Jon Chee - 00:25:01: It's not good enough. You know, what we saw too is is, like, when we're doing all the equipment for Quest, it was like we had bunch of parallel lines. So if one went down, other one still up, you don't miss a beat. But this is crazy. The parallel line went down.
Leslie Loveless - 00:25:15: Oh my. That's a bad day.
Jon Chee - 00:25:17: Bad day. Bad day. So we got triplicates. We got triplicates of the robotic lines just because we saw, like, oh, crap, two can go down at the same time. So it was, like, backup to backup. Anyways, I was on the other end of the kind of the service quality bar when it comes to Quest. So you're, like, learning the enterprise sales motion and you're teaching it to the commercial org. When did you know that moving on from Quest was in the books for you? It sounds like a sweet gig, by the way. You said you're like it was awesome. Like so something must have been really compelling.
Outro - 00:25:51: That's a wrap for part two with Leslie Loveless. Next time, Leslie faces a major personal and professional transition, reconnects with the founder of Slone Partners, and takes a leap from a large health care company into a small recruiting firm where she becomes employee number five. Enjoy the show? Leave a quick review. It genuinely helps. Catch you in part three.
The Biotech Startups Podcast is produced by Excedr. Don't want to miss an episode? Search for The Biotech Startups Podcast wherever you get your podcasts and click subscribe. Excedr provides research labs with equipment leases on founder-friendly terms to support paths to exceptional outcomes. To learn more, visit our website, www.excedr.com. On behalf of the team here at Excedr, thanks for listening.
The Biotech Startups Podcast provides general insights into the life science sector through the experiences of its guests. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from the podcast is at the user's own risk. The views expressed by the participants are their own and are not the views of Excedr or sponsors. No reference to any product, service, or company in the podcast is an endorsement by Excedr or its guests.
