Dr. Zhiyong Li: Getting new customers - how do you recruit and then keep new customers?
Ms. Ueng: In the beginning, you will want to focus on gaining initial users - beta customers or early adopters. As far as how you price, I would never give away your service for free since that is an indicator of value. Your first customers are those that are ideally very articulate and very passionate about their experience with your product or service so they in turn can serve as your evangelists and the news can trickle from there. These days, there are so many channels of communications that if your early users become evangelists, they can spread the word rapidly, especially if they are very happy.
And while you always want to over serve your customers, serving initial customers is critically important. You want to spend time with them, find out how they use your product, what might go wrong and how you can improve. If you have a close relationship with them, they can provide articulate feedback. You could perhaps offer them a discount off of the initial pricing in exchange for their time.
Dr. Wang: Grace really hit on good points. For us, when you try to get a client, when you start off, your best customers are your friends, people you already know. In the beginning, you don't have credibility yet. So in our case, we go to professors that we already know, so they trust us. Otherwise, it is very difficult because the company's name recognition is not yet there. For us, we approach prospects based on our existing relationships. It is very important to engage in building relationships on an ongoing basis, so that when you start a business, you will have customers who can also offer helpful feedback.
Dr. Fernandes: We discover and develop new drugs, a process that takes 7 or 8 years. In the start up stages, we don't need to be talking to the people who will be buying - customers/pharmacies. But what we do find out, and is a required part of the presentations we make to investors, is what will these people will pay for. That is a fundamental part of the market research.
It's hard to predict due to changing medical care and insurance changing right before us every day. What could we possibly charge here in the U.S., in Europe, and in Japan? You cannot have much difference in pricing. There is a lot of thought that goes into this many years in advance. It is so hard to predict due to change in government, change of laws. We have to have credibility to predict this and tell investors with an honest face based on having done a lot of research.
Comments