Why Membrane Module Manufacturers should not use Independent Sales Reps

 

In recent years a few of the membrane module manufacturers have been using independent sales representatives which I believe is a bad idea and a case of biting the hand that feeds you. Typically, module manufacturers’ internal salespeople, and I am referring to MF/UF modules here, have directly sold to OEMs/System Integrators as well as marketing to end users and consulting engineers so that their products get specified. I am perfectly OK with that. What I am not OK with is the module manufacturers signing up independent sales reps to sell their products which opens up a can of conflicts. Let me clarify that I am talking about new MF/UF systems and not replacement modules at existing systems. I get that some new module suppliers on the market want to find opportunities ASAP and see independent reps as a way to get directly to engineers and end users rather than have to go through OEMs, but this is going to do more harm than good for the following reasons:

The module manufacturers don’t build the MF/UF systems and won’t be bidding the projects, so they still need OEMs to bid with their modules. The rep may also represent one of the OEMs bidding a project who may or may not want (or be able) to bid a system using that module and that likely will prevent competitor OEMs from bidding with that module. So now there is possible conflict created between the rep, his OEM and the module manufacturer as well as conflict between the module manufacturer and other OEMs. At best you may get the rep’s membrane system OEM bidding with the module, assuming that OEM isn’t a proprietary system supplier (Pall, Suez, Memcor/Dupont) and is willing to bid with the module. You also have to understand the dynamics between reps – the module rep will expect a commission for a sale whether his OEM or a competitor’s OEM wins the job as long as the module is selected. Competing reps that win the job don’t want to see commissions going to their competitor for the membranes and will therefore encourage another membrane to be used. This is a very messy arrangement (and difficult to explain) and is going to steer many reps and OEMs away from using the module.

I understand that the objective of using a rep who may be close to the specifying engineers, is to get the membrane listed in the specs and ideally flat spec’d so all OEMs have to use it. It is a very rare situation where you will get a module flat spec’d so in the case where it is listed with other modules, at best only the module manufacturer rep’s OEM will bid the job with that module. I had a project a few years ago where one such module was listed for a project and our sales rep represented that module as well as another OEM who was also listed for the project (not an ideal situation for an OEM but with all the mergers, etc in the industry you can end up with a rep having two competing OEMs). I called the module manufacturer for a quote and was told “sorry we are teaming with the other OEM on this one, but would love to work with you on another project”….. That is the last time we seriously considered that module and it wasn’t long before we also found a new rep in that region.

Before I get some module manufacturers too angry, I’m not talking about membrane replacements on existing systems where there is no role for the OEM. In that case it can make sense to have a rep involved to get the new replacement module qualified and help with the bidding process. But the reps should not be provided any incentive to push this module on new systems and risk opening the can of conflicts.

So how does a new module manufacturer get to market? Obviously, you have to sell to OEMs with the objective of having as many as possible bid a project to increase the chances of the module being selected by the winning bidder. In parallel you have to go direct to the engineers and end users to get a comfort level with the module and have it put in the specification. This latter point is very important. As an OEM, you have a lot of options (this applies to RO membranes also) and OEMs often don’t have time to market a new product to get it spec’d. There are exceptions when the OEM sees an advantage in bidding the new product, but in this crazy busy world right now, very few have time to pause and find the right opportunity do this up-front missionary work. So that is why some module manufacturers are using reps, right? I get it, and it may help on a specific project if all the stars align but in the long run to maximize sales opportunities it is better for module manufacturers to not use reps. Don’t bite the OEM hand that feeds you!

The comments and opinions in this post are my own and not those of my employer.

Filling the Conference Gap

In past years at this time I would be writing about technology developments and industry news I had picked up at the AMTA/AWWA Membrane Technology Conference (MTC) and the California WateReuse Conference in March but as we all know, this year these conferences and many more have been cancelled due to the Coronavirus outbreak. These two shows were one week away when most of the country started to go into lockdown, which was a shame for the many who had put so much hard work into planning these events, but obviously the right decisions were made to not cram so many people together in meeting rooms, exhibit halls and social events during these times. Also, as there had been so many attendee and exhibitor withdrawals, it was probably not feasible for the shows to proceed anyway.

Now with AWWA’s ACE20 and many other regional shows being cancelled through July so far, how will this impact the water industry in the short and long term?

In the short term, personally, I am missing out on the networking at these conferences where stronger relationships are developed from direct interactions with engineers, water utilities and manufacturers/service providers. It is through these interactions that you can find out about upcoming projects and industry developments well in advance of public announcements. I know Dupont was really looking forward to being the major sponsor at MTC following the acquisition of several membrane businesses in late 2019 and as I noted in a previous post, I was hoping to spend some time with Dupont at the show to see how these acquisitions would impact the relationship with its existing OEM customers. I am sure many similar meetings would have been planned at MTC. In the everyday hustle and bustle of working on projects and chasing new opportunities when you feel like you are always in firefighting mode, these conferences are important opportunities to break away and spend some quality time to look at new technologies, develop new relationships and strategize with current and future business partners.

The Coronavirus cancellations hit just when the busy spring conference season was starting and now that season is wiped out, we will have a void of at least five months with no shows. For manufacturers and consultants with well-established networks I don’t think there will be long term damage to industry relationships and finding new projects. This pause in shows is actually providing an opportunity to explore and utilize video conferencing and ancient means of communication like talking on the phone. Companies looking to introduce new technologies or enter new markets will be more impacted where the shows are an important avenue to launch these companies or technologies.

So far, I am not seeing a pause in projects bidding, although a few bid dates have been extended, but nothing cancelled yet. If anything, the bidding seems a little busier, maybe because engineers and owners have more time to get these bids on the street and are hoping by the time contractors are awarded the shutdowns will be relaxed and the projects can break ground in late summer. I don’t know if that means some projects are being brought forward so that here will be a lull in bids over summer/fall. I will update on that in a few months.

Long term there could be an impact on the attendance at conferences. Personally, with less travel I have been able to work on a few papers, write a few project case-studies, sort out some projection software issues, and other items I have had on the backburner for years. It has me wondering if it would be more productive for me to possibly cut back on some of the shows. I’m sure others will be thinking the same. There will also be reluctance to travel as much due to the risk of catching a virus, at least for the next year or two if not longer. For exhibitors, this pause in shows is probably also providing time for some reflection on the return they are getting from committing expenditure and resources to these shows and could result in some prioritization on what shows they exhibit at and redirecting these resources into webinars, etc – I am seeing a lot more webinars on new technologies and product information lately, obviously in response to less conferences and sales travel. Normally I wouldn’t have time to watch these, but with no travel I have been happy to sign in.

More Virtual Conferences?

We are seeing some of the cancelled shows now going to be presented virtually and depending on the success of the online versions, there could be more demand for this format. If so, the conference organizers will have to work out how to monetize the virtual offerings to make up for much-needed revenue from the conferences to keep these organizations going. As an industry we need organizations like AWWA and AMTA, plus local AWWA and WEA Sections, to be healthy and active so we have forums for technology exchanges, networking, training, government lobbying, regulation setting and many other services these groups provide. It is in our best interests to keep these organizations strong. I also do work on the industrial water treatment market and you only have to look at how fragmented that market is in terms of conferences and networking opportunities to really appreciate what we have in the municipal market with organizations such at AWWA, WEA, AMTA and WateReuse.

The comments and opinions in this post are my own and not those of my employer.

AWWA Aces it at ACE19 in Denver!

Every time I start to wonder if AWWA’s Annual Conference and Exposition (ACE) is starting to lose steam they have one in Denver that brings back the mojo and feeling that this is a really important event for the water industry. I think this year’s ACE in Denver was the best since…the last ACE in Denver in 2013. I don’t know if it is because AWWA is based there so a lot more effort is put into making it a great event or if people just love to come to Denver. Since I live here it is hard for me to compare Denver as a place to visit compared to other cities but I certainly think the convention center location downtown near hotels and restaurants etc, and less distractions such as casinos and theme parks makes it one of the better locations.

What was so good about it? I don’t know the official attendance numbers, but it felt like there were a lot more people at the show this year. As an exhibitor, the exhibit hall seemed to have a busier atmosphere right through the end of the show on the Wednesday. I usually plan on doing a walk around the hall on the last morning when it is typically quiet, but I was too busy with visitors at our booth which is great. I went to some of the morning technical sessions and these were very well attended and there seemed to be a buzz downstairs at the presentations with people rushing between sessions. Maybe the fact that there are less distractions away from the convention at Denver meant more people stayed at the show.

No junket no reps?

ACE is certainly less of a party than WEFTEC and I think it draws delegates more for technical content than going to party. I have been going to ACE and exhibiting for 20 years now and I recall there used to be a lot more people going for a junket. Perhaps that is why there are so many fewer manufacturers’ sales reps attending ACE now. Years ago all rep firms sent at least a few of their sales guys to ACE. Now, many rep firms may send one person or nobody at all. That is probably over 1000 people out of the exhibit hall right there (they don’t go to presentations). The quality of attendees in terms of key consultants and water system personnel is still very high and those going on a junket normally aren’t a target for the exhibitors, but with less wining and dining of water industry fat cats who probably now just go to WEFTEC, there is less incentive for the sales reps to attend. Many manufacturers see shows such as WEFTEC and ACE as opportunities to network and train with their reps. With less reps at ACE some manufacturers are questioning the value of exhibiting (and I have had some reps who say we should just go to WEFTEC which would then give them an excuse not to go to ACE). These exhibitors really miss the point where their main target should be showing their wares to the quality attendees at the show. To do that you have to put some thought into how to get the best from the show and not just turn up hoping a few leads will accidentally find your booth.

I don’t know if AWWA should try to attract more reps to help retain more exhibitors or concede these to WEFTEC and concentrate on keeping the show’s quality technical program and other activities. Without doubt, AWWA should try put this year’s ACE19 in a bottle and replicate it as much as possible every year rather than just in Denver.

The opinions expressed in this post are my own and not those of my employer.

Why do so many new water technology companies struggle?

I was at an American Membrane Technology Association (AMTA) workshop last December focused on the use of membranes in the oil & gas and mining industries and in a discussion with a professor who had done a lot of research on forward osmosis (FO) applications I learned of the demise of Oasys Water in the past 12 months. Oasys was one of the water tech shooting stars a few years ago, promising great new applications for forward osmosis for seawater desalination and oil and gas produced water treatment. The professor I was speaking to was a big proponent of forward osmosis ten or so years ago and his group at the Colorado School of Mines had done a lot of work looking at the use of FO for produced water treatment applications.

Over that time he said the producers of the FO membranes have failed to deliver a robust product with issues such as contaminant leakage, fouling and membrane integrity not being solved. I believe another FO company called Hydration Technologies (HTI) has been restructured and refocussed. I don’t want to get into the technical issues of FO but rather why did these start-ups with a lot of investor backing and seemingly great technology fail?

Here are a few of my thoughts as to why I think many water tech start-ups struggle:

Technology is brought to market too soon

In the excitement over the great potential for a technology, it is brought to market too soon without enough testing in real world applications to iron out technical flaws and while product development is still underway. I suspect executives are too impatient to sort out these details and want to get the product to market ASAP and assume the technical flaws can be worked out on field trials for commercial opportunities. I agree that you don’t want to delay launching a product until every minor technical detail is finalized but word travels fast in the water industry and a failed pilot study can be a critical set back to a new technology. There is a delicate balance between getting a product to market ASAP to capture an opportunity and start bringing in some revenue and continuing costly product development until the technology is perfect. I assume that in some cases start-ups are pressured by investors to commercialize a product too soon, so they can start getting a return on their investment.

Once brought to market, all product development stops

I have experience working for a company where once the new technology was commercialized, all efforts were put into field demonstration testing to get some sales while research and product development efforts were put on hold. Even when there was feedback from the field testing that some product improvements were needed to eliminate some issues, there were no resources available to work on these issues. I can see how in the urgency to demonstrate market acceptance and make investors happy after years of sinking money into product development there would be pressure to focus solely on making sales, but inevitably the field testing will find some product flaws and there must be resources allocated to further product development to keep the product competitive. Also, customer needs change and companies must adapt to keep meeting these needs. At the AMTA workshop one presenter explained how fracking chemistry has been improved to allow high salinity produced water to be reused in fracking whereas several years ago it was necessary to desalinate this water for reuse. That pretty much killed a key market Oasys Water, HTI and other forward osmosis companies were targeting!

Poor understanding of market

The municipal water treatment market is a conservative industry. If that is the target for a new technology the startup must be very patient and prepared for a very long sales cycle starting with small installations and very slowly building up to larger systems. Even if the technology is amazing and appears to have little competition, end users will be wary of buying an important piece of process equipment from a company that is new to the market without a track record and evidence that the company will still be around in several years to provide the customer with the technical support, parts/consumables necessary to keep the equipment operating in the future. Process equipment is typically a large capital investment and very few if any water utilities want to be the first to adopt it, even if it is widely used overseas. Industrial customers can be a bit more open to new technology and are often a good proving ground before entering the municipal market. But I still have seen companies with technologies proven overseas enter the US market expecting to hit the ground running and start selling to larger systems and end up very disappointed by the lukewarm reception from engineers and end users.

Other Start-ups to Watch

There are a few water tech startups I am watching with interest to see how they hold up in the next few years.

Nanostone Water, a ceramic membrane manufacturer, has been around for over 5 years now and in the last 1-2 years has been more aggressively pursuing commercial installations. In the early days its activities focused on pilot studies to prove the technology and also finish product development without racing to get sales, which I think was very prudent and showed great patience by the company’s investors. In recent years it seems like the development phase is mostly finished and the expectations are to start getting some sales, primarily in the drinking water market. I am not sure why the conservative drinking market has been initially targeted unless it is considered that the technology is ready for that market so that immediate sales can be pursued while development continues on more challenging applications. I would think for relatively non-challenging drinking water treatment in general it will be very difficult for a ceramic membrane to economically compete with a polymeric membrane. Especially considering that there are some very good polymeric membranes on the market that have minimal integrity issues on drinking water, where superior integrity is the main benefit offered by ceramic membranes. There could still be some legacy Memcor and Zenon systems out there that have to pin a lot of membranes, but polymeric membranes have come a long way since the late 90s/early 2000s and these systems should not be used as the standard for polymeric membranes.

There are some niche challenging potable applications such as backwash water recovery that Nanostone has done a good job in getting some early retrofits as mentioned in my previous post, but I don’t think they are ready for competing against polymeric membranes for mainstream filtration applications. Another big advantage of ceramic membranes is the significantly higher flux possible compared to polymeric membranes. I would therefore look at the wastewater reuse market where organics result in reduced fluxes for polymeric systems, more cleaning and therefore more chance of irreversible fouling and a shorter membrane life – all issues that ceramic membranes claim not to have. It seems too obvious be me, so there must be some issue with wastewater filtration using ceramic membranes that I am not aware of. I do know the Parker Water & Sanitation District's (Colorado) Metawater ceramic membrane system has had some fouling issues and the feedwater has a wastewater input so perhaps the characteristics of these organics are not favorable.

PolyCera has been a more recent entrant to the market after being spun off by Water Planet in 2017 to sell its membranes developed from a unique material. The main product is an organic polymeric UF membrane with similar properties to inorganic ceramic membranes which allow the membrane to have similar fouling resistance to ceramic membranes as well as being able to tolerate more aggressive cleaning regimes than conventional polymeric membranes. I saw a presentation from PolyCera a few years ago on a produced water treatment application in California where a full-scale system has been installed and this seemed like a very good market for PolyCera’s membrane. The thing is, I haven’t seen anything new presented since then other than a few pilot studies. It may be that PolyCera's membranes have applications in industries that I don't work in.

I do not know the strategies of any of the companies mentioned in this post and have just thrown a few theories out there based on my own experience on why some of these companies may be struggling. I am excited by the innovations out there in the water treatment market and really hope that they can be successfully brought to market when they can offer real benefits to end users.

The opinions expressed in my posts are mine and not those of my employer.

To Bid or Not to Bid?

What to do when you are only listed to keep the preferred vendor honest
As the dust settles on the annual end-year bidding frenzy where I probably bid on a few projects that were set up for other companies and we were just making up the numbers, I wonder if there is any value in bidding when you know your company is just listed so the owner can get a competitive bid. In some cases there are benefits in putting in a bid even when you know you have no chance of being selected over a preferred supplier but at some point when you have limited resources to spread between projects you have to make the decision – to Bid or Not to Bid?

There can be a number of reasons a company/supplier may be listed in a specification but have no chance of being selected:

• Another company has a good existing relationship with the end user through previous equipment supply and the owner wants to continue to deal with this company and the service personnel rather than work with a new company. This is especially the case where the project is an expansion of a facility, but as it is a large capital expenditure, it still needs to be competitively bid.

• Another company conducted a pilot study that the full-scale equipment design is based on, has developed a good relationship with the owner and was able to help write the specifications for the full-scale system. These specifications may require certain system features that are proprietary to the other company or difficult and costly for you to provide. This includes components that you may not typically use, so you do not have good OEM pricing.

• A service center must be within a certain distance of the project site or response times are required that can only be provided by one of the companies listed.

• The amount of information required to be submitted with the bid (detailed drawings, custom operating protocols, etc.) cannot possibly be provided by the bid date unless you had been working on these prior to the bid being advertised.

• Even though you are listed as an approved supplier, the first time you hear about the project is when it is advertised…

Even if you recognize you are just making up the numbers for one or more of the above reasons, there can be a number of reasons why you may still want to put in a bid as follows:

• It is an opportunity for the owner and consulting engineer to see the quality of your work through your proposal and the references provided. This may help you to be more seriously considered when the next project comes up.
• By putting in a bid you may be sent a post-bid tab with all bid prices listed and other competitive information that you can use to your advantage next time (you may also not want to give away that information if you don't think you can win).
• The preferred supplier may get overconfident and greedy and provide a price way over budget resulting in your proposal being considered seriously. Along the same lines, the preferred supplier and owner may not be able to agree on contractual terms forcing the owner to look for an alternative.
• The bid may come at a time when the other companies listed are very busy and there is not the incentive for them to put in a competitive bid.

The last two points are like playing the lottery and you do not want to be hoping for these scenarios every time you bid. I think the first two points are a better reason for bidding, as you have no false hopes and are working to build sales in the long term rather than hoping for a lucky windfall.

I am coming from the perspective of selling large custom capital-built equipment where a lot of engineering effort and time is required to prepare a bid proposal. So when it appears the specification is written around an alternative supplier, you really have to decide if it is worth diverting these valuable resources from existing projects that you have orders for, or from bids where you know you have a better chance of winning. I have worked on bids where the owner or owner’s engineer has assured me that there is no preferred bidder and everyone will be considered on their merits, then when the bid award notice comes out there is no pricing listed, the company it appeared was preferred is selected and you get some patronizing statement that the proposals were very close but in the end the owner went with the company they were familiar with or had closer service personnel, or some sort of subjective reason that is difficult to argue against.

Don’t get the impression that I resent the owner or their engineer for trying to get us to make up the numbers and bid. I get it that for public entities they have to have at least 2 if not 3 bidders, so the customer will encourage other bidders even if they have a preferred company in mind. As a manufacturer you always want to be in the position of having the specs written around your equipment and you should be in that position at least 25% of the time or you won’t win many jobs and will spend a lot of wasted engineering time on failed bids… The question is, when you know you are not the preferred supplier, do you bid or not? You then have to go through the possible upsides of putting in a futile bid listed above. There is also the possibility that there truly in not a preferred supplier and the engineer/owner has used a generic specification that may not suit any bidders perfectly. You then have a good chance in winning the job if the other bidders put in a halfhearted effort on their proposals. I see that in possibly one out of ten bid specs. The challenge is identifying if this is the case, and if you can the job may be yours for the taking.

We all have our ways to try get our equipment specified or find out if the specs are written around someone else and sometimes this works and sometimes you completely misread what you think you see between the lines. I have elected to not bid a few projects and then found out the company I thought was the preferred bidder didn’t bid either… I am still learning through the school of hard knocks how best to play the bidding game as I am sure my competitors are. I could write a lot more about this topic, but I don’t want to give away any more of my trade secrets until I retire so these can’t be used against me!

Industry Trade Shows: Pot of Gold or Money Pit?

Are you stuck in the tradeshow rut, spending most of your time chatting to your neighboring exhibitor, catching up on your voicemails and wondering if there are potential leads wandering past your booth? Do you find yourself doubting if all of the time and expense you put in to exhibiting at trade shows is worth it? Is the only reason you are there because you want to support your local sales rep or because you fear your ‘noticed absence’ will hurt your reputation? I want to let you in on something – trade shows are an extremely valuable opportunity to strengthen existing customer relationships and to bring in quality new leads – but you only get out of a tradeshow what you put in!

Fishin’ without bait…

If you think all you need to do is turn up to the show with your booth and literature and the leads will flow in, you’re dreamin’…. This is like fishing without bait. You may be extremely lucky and hook an unsuspecting fish passing by but… more than likely you will have plenty of time to get to know your neighboring booth buddies and keep on top of your emails. And you are not the only one in the boat. At most regional water industry shows that I go to, I hear the same complaint from my fellow exhibitors …the show was dead… the organizers didn’t do enough to get people into the hall…there were too many competing events….we had a horrible spot in the hall...” So you think all you have to do is pay for your booth space and you should be guaranteed a flood of quality visitors to your booth?” If that is the case, save your money and don’t bother exhibiting!

In contrast, my booth neighbors will say to me “Wow you sure had a lot of traffic at your booth…you’ve hardly had time to blink!” These neighbors have also made the aforementioned complaints when I have been located in the same dead spot in the hall! So how did I get that much traffic when all the booths around me were dead? There are a number of reasons, including having an eye-catching display and planning activities during the show to direct people to my booth, but by far the biggest factor in generating traffic to your booth is pre-show marketing! I cannot emphasize enough the importance of putting in some effort before the show to draw people to your booth. If you don’t have time to do this don’t go! Here are a few suggestions for pre-show marketing that can really help you get a return on your tradeshow investment:

Pre-Conference Mailer

A pre-conference mailer can be a relatively inexpensive marketing tool for regional trade shows. Prior to the national trade shows you can be bombarded with incentives to visit booths but very rarely do attendees receive this type of marketing leading up to the regional shows – so here is an opportunity to get noticed. Most conferences offer pre-show registration lists to exhibitors at no cost. Take advantage of this list and mail a booth invitation directly to attendees. Personalize the letter as much as possible and it helps if you add an incentive to visit the booth such as a business card drawing for a prize if you are doing a mass mailing or a direct exchange of the letter for a gift for a very targeted mailing. One of my most successful pre-show marketing efforts was for a show in South Carolina several years ago. At the time I was selling a water treatment process that removed a particular contaminant. I went through the EPA register and compiled a list of every city in the state in violation of the relevant regulation and sent them an invitation to the booth to find out about our process. Almost 50% of the invited cities visited the booth!

Pre-Arranged Meetings

Don’t expect to turn up at the conference and be able track down attendees to arrange meetings. The consultant you want to see is probably being pursued by other manufacturers while she is also trying to meet with water utilities who are her customers. Let’s face it, in the water industry we manufacturers are at the bottom of the importance food chain, even though we provide the technology. So we need to be very organized in planning our meetings. Make appointments prior to the show before your target customer has a full dance card. If you have the pre-show registration list, use it to help set up some meetings in advance, or at the very least, get people to meet you for a short while at your booth.

Pre-Show Advertising

Pre-Show advertising is not cheap (you can do a lot of direct mail for the price or one ad) but if you have the budget, many trade journals have pre-show issues where if you advertise you can get a free product spotlight. On your ad you will also have your booth number advertised. At a previous company, prior to our first national trade show as part of our launch into the U.S. market, I developed a preshow marketing campaign using an eye catching jumping goldfish in direct mail and in preshow trade journal advertising. Even though we had a small booth at the back of the hall, we almost always had a queue of people in front of the booth wanting to find out about ‘that company with the cute goldfish’.

Got the Message?

Don’t waste your time and just show up to the next trade show. American Water Works Association (AWWA) surveys show that over 80% of people visiting their annual water industry show participate in purchasing decisions and over 30% intend to purchase equipment from exhibitors in the next 12 months. Pre-show marketing can help you find those people who are looking for your product and let you get a step ahead of your competitors. Try it once and your time invested will be repaid many times over!

Using Research to Sell New Technologies

A valuable and underutilized strategy to facilitate the acceptance and ultimately sales of new technologies is research. I’m not about to suggest you start putting researchers on your sales force. And don’t ask your sales guys to wear lab coats either! But as part of the complex process required to introduce new technologies into the conservative water treatment market, a well thought out strategy involving academics who are recognized as experts in the field can be crucial to your success.

Facilitating Local Acceptance

The types of technologies I am talking about are not just slight variations on existing widgets, but where the technology is a significant step-change to the accepted methods traditionally used for achieving a treatment goal, i.e. the technology is a disruption to the conventional practice for meeting a water treatment objective. In the water treatment industry, disruptive solutions are typically viewed with extreme caution and therefore can take years to break into mainstream acceptance. Some great innovations may therefore never get commercialized.

The challenge in bringing these disruptive technologies to market is overcoming the perceived risk of being one of the first to adopt the technology. Don’t assume you can overcome local conservatism if your technology is well accepted on another continent or even in another state. Years ago I was delivering a presentation at an AWWA Section meeting in North Carolina on our Australian developed technology and was not asked if we had any installations in the U.S. but if we had any in that county!

A key component of our strategy to gain local acceptance was identifying well respected academics who could conduct research into the effectiveness of our technology on water sources around the U.S. Through reading technical publications and attending water industry conferences we were aware of which academics were actively conducting research in the applications where our technology could be used. It was also important that these researchers had a high credibility (and profile) in the fields where our technology could be applied and that they, or their students, had a track record in getting their research published and accepted for conference presentations.

No Free Lunch!

While any researcher is intrigued and excited by the prospect of working on a new technology and gaining a reputation as an expert in that technology, that alone is unlikely to get you your research for free. To get started, you must be prepared to fork out some cash to fund a post graduate student to do some work. This may range from $60-80K for a full-time masters student for one year or you may be able to negotiate 50% of a student for half this amount. The benefit of funding a student is that you then can have some influence over the type of research conducted and steer the work towards the needs of certain geographical regions or water types, etc where there are specific opportunities for your technology.

The Dominos Start Falling….

Assuming your technology is a winner, i.e. it outperforms the traditional alternative technologies, and this is then ‘discovered’ in the research, the papers and presentations will start to flow. And there can be a real multiplier effect from your initial investment. Here is what happened with our technology:

• Other researchers saw the promise of the technology and rather than be left behind by their peers, requested samples of our product to perform their own tests at no charge.
• The early academics we paid were also involved in industry funded research projects (AWWARF/WRF) that were investigating similar water treatment issues and they promoted the inclusion of our technology in these projects.
• These academics have also gained a reputation as independent experts in the application of our technology and have been included as paid research partners or peer reviewers for industry funded research projects where our technology has been evaluated.
• Students of these academics ultimately enter the water profession as consulting engineers representing water utilities or have moved up in academia. These students enter the industry as experts and advocates for our technology, confident in its capabilities.
• At this year’s AWWA Annual Conference & Exposition (ACE10) there were 11 presentations and posters on research and other projects involving our technology - only one of these involved research we had paid for.

I could go on with this list, but as you can see there has been a huge multiplier effect from that initial investment in research. Some of the tangible commercial outcomes have been new leads from water utilities and consultants who were referred to us after approaching the academics. Students who have entered the consulting field have also recommended our technology to their clients. There is also the more difficult to measure benefit of building the desired technology brand as a proven, accepted and exciting new technology that is market ready!

It still takes time…..

But you have to be realistic about how long it will take to bring your technology to market. It still takes several years to conduct the research, write the papers, get them accepted, published/presented, then start to spawn additional research and have students enter the industry. Notwithstanding, the use of research should be included as a key component of a well planned, long term product entry strategy to facilitate local acceptance and if properly executed can accelerate the introduction of your technology to market.

Spicing Up The Brown Bag!

Are you tired of making sales presentations to blank or disinterested faces? Are you fed up with buying lunch for people who are not the slightest bit interested in your product?

Well its time to put an end to the waste of time and money that is the traditional brown bag lunch presentation!

I would like to introduce to you a radically different approach to this worn out and abused sales tool, which quite frankly is not viable in these tough economic times!

In my article I will explain:

• What is a brown bag sales presentation and why sales people give them,
• Why I think the traditional brown bag is such a waste of time,
• Then I will introduce you to a new approach to the brown bag that I believe will give you a much better return for your time and money.

For those of you who are not in sales or are not familiar with the ‘brown bag’ term, a brown bag, is a sales presentation at a potential client’s office over lunch where the sales person orders in lunch. A more politically correct description is the “lunch-n-learn”. I have refused to use this term because lets get real – I am using lunch as bait to get some people to listen to me and most of the attendees are only there for the free food.

The target audience for Brown Bags in the water industry is engineering consultants. The objectives of the brown bag, for me, are to inspire a consultant to consider my product for an active project they are working on or get them to remember to consider the product when a suitable opportunity arises.

So what led me to rebel against the traditional brown bag?

It was last year in Washington State when I was travelling with a new regional sales manager that I was handing over the territory to. As part of the handover we were sharing the presentation load. This gave me the opportunity to watch the sales presentations and also watch the audience.

I saw little engagement from the audience and we didn’t get many quality questions. I realized that just about everyone in the industry was caught in the same brown bag rut – Delivering a 45 minute information dump covering every possible topic in the hope that something sticks and they get a lead.

With a considerable amount of our precious time, effort and travelling expenses put into these presentations we can’t afford to get very little return on this investment. I would therefore like to introduce you to a radical new approach to the brown bag. It is based around spicing up the process in which the content of the presentation is delivered.

New Approach:

In executing the brown bag there are three major objectives you should pay attention to;

• Focusing your content on the interests of the audience,
• Getting the audience actively engaged in your content, and
• Getting interaction from the audience so you can flush out new opportunities or get feedback on your product.

These objectives can be achieved as follows:

1/ The critical first step in preparing for your brown bag is not deciding what to eat, but breaking your presentation up into Discrete Modules.

This allows you to let the audience to select what information they want presented – I call it the ‘sushi menu’ approach. Your presentation can then be more focused and provide more depth on the specific areas of interest rather than be a general information dump.

2/ Getting the audience to select the topics goes a long way to helping get the audience engaged. Right at the start, before they eat, ask the audience to select what modules they would like you to present! Limit it to about three of up to 10 minutes each.

The audience has to pay attention, and by selecting topics, they will feel more obliged to listen and ask questions.

3/ Greater engagement then promotes audience interaction:

I want to ensure the brown-bag is a two-way meeting.
Without feedback you have pretty much wasted your time.

There is nothing more deflating than as soon as you have finished your 45 minute information dump, everybody immediately evacuates back to their offices without providing any feedback…

By presenting in modules, it allows you to:

• Break the presentation into chunks, keep the audience more alert and take questions while the topic is fresh (and check that the audience still has a pulse...), and
• Start with the topic of most interest so if you do run overtime, at least you have received feedback on the most important topics.

The proof in the pudding is in the eating.

One of our sales reps who recently used this approach at CH2M Hill said that he felt it was the most productive presentation he had given and the audience provided a rare compliment saying it was one of the most useful product presentations they had seen.

Our time is too precious to spend talking to uninterested audiences or to make a presentation that is a treasure hunt where we hope the listeners will stumble upon something of value.

I challenge you to stop going through the motions and spice up the brown bag presentation to better focus your content and ensure engagement and interaction from the audience and the results will speak for themselves.