Consumables

By Jim Poggi

Sweat the small stuff

When it comes to the small everyday items that make every lab run efficiently, the range of consumable products and, even worse, consumable product options seems endless. As a result, I’ve frequently heard even well-respected distribution account manager pros lament “If I don’t offer everything (for lab consumables), I can’t sell anything.”

Yet, since every lab needs these items and they represent a substantial lab spend opportunity, you need to challenge the conventional wisdom if you want to be a lab super star. My contention: If you are managing a lab catalog or simply want to take orders, yes, you do need everything. As a professional distributor account manager, there’s no way you can or want to offer every possible consumable item. But, if your game is selling, you need a quality assortment of the most commonly used products from reliable suppliers. And, you need to work your product formulary every day with every customer until you establish a solid product and customer base. So, what do you do?

Know what your customers buy and develop a “formulary” accordingly
Don’t be intimidated by the massive range of possibilities. Take a calm, reflective view and look around your customers’ labs for the common items. See what’s in view. The lab appliances — centrifuges, microscopes, rockers, rotators, etc. – are in plain sight and are pretty obvious picks.

Figure out which lab appliances are used in most of your labs and the requests you get most often. Then look for the really small stuff hiding in plain sight: microscope slides, pipettes, stains, blood collection supplies, etc.

Finally, ask a few qualifying questions. Which items do you use most often? Which seem to provide you with difficulties in performance, have back orders or are just inconvenient to get or use? Where do you buy them now? Why do you buy from that source? Which items would you like to add to your order guide from me, if I can get them for you?

Remember the first rule of consolidation: customers are most efficient when they buy the most items from the fewest sources. And, since you are their chosen lab distributor, make sure they choose you for their consumables.

Once you know the range of items, make a list. I use Excel and divide the list into two buckets:

• Lab appliances: the little gadgets with power cords scattered throughout the lab like centrifuges, microscopes, etc.
• Daily use consumables: slides, culture tubes, blood collection tubes.

I then try to estimate which items are most common and represent my best opportunities, like this:

Territory Consumable summary for my top 50 customers:

Lab Appliances

Item	Number of labs using the item	Most common choices
Centrifuges	38	6 rotor, fixed angle rotor
Rocker	22	Small rockers are most common

Daily Use Consumables

Item	Number of labs using the item	Most common choices
Blood collection tubes	46	SST tube
Blood collection tubes	41	Lavender top (hematology)
Microscope slides	22	Plain, green is most common
Culture tubes	14	10 x 75 plastic is most common
Pipettes/tips	14	100 uL, 1 ml are most common; list brand

Be a smart boutique
Don’t try to be a catalog merchant, order taker or big box store. It’s not possible, not profitable and it puts product selection for simple everyday items in your customer’s control not yours. Use Pareto’s rule and pick the items that cover the majority of customer spend with products whose price and performance meet the general need.

For these types of items, if you have consulted your best consumable suppliers, searched diligently for the private label items that make sense in this category and sought a little coaching from your manager, category expert or highly experienced reps, you should have a solid formulary. If your formulary choices are right, you shouldn’t need to have more than two options for most of the most commonly required lab consumables to manage. That’s a lot easier than trying to manage a catalog assortment. There is no doubt you will need to refine the list from time to time, but if you start with a solid formulary you will create customer loyalty and on-going repeat business.

How do you and your customers win with this approach?
Selecting a core of formulary products with the right combination of price, performance and availability is a win for everyone. From a revenue standpoint, you will grow your business consistently and get valuable repeat business. You will also gain loyalty from the suppliers you support most actively. This should open the door to samples when needed, excellent supplier support and even insight to new products on the horizon. Your customers win with an order guide you help create that makes ordering high quality products easy, consistent and assures availability of products with competitive pricing when needed. As an added bonus, if you have a good cross section of your customer base ordering the same products, they have the ability to borrow from one another should the need arise. We always hope that doesn’t happen, but we all know it does. A formulary helps you and your customers when the need arises.

Sell, don’t source

• Offer high quality options for items on your formulary as replacements for items you don’t have
• Don’t be afraid to sample
• Make private label work for you

The best strategy to manage your customers’ needs for lab consumables is to sell. Know you can influence your customers’ choices of pipettes, microscope slides and stains, which typically have the higher levels of customer preference as long as you know you have high performance options to offer. After that, the culture tubes, sample racks and other simple items are easy because there’s little to no customer preference beyond price and availability. Planning and selecting the right number and mix of products to offer is the “heavy lifting.” Once you do that successfully, implementation of your formulary with your customers will bring you the revenue and customer loyalty we are all looking for. Sweat the small stuff and reap the rewards!