Nobody has a bigger passion for scientific sales than our very own Technical Sales Specialist for Solaris Biotech, Matt Wright!
How did you get into the biotech industry and now, BPES?
“I travelled for three years after university, but it got to the point where I wanted to put my Chemistry degree to good use and pursue a career. However, at the time it was the height of the pandemic so the only readily available jobs in science were Covid testing. I did that for a year and a half and progressed nicely, but I didn’t get much satisfaction from it. Fortunately, COVID-19 settled down and the role came to a natural conclusion.
I’d romanticised the idea of going into sales for some years. Partly because I’m a people person, I like talking to others and getting to know them, but also because I love being around interesting research and development, I just didn’t want to be the one in the lab doing it. So, I started searching for roles in scientific sales. The Technical Sales Specialist vacancy came up at BPES and it was almost too good to be true, it was exactly what I wanted! When I looked into the company, I got a really good feeling about it. I applied for the position and really clicked with Tom in the interview and now, here I am!”
What does a typical day look like at BPES for you?
“I’ll start my day off by attending our daily morning team’s meeting, where we discuss our agendas for the day. I then have a variety of account admin duties, like emailing customers about quotes and developing relationships, really. It’s hard to say exactly what a typical day is as they are often so varied; you can guarantee I’ll be interacting with customers, and Solaris, to some extent, to find the best solution for their upstream processing.
I also do a lot of problem solving with customers. For example, when our customers order a fermenter, I’ll go to their site with Stuart for the installation and training. I go all over the country installing equipment! It’s not just sales. There’s a lot of marketing and business development as well, which is reinforced by the conferences we attend throughout the year. I love the variety of my job, for sure!”
What are the ongoing challenges your customers face and how does Solaris help combat these?
“It depends on the customer and what they are trying to achieve. To give you a real example, the cell agriculture industry currently faces the big challenge of trying to make alternative proteins more cost effective before scaling-up. A lot of businesses are investing in their R&D department so they’re purchasing bioreactors to tackle this problem and find solutions that allow lab grown meats to compete with traditional animal products on price. An automated bioreactor offers so much in the way of measurements and control. It allows customers to fully automate their bioprocess in a completely reproducible way and the real-time data offers so much valuable insight into their process that just isn’t available any other way. This insight makes it much easier to see the imperfections in a process and allows you to optimise it, which can have a dramatic effect on your production costs at large-scale.
What’s particularly great about the Solaris bench top bioreactors is that 24 units can be run in parallel, so if you’re wanting to fine-tune a process, it’s much easier to alter a few parameters, run the experiments and compare the results, like for like. You also have this really nice feature on the Leonardo software that allows you to overlay several graphs in real-time to see how certain variables interact with one another.”
What do you think makes BPES stand out in the industry?
“This is an easy one. BPES stands out in many ways. They’re a fantastic company, with genuine morals. What’s refreshing is our approach, it isn’t to sell for the sake of selling. There are no financial targets to hit, or number of calls or emails to make each day. Generally, our customers contact us for advice with servicing or maintenance issues, or for a quote for a bioprocess related product. I’m contacted for anything Solaris bioreactor or fermenter related.
First and foremost, we are here to help by giving sound advice and finding solutions to our customers problems. We give them the best possible information and to help them make an informed decision at all stages of their process, whilst building lasting relationships. BPES always have good intentions and that’s what makes it a great company to work for. I feel like I sound cheesy and scripted saying it, but it’s true.”
If you weren’t a Technical Sales Specialist, what would you be doing instead?
“If I’m being honest, I’d still be in scientific sales! That’s what I wanted to do career wise. However, if we’re talking about dream jobs, and money wasn’t an object, I ‘d like to be a park ranger in Canada, or an adventurer or mountaineer of some sort. I’d spend all my time hiking in the mountains with about 5 dogs beside me. Nothing beats enjoying life outdoors in the wilderness and I love physical exercise!”
Want to find out more about the BPES team? Discover our ‘Inside BPES‘ series today!
