What are your responsibilities?
"I am responsible for locating customers who fit our offering: manufacturing of small and large molecule technology for biotech companies. I coordinate clients to make sure there's a fit with respect to the financial, regulatory, liability, and scope of service parameters. Working out the terms for these parameters often lead to 40-50 page documents. Closing a deal involves two main phases: identifying the company then negotiating the actual contract.

We break down the industry into several customer segments: virtual and small biotech companies, medium-size companies, and large biopharma companies. Each has different set of needs.

The virtual and small segment is the most promising since they typically don't have any process development or manufacturing infrastructure, insight into GMP or knowledge of FDA regulatory approval requirements.

Specifically, we take a gene, insert it into a cell strain, and express the protein to allow for testing in animals. Then, we manufacture it according to GMP guidelines. So basically, we fulfill the manufacturing step at the stage when a drug candidate is ready to move from the bench to clinical trials. We get involved mostly in Phase I and II, with some participation in Phase III. Although not a huge revenue generator currently, our strategy is that we will be the commercial producer for makers of drug candidates that ultimately make it to FDA approval."

How would you describe a typical day?

??8:00 AM	I spend half an hour reviewing what I've planned for the day and another half hour checking and responding to email. There is no routine to my days. My days are divided between proactive and reactive work. Although you have much more control on the proactive side, I'm often on the reactive side of things. This makes my days much less predictable. You have to be able to plan both sides to be productive.
??Proactive ??Work	My typical proactive tasks include: Getting back to any potential customers Scheduling meetings with prospects Sending draft proposals to potential clients to go through the details in preparation for negotiating contract terms Conducting project review board meetings to screen potential projects at a high level (e.g., senior executives, subject matter experts or SMEs) to make a Go/No Go decision. This involves collecting information, drafting or editing proposals Conducting commercial review meetings with existing clients to review current projects determine whether we are meeting our agreed upon terms (usually either monthly or biweekly meetings) Coordinating and scheduling conferences and trade shows Regularly and routinely contacting key industry players who we may not have business with (i.e., maintaining relationships)
??Reactive ??Work	My reactive work typically involves: Responding to potential client inquiries (phone, email, referral) to set up meetings, collect information, draft proposals, review them with clients, respond to their questions, and set up the terms of the contract Setting up negotiations with internal clients (e.g., senior executives) as well as external clients It's important to react in a structured way, but the points of reaction are not that predictable. The challenge is always scheduling, since multiple people with multiple schedules can make coordination unpredictable.