The second conversation

Scientific software is usually bought by people who don't use it.

That sounds wrong until you think about how purchasing decisions actually work in scientific organisations. The scientists doing the evaluation feel the problem. They run the pilot, benchmark the outputs, and form an opinion. But above a certain purchase size, they rarely control the budget. That sits with someone else, such as a VP, a department head, a CFO, whose relationship to the problem is indirect and whose priorities are broader.

Where exactly budget authority sits depends on the organisation and the size of the purchase. A small biotech might have a CSO who is also the scientific lead and signs off the spend. A large pharma won't. But in most cases, there is a gap between the person who feels the problem and the person who releases the funds.

This is the structural reality of selling into scientific organisations, and it has a direct consequence for how you build your commercial relationships. The entry point is almost always the scientific user. That's where the problem lives, where the evaluation happens, and where credibility gets established. It's also where science-led commercial teams are most comfortable. Application scientists and technically trained salespeople are naturally at home in technical conversations with scientists.

The risk is staying there too long.

There's a second conversation happening in parallel, whether you're part of it or not. It's happening with the person who didn't participate in the evaluation, who may never have seen a demo, who doesn't feel the same urgency about the problem, and who is weighing your solution against competing priorities you may not even be aware of. If you're not present in that conversation, your scientific champions are left to make the case upward on your behalf, to someone they may not have much influence with, about a problem that person experiences only second-hand.

That's a fragile position to be in when a decision is being made.

The most effective commercial people I've worked with read the organisation early. They map who holds budget authority, who influences the decision, and who needs to be part of the relationship before it becomes a budget conversation. They start building the second conversation in parallel with the first, not after the technical case is won, but alongside it.

It can feel premature to engage above the evaluator before the technical work is done. In scientific sales, that instinct is understandable. Scientists selling to scientists want to earn the right to go further up the organisation by doing the scientific work well first. But waiting too long leaves half the relationship unbuilt, and by the time the decision reaches the person with budget authority, it's often too late to start.

The scientific user is your entry point, your advocate, and your most credible source of proof. But they are rarely your only audience. The question worth asking early in any new opportunity is a simple one: who else needs to believe in this, and when are you going to start that conversation?