Why marketing is education. (And how to use that in your gr - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Why marketing is education. (And how to use that in your grants to make them far more compelling)

Morgan Giddings, PhDSept 26, 2012

Or how I greedily sucked $23.4 M from NIH Slide2

The benefits of learning this stuff more deeply (pay attention today)

Colleague recognitionExpand your scienceTenure/promotion

Your choice of where to work, who to work with

Building and supporting a strong team… etc.Slide3

Part 1. California Experience

Lesson: play to your strengths with your grantsPeople forget about their strengthsMake a list of assets to bring to proposalOne thing at a time, focus

Lesson: whether in business or academia, you’re selling

Job of running lab, you are in a business

Univ

scrambling to come up with funding for those who cant get funding

If not successful in selling your science, you will eventually go downSlide4

Part 1. California Experience

Lesson: Emotions are key to everything -- the story of a delayed talkIn LA, went to talk with plenty of time, tied up in traffic, got emotional state down to a reasonable levelTrying to convince someone to give money, not just the science, it is no longer hard rational scientific judgment, it is emotional at the core. Reviewers decisions made by emotions

Lesson: understand what gets your audience jazzed

Change underlying science to get more compelling words. Not just about the words, must change the underlying science.Slide5

Part II. Why I don’t offer recording of Webinars (and what this has to do with your grants)

Offering an anytime replay of the event is an invitation to multi task, less focusLesson: knowing your audience really well – pressures, pain points and preferences

Example, reviewers are working on a review committee because they feel they need to almost always an

objectional

activity

Must be simple and clear-- if dense and technical, making their pain worse, adding to the pressure

Lesson:

Offereing

them something that is in their best interest, and doing it compellingly – write it from their point of view, instead of will this excite them

(push vs. pull)Slide6

Adding scarcity for reviewer so they think they have to get it nowExample - Total Grant Makeover, take action now and get a discount in the price,

Example – the ENCODE project (most about DNA, coding elements on genome). She was coming in late with a Proteomics approach – but timing was right, proteins of interest in getting info about genes and genome. Technology needed to get to a point and opportunity to get at a particular cell lines needed to do nowSo put scarcity into grant that is real, needs to be now, has to be realSlide7

Commitment and consistencyTake a step in one direction, likely to go on

If you simply show up to a webinar on grant writing, taking first stepDon’t take first step, you will be stuckSame with reviewers, make first snap judgement whether it is interesting or not. Then they will be looking for evidence that supports the first judgment. Further they go down the path, the more likely they will stick with those impressions.

First part of grant proposal must be very interesting, compelling, consistent. Specific aims must do all thisSlide8

Take step down path.. answer objections.. then another step… answer objections… repeat

The mind set is first into the rejection category. Very easy to go into this category from mindset that I want to fundSlide9

Part III. Educating your reviewer about the value of what you do in your proposal

This is the key. Covers everything about So which title do you remember (the title or how I greedily sucked grants …etc.)Why is 2

nd

title more compelling, remember? Always remember things we have an emotional response to much more than no emotion (emotion could be good or bad)

Scientific information

does not

generate emotion

Packing info at the right time is key; don’t just pile as much info in as possible thinking that would be the compelling story. It

isntSlide10

Part III. Educating your reviewer about the value of what you do in your proposal

Drilling facts doesn’t work, Educating readers about value of what your are proposing they are far more likely to get excited about itOne reason is because of information explosion (info

vs

avail storage). Info was much more scarce years ago. Not so any more. Slide11

Push learning

Authority figFacts and figI’m right your wrong

Doesn’t work anymore

People overloaded

already

Only want facts and data of immediate interest

They don’t like authority pushed to get through all

informationSlide12

Pull Mode of Educating

InvitingCollegialCollaborativeFunEngagingInterestingSlide13

Educating the Reviewer

Propsal is about educating reader about value of what you do. Pull in then can give facts

Think about how

education

mode applies Push, PullSlide14

Value to the Proposal

Something people desire (e.g., gold)Why do they desire it (genomic audience new insights into genome, something they wanted)Emotion and belief, not rationalSlide15

Bottom line, develop skills at both pull

education and at understanding what your audience valuesMust make the push-to-pull transformation and really understanding what your audience values is the keySlide16

Mentoring Value

Most senior people struggling, cant give feedback on what is neededThrough out scientific and grant writing are in the Push mode, it is hard to find mentors in the Pull mode.