THE SCIENCE OF SELLING TO SCIENTISTS
CHAPTER 4
Searches, Lists, and Signals
Staying informed about the latest developments and activities in your market is essential. This chapter explains how to create and manage lists, set up alerts, and monitor the recent activities of your sales prospects to identify potential sales opportunities.

Contents
– Introduction
– Benefits of Continous Monitoring
– Key Tools for Setting Alerts
– Best Practises
– Conclusion
Why Monitoring Matters
Once you have researched your audience and identified the tools needed to connect with them, the next step is to structure your research and sales monitoring. Setting up continuous updates and alerts provides opportunities to engage with your prospects regularly. These structured alerts ensure that critical activities are not missed, allowing you to respond quickly and capitalize on opportunities such as new publications, funding announcements, or organizational changes.
This chapter explores how to set up effective alerts and lists using various tools, ensuring that the information you receive is actionable and contributes to achieving sales outcomes.
Benefits of Continuous Monitoring
Continuous monitoring of your prospects is essential for staying informed about changes in their professional lives. With the right tools, you can receive daily, weekly, or monthly updates on the following:
- New publications
- Funding announcements
- Organizational changes (e.g., new hires or layoffs)
- Conference and tradeshow attendance
- Research project milestones
These updates provide relevant, actionable reasons to reach out, ensuring that your communication is timely and aligned with your prospect’s current activities.
Key Tools for Setting Alerts
Several tools offer robust alert systems designed to help you monitor your prospects in real time. Here’s an overview of the most effective ones:
Google Scholar Alerts
Google Scholar allows you to create alerts for specific search terms, which is particularly useful for monitoring new publications in your field. When an alert is triggered, it directs you to a Google Scholar results page where you can explore the latest research. While informative, you may need to assess whether the information is immediately actionable manually.
PubMed Alerts
Similar to Google Scholar, PubMed enables you to set up keyword-based alerts that guide you back to the platform to review new articles and publications. This tool is especially helpful for those targeting researchers in clinical or biomedical fields.
SciLeads Alerts
SciLeads is a powerful platform with customizable search features. You can create detailed searches using specific keywords, combining terms with AND/OR logic to narrow down your target audience. SciLeads allows you to monitor changes across a wide spectrum, including funding updates, new publications, tradeshow attendance, and clinical trials. Alerts can sync with your CRM and be sent daily, weekly, or monthly, and exported as CSV files, making it a comprehensive solution for managing scientific prospecting.
Best Practices for Setting Up Alerts
To make the most of these tools, it’s important to approach alert setup methodically. Here are some best practices to consider:
Create Two Lists for Monitoring
When researching a specific area, it’s beneficial to create two types of lists: a broad-term keyword match and a more focused keyword match. This approach allows you to capture general trends while also tracking niche developments.
Broad Keyword List
This list captures all activities related to your topic of interest. For example, if your focus is mass spectrometry, a broad-term search would capture any new research, publications, or developments across this entire field.
Specific Keyword List
A focused list helps you track highly relevant activities in a specific niche. For instance, you could create a search combining specific terms such as “Liquid Chromatography” OR “LCMS” OR “LC-MS” AND “Milk” to monitor developments in the application of mass spectrometry in dairy research.
Example: Setting Up Alerts for Mass Spectrometry
To monitor developments in mass spectrometry, you can set up the following searches:
Broad Search
“mass spectrometry”
This will capture any developments, publications, or news related to mass spectrometry across a wide range of applications.
Specific Search
(“Liquid Chromatography” OR “LCMS” OR “LC-MS”) AND “Milk”
This focuses on publications or activities that mention liquid chromatography specifically in dairy research.
By creating these two searches, you keep track of general trends while also zeroing in on niche opportunities that may be more relevant to your specific product or service.
Conclusion
Creating well-structured lists and setting up alerts is crucial for ensuring you never miss an opportunity to engage with your scientific prospects. Tools like Google Scholar and PubMed can help you monitor publications, while platforms such as SciLeads provide real-time organizational updates. This way, you will always have new reasons to reach out and connect.
By syncing these alerts with your CRM, you can turn every notification into actionable tasks, which helps you maintain consistent and meaningful interactions with your scientific buyers.
The Science of Selling to Scientists
1: Introduction - Selling to Scientists
2: Researching the Researchers
3: Tools for Researching
4: Lists, Alerts & Signal Monitoring
5: Prospecting: Grants & Funding Research
6: Prospecting: Publications, Authors & Collaborators
7: Prospecting: Tradeshow Attendance & Participation
8: How to Write Cold Sales Prospecting Emails
9: Cold Sales Prospecting: LinkedIn
10: Automating Sales Prospecting
11: Conclusion
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CHAPTER 5
Prospecting: Grants and Funding Research
Understanding where and how research funding is allocated can help you identify prospects with the resources to invest in your solutions. This chapter discusses how to leverage information about grants and funding to prioritize your outreach.
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