We Are Norstella

Steve Wilson

Manager of Customer Success | Evaluate

Steve Wilson is Manager of Customer Success at Evaluate, leading both the customer success and renewal management teams.

Tell us a little bit more about your role.

My two roles are slightly different, but the main goal is to make sure that we understand the objectives, responsibilities, roles, and strategic priorities of our customers, and how Evaluate can fit neatly into those. The team does a lot of work supporting individual customers. That may be query management but also onboarding and proactive outreach. We are constantly reaching out to our clients, making sure that we understand any changes in their roles and how we can help. Our larger customers might be large pharma, large investment banks, or consultancies. Each requires a slightly different level of support. It’s really about us listening to them.

How did you join the company? What in your background brought you to pharma?

I had first started working at Lexus Nexus, a legal business information company. After three years there I heard Evaluate were looking for client services staff. I joined eight years ago, had a six-month sabbatical, and rejoined three years ago. I had no prior experience in pharma and didn’t know anything about the terminology people were using, so I listened to people to learn about what they are doing. In client services, I looked after our financial and consultancy clients. This is more of a reactive department, answering queries and giving support. Then it morphed into customer success.

What does your day-to-day role usually look like?

It’s a cliché but every day is different because our teams are different. Strategic customer success team look after large pharma companies; renewal management looks after renewals and our smaller biotech companies as well; and then our technical customer success, who we hired for about six months ago, look after our data feed customers. My day is about supporting the team to make sure they can be successful and then in turn make our customers successful. I’m very lucky, the team I have are absolute rock stars in what they do, they go out, listen to customers, build out cases for them, then talk to marketing and advocate for them internally as well.

What are some of the larger projects you’re working on?

We’re currently building an external client portal where our clients can self-serve information. For example, let’s say they’re trying to build out a report on forecasting in non-small cell lung cancer. They may not know how to do that, but the videos there will help them, and the reports will help them utilize the data. Evaluate has thousands and thousands of data points. We help them get the right information at the right time. Norstella acquired a company called J&D about six months ago and the team are now being upskilled on the J&D functionality so when they go out to customers, they can say, ‘We’ve got this solution that can help you do what you’re trying to do better’.

What are some of the common challenges of your role?

There’s always customer resistance on pricing but the most important thing is that we know what our customers need and what value we provide. That’s paramount to everything that we try and do. Sometimes we have difficult customers, but they are few and far between. Most are extremely understanding. They’re great people to work with. You want to listen to them because they’re the experts.

What’s been your career highlight to date?

There’s been quite a few – helping customers is always important. But I think over the last two years, it’s just seeing the group grow from what it was when I first joined. When I came back, they put me into a team lead role. I had my own customers as well. And then I moved into a pure leadership role. We had three people, then it grew to seven. Now we have added in three renewal managers and the technical customer success manager to look after the data feed.

What trends are you seeing across the industry right now that Norstella is in a unique position to help with?

Return on investment (ROI) has become more and more important for customers.’ When I first started at Evaluate, venture capital (VC) funds would give money to everybody as eventually one biotech would do something incredible and they would make all that money back. Now, VC funds are being much, much stricter on who they give money to. The biotechs’ runway is not six months, it’s two years. They have to keep that cash flow going for two years without anything they can actually sell. Norstella and Evaluate have data that can help them make those decisions faster. Evaluate has tried to stay ahead of this curve. We’ve added things like R&D costs, so customers can actually understand what the clinical trial costs will be when they move through to another phase. We’ve looked at things like product-specific probability of technical and regulatory success, so customers can see what the main hurdles are going to be and where they will need that money to be able to push products through those different stage gates. Now we’re also looking at peak sales for private companies, including indications that aren’t well served by the consensus or by brokers. We’re looking at doing that ourselves through machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). These are big decisions for biotechs and large pharma companies to make and they need data they can absolutely rely on. That’s what we always try to provide.

Which company principle resonates most with you?

They’re all very valuable principles, but I think the biggest one for me is probably Kindness, empathy, and grace. It sounds corny, but I think it’s a hugely underappreciated skill for people to be able to put themselves in other people’s shoes and understand what they’re going through. It allows us to communicate much more effectively and make better decisions. Being kind and accepting feedback from our peers and from people internally is such an important skill to have. It’s just being a good person to work with. The way I’ve always wanted to come across throughout my working career is as somebody that people want to be able to work with, someone that they can go up to and ask a question of and know that they’re not going to be shouted down. I may not know the answer, but I’ll try and give them an answer or point them in the right direction. Just having that empathy, kindness, and grace to be able to take feedback as it’s meant and not take it to heart makes everybody easier to work with.

What would you tell someone just starting their career with Norstella?

There are so many people across Norstella who have done amazing things. So, I would say ‘Be curious, ask questions, go up to people and speak to them about their day, what they do, how they got into that role’. Curiosity and listening to what people have to say will make you learn so much more. You learn better through osmosis.

Where do you see Norstella in the next year or two?

Across Norstella we’ve got the best data in the entire pharma industry in terms of clinical data, strategic information, look post-marketing, how you’re going to get through to market access, and pricing. We aim to make that even more accessible to our clients, using things like AI and ML to allow them to make decisions faster. I think we’re already most of the way there and it’s all about leveraging those new technologies across those datasets.

What do you like most about working at Norstella?

It would be rude to not say the people! I consider a lot of the people here friends for life. The attitude and the collaborative way of working are also things that I like. Again, it’s a bit of a cliché, but the fact you can go up to people and speak to them, and no one’s going to turn you away is really, really important. It’s a great place to learn and to work in terms of just trusting. Everybody’s got the right attitude and everybody’s there for the right reasons.

And finally, what do you like to do outside of work?

I play a lot of golf – badly. I’m trying to bring my handicap down. I also do a lot of football and running. I bought a new house about two years ago, so keeping the garden up to date is a consistent challenge. But if you don’t where I am, I’m probably playing golf!

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