How to Prepare for the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference

The JP Morgan Healthcare Conference is now less than three months away. As the business development leader, how can you use this time to make the most of the conference?

Next 2 Weeks: Planning

• Finance: Meet your counterpart on your finance team to understand their goals. Will they be in fund-raising mode? Will their strategic investment targets need a coordinated approach between finance and BD?
• Executive Team: Identify executives participating in BD partnership meetings. Schedule time on their calendars as a group and individually immediately after the holidays to review goals and their roles in the meetings.
• Partnership Strategy: Outline the high-level partnership strategy for the year ahead and get buy-in from the rest of the executive team. What are the highest priority partnerships to support the corporate goals?
• Key Existing Partners: What are the realistic milestones with existing key partners? Reach out to your counterparts to align on these and tee them up for the joint steering committee. Consider scheduling a coffee, lunch or dinner with your most important partners to build executive relationships and momentum behind the milestone.
• Deals in Negotiation: Which deals do you anticipate would be at a point where an executive-level meeting in January would build momentum to close?
• Partnership Funnel: What new partners are needed to execute the partnership strategy? Create and prioritize a list for outreach, identify warm introductions and engage them to set up initial calls.

Weeks 3–5: Agenda Development

• Partnership Funnel: Prepare for first calls to explore interest. Ahead of the call, learn about potential partners' strategy from public information, prepare talking points on your company's value and clarify what value you want them to bring to a partnership. Agree on next steps — terminate discussion, follow up call, or set up a meeting at the conference. Capture the agenda for the next call or meeting.
• Key Existing Partners and Deals in Negotiation: Hold at least one call in November–December to align with your counterpart on the agenda and goals for any dinner, happy hour or lunch.

December: Your Executive Team

• Briefing Document: Prepare and circulate one page for each meeting that includes: background on partner, background on each participant, participants from your company, goal for partnership, goal of meeting.
• CEO Review: Meet with your CEO to answer any questions and ensure alignment.

January: Final Preparation

• Executive Team: Hold a meeting with your executive team and your counterpart in finance. Review schedule, agendas and participants. Hold individual meetings with each executive to discuss their roles in the meetings in more detail.
• Leave Space: If you are well prepared, action items will come out of these meetings. Leave space in your schedule for follow up — and follow through on everything to execute a successful partnership strategy.