Groucho Marx said that time flies like an arrow.*

It’s true. 2013 flew by faster than a chief financial officer’s email messsage requesting sales numbers on the last day of a fiscal quarter.

Thanks to your participation and support, 2013 was a spectacular year for the Association. Let’s review what we accomplished together and what you can look forward to in 2014.

Where the Association has been

December 31, 2013 closed the book on the Association’s first full year sharing information designed to be current, meaningful, and insightful in order to support your career, help you achieve your business objectives, and elevate the standing of commercial professionals in the life sciences.

Where the Association is going

The objectives haven’t changed dramatically; we just want to get there faster without missing anything that you should know about. To that end, the Association is expanding the Editorial Board to better identify our industry’s critical questions and the authors who can answer them.

We’re also engaging thought leaders outside of commercial life science to bring you the very best practices from the bleeding edge of sales, marketing, and support practices. One quick example—Joe Pulizzi, cofounder of the Content Marketing Instituteand a titan in content marketing practice across innumerable industries, joins the 2014 SAMPS webinar roster. Joe is heavily involved in organizing the renowned Intelligent Content Conferences, which will launch its first life-science specific conference this May.

And whether you consider it a blessing or curse, sales and marketing technology is evolving ever faster and the evolution shows no sign of slowing. To help you critically evaluate your options and make the most cost-effective decisions, the Association is forming a Digital Marketing Working Group—details to follow very soon.

Where you come in

The SAMPS is your association. Help us make it work better for you. Tell us what you need. Share the clever ideas and innovative sales and marketing strategy that you see in other industries.

It’s never too late to join the fun. Help us ask the questions, execute the benchmarking studies, design the surveys and network with industry leaders to continue bringing the most productive information to the SAMPS community.

Curious but not sure how to get started? Worried that working within the Association would add too many hours to your already overburaened schedule? Don’t fret. Just email me and let’s get the conversation started.

Thanks to your interest and support, 2013, as evidenced by the hypercharged discussions at the Association’s first Annual Meeting in Philadelphia last September, brought success beyond expectations. With your involvement, 2014 will raise the bar.

Dramatically.*Actually, the complete quote is “Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.”

Alan Gerstein