Read time: 5 minutes
Welcome to the Succession newsletter where 2,000+ life science sales reps improve their skills in 5 minutes per week. If you’re getting value from these newsletters, we'd love it if you could forward it along to your sales colleagues. If you’re new here, subscribe below.

🔥 GET YOUR EMAIL ROASTED 🔥
Nick created a fun app where you can input your prospecting email, choose a scientific persona, and then have them read it and roast it.

The responses are hilarious!
They actually provide some good insights into how your skeptical buyers might react to your messaging
They don’t hold back whatsoever
Give it a shot below!

I talk to life science companies every single week, and the pattern is almost always the same. Great technology, real science, a team of smart people, and a pipeline that looks like a ghost town.
The reason isn't complicated. Your prospects are scientists who are literally trained to be skeptical. Generic "pain point" messaging doesn't land. And if I'm being blunt, most life science companies sound identical. "High quality." "Easy to use." "Accelerate your research." "Derisk your pipeline." Pick any competitor's website and you could swap the logos without anyone noticing.
On top of that, prospecting is the first thing that gets deprioritized. Founders are pulled in ten directions. Reps are busy in the field, working deals, or running to events. So consistent outbound just... stops.
The companies that are building real pipeline right now aren't doing one thing really well. They've built a system, a coordinated go-to-market motion across multiple channels that keeps working whether the team is heads down or not.
Here's what that looks like.
1. It Starts with Differentiated Messaging
This is the foundation everything else is built on, and it's where most companies fall apart before they even get started.
If your messaging sounds like everyone else's, it doesn't matter how many channels you're running. You'll just be saying the same forgettable thing in more places. That's not a GTM motion, that's expensive noise.
Differentiated messaging means you've done the work to articulate exactly why your product matters to a specific buyer, in their language, tied to problems they actually care about. Not features. Not a list of capabilities. A clear, specific point of view on the problem you solve and why your approach is different.
Here's the part most people miss: once you've built that messaging, you need to store it somewhere useful. We're big believers in building a messaging database tied to your ICP and buyer personas. Think of it as a structured library of your best positioning, pain points, proof points, and differentiators, organized by who you're talking to and what they care about.
Why does this matter now more than ever? Because if you're using AI tools anywhere in your sales process (and you should be), the quality of your output is entirely dependent on the context you give it. An LLM writing a cold email with zero context about your differentiation will produce the same bland stuff everyone else is sending. But give it your full messaging framework, your ICP details, and your persona-specific pain points as context, and the output is dramatically better. It writes like someone who actually understands your product and your buyer.
Your messaging database becomes the engine that powers everything downstream, from emails and LinkedIn messages to ad copy and content. Get this right first.
2. Distribution: You Need to Be Everywhere
One channel is not enough. I need to say that again because too many companies are still relying on a single outbound motion (usually email) and wondering why pipeline is thin.
Your prospects are getting hit with noise from every direction. If the only place they see you is a cold email, you're just another stranger in their inbox. But if they've seen your content on LinkedIn, caught a webinar you hosted, got a thoughtful email, and then bumped into you at a conference? Now you're someone they recognize. Now they're willing to take a meeting.
Here's what a coordinated GTM motion actually includes:
Outbound: Cold email sequences and LinkedIn outreach, both personalized and informed by your messaging database. These should be running consistently, not just when the pipeline looks dry.
Paid: LinkedIn ads and Google ads targeted at your ICP. These aren't about generating direct clicks to a demo page. They're about brand awareness and staying visible so that when your outbound lands, the prospect already has some familiarity with you.
Content: This is where most companies either do nothing or do the wrong thing. More on this in a second.
Events: Conferences, dinners, roundtables, and in-person visits. These still matter enormously in life sciences. Scientists trust people they've met. But events alone aren't a strategy, they're a channel within the system.
Signals and Inbound: Monitoring intent signals (job postings, funding rounds, regulatory approvals) and following up on inbound leads quickly and with relevant context. Most companies are way too slow here.
Lead Nurturing: Not every prospect is ready to buy today. A nurture motion with valuable content keeps you top of mind until the timing is right.
The key is that none of these channels work in isolation. They compound. The cold email works better because the prospect saw your LinkedIn post. The event conversation goes deeper because they read your case study. The ad builds familiarity before the outbound even hits. That's the whole point of a coordinated motion.
3. Content That Actually Creates Value
Here's my hot take on content in life sciences: most of it is useless to the buyer.
Company LinkedIn pages full of "We're excited to announce" posts. Booths at conferences with no follow-up content. Product brochures disguised as thought leadership. None of this helps your prospect get better at their job, and that's the bar you need to clear.
The content that works is content that makes your ideal customer smarter, more effective, or more informed, whether they ever buy from you or not. That's the mindset shift.
What does this look like in practice?
Webinars cut into bite-size videos. Run a 45 minute panel with a KOL. Then cut that into 8-10 short clips and distribute them across LinkedIn and YouTube for months. One event, dozens of content pieces.
Case studies with real specificity. Not "Company X improved their workflow." Instead: "This 50 person biotech was spending 3 weeks on sample prep per batch. Here's what changed and the specific results they saw." Scientists want data and detail.
Application notes and white papers that address genuine technical questions your buyers are asking. If your sales team keeps hearing the same objections or questions, that's your content roadmap.
LinkedIn posts from personal accounts. Company pages get limited reach. The founders, the CSO, the sales leaders posting consistently from their personal accounts with real opinions and useful insights? That's what gets engagement and builds trust. You want 3-5 people in your company posting regularly, not just the company page.
New video content. Short, direct videos where your scientists or product experts explain something genuinely helpful. No scripts, no polish, just a smart person explaining something useful in 2 minutes.
The thread connecting all of this: every piece of content should be built for the prospect, not for your internal team or your investors. If it doesn't help your buyer do their job better or think about a problem differently, don't publish it.
Putting It All Together
Most companies won't do all of this. They'll pick one or two channels, run them inconsistently, and wonder why results are poor.
The companies that are winning right now have built systems. They have their messaging dialed in and stored in a way that's usable across every channel. They're showing up on email, LinkedIn, ads, content, and at events. And their content genuinely helps their buyers rather than just promoting themselves.
You don't have to launch everything at once. But you do need a plan to get there. Start with messaging. Then layer in channels one at a time, making sure each one is informed by the same differentiated positioning. Build content that creates real value. And make sure the whole thing is coordinated, not a bunch of disconnected activities that happen to be running at the same time.
That's how you build a pipeline that doesn't depend on one rep having a good month or one conference going well. That's a GTM motion.
I also created a video that goes into these details below!



Succession Bio works with life science/biotech companies to help drive sales, licensing, and partnership opportunities.
We do this through market research to identify the right companies and people, craft scientifically credible messages, and then perform the outbound sales and marketing tactics on your behalf to facilitate meetings with the right people at the right companies.
Succession
Specializes in life sciences/biotech (it's all we do!)
Provides market research, messaging, and outbound sales/marketing services
Facilitates meetings and opportunities with the right people at the right companies for our clients
Sales training for teams of 10+ who want to find and close more deals with biotech and pharma


