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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

When I moved from a production to a sales role 4 years ago, the game was simple. 

In 2026, the 2022 version of first time SDR me simply would not survive.

At that time I remember setting up a Salesloft cadence and running it nonstop on every prospect for months at a time. It worked, it got results and we were happy. But technology has advanced, email security has gotten tighter and prospects have gotten a lot savvier.

A good list from LinkedIn Sales Navigator, a meeting link in your email and remembering the lead's daughter's birthday will only take you so far in 2026.

Here's what your tech stack probably looked like a few years ago: a Sales Nav license, a poorly configured Salesforce account and a giant, ever-growing MASTER spreadsheet.

Oh were the days.

In this post I want to walk you through what your tech stack can look like today and take a closer look at some of the options out there to help you hit quota, maintain a full pipeline and keep your reps focused on the conversations that actually matter.

List Building

List building is a lot like cooking. Start with low quality ingredients and even the best chef can't turn them into a knockout dish. The same goes for your prospect list. If you're reaching out to people your message only partially resonates with, or doesn't resonate at all, no amount of great copy or rep talent will save you.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator has been the gold standard for list building for the past few years and it should still form a core part of your process. Rather than using Apollo or ZoomInfo to both build and enrich your list, the smarter approach is to build in Sales Navigator and push to a separate platform for enrichment.

In life science tools that pull data from scientific databases such as SciLeads can be a game changer when it comes to finding leads working on particular research areas or within academia.

Beyond the classic firmographic filters like headcount, revenue and location, we're now seeing AI-powered list building tools that let you run a complex people search from a simple plain-English prompt. That's a big shift from the classic Boolean searches we are used to running and this technology will only get better and better.

Enrichment

This is where things get broader and where most teams fall behind, but a few will pull ahead 

The classic enrichments are email and phone number, and for that there's no shortage of options. Apollo, ZoomInfo, Prospeo and Lead Magic are all worth considering depending on your budget and geography. But whichever provider you use, add a verification step. Tools like NeverBounce, ZeroBounce or Debounce will confirm your emails are hitting real inboxes rather than bouncing back and quietly destroying your domain score. It's a small extra step that makes a big difference.

Here's where it gets really interesting though. Thanks to more accessible AI API keys, enrichment no longer stops at contact data. You can now enrich your lists for FDA approved products, recent publications, therapeutic area of focus, clinical trial activity and much more. The ceiling on what you can know about a prospect before you reach out has never been higher.

Clay

You've probably seen Clay all over your LinkedIn feed and at this point you may be thoroughly sick of hearing about it. But bear with me.

When it comes to organising and executing everything described above, Clay is the closest thing to a brain your GTM stack has. It sits at the heart of the enrichment workflow and while it's not the easiest tool to get started with, the investment is absolutely worth it. Inside Clay you can run multiple data provider searches simultaneously, layer in AI prompt-based enrichments and pipe everything directly into your CRM. What used to take a data team and a week can now be easily configured inside Clay much more quickly.

If you want to run truly targeted outbound in life science, and in 2026 you really do need to, Clay is the tool that makes it possible at scale.

Sequencers

Think of a sequencer like a digital catapult for your emails. It is an automated tool that sends a pre-planned series of emails to your prospects based on a set schedule. 

Your sequencer fires your outbound motion. It's where you design, schedule and send your campaigns. If you've used the email tool in HubSpot or run cadences in Salesloft alongside Salesforce, you already know what you're dealing with.

What's changed is how seriously modern sequencers take deliverability. They're now built from the ground up to help your emails navigate increasingly aggressive spam filters and actually land in the inbox. 

Tools like Smartlead and Instantly allocate you multiple sending domains, which protects your core domain from getting flagged. A feature that used to require a dedicated ops person is now baked right into the product. Essential if you want your emails to land in 2026.

Signal Based Outreach

One of the most exciting developments available to GTM teams today is the ability to target prospects based on buying signals they've already displayed. 

A new funding round, a product launch or a sudden wave of relevant job postings are all signs that a company is moving and may be open to a conversation.

We've all heard the stat that at any given time only around 5% of the market is actively looking for a new solution. Signal-based outreach helps you find that 5% and reach them when the timing is actually right, rather than interrupting the other 95% who aren't ready and won't be receptive. It's one of the most meaningful shifts in how modern outbound is now being run.

So What Now?

Here's the uncomfortable truth. The same tools that make it easy to build a targeted list and craft a decent email are available to everyone, including the people doing it badly. AI has made low quality outbound embarrassingly easy to produce at scale, which means inboxes are noisier and prospects are less patient than ever.

A poorly generated AI email littered with em dashes (this guy —) and obvious AI phrases is less likely to book you a meeting than a badly written human email. To give you some context at Succession we have trained our model on a 30+ page document to help our emails resonate when they do land in people's inboxes. 

The bottom line is that spray and pray is over. We can't blast a list and wait for qualified meetings to roll in. The teams building real pipeline right now are doing it with precision, not volume.

I'll be honest, I enjoyed my spray and pray days as much as anyone. But as soon as I started getting to grips with the tools available I found myself enjoying the work more and seeing better results. 

The key to success in 2026 is finding the right person at the right moment with the right solution. The good news is that with a little research and a modest investment, this is entirely achievable for your team.

Final Thoughts

Pick something. Choose your lane and get good at it. Because the alternative, resisting the tools that are out there and hoping the old playbook holds up, will cost you pipeline.

My personal advice is to get curious. Play around with free trials, watch YouTube tutorials, and enjoy the new technology that's out there. Most platforms will give you enough access to get a real feel for how they work before you spend a penny. Figure out what fits your team and go from there.

One of the most encouraging things I've seen is that the right tools in the hands of a skilled operator can comfortably outperform an enterprise solution with a hefty price tag being used badly. A modest budget, applied intelligently with the AI layer now available on top of these tools, can go a very long way.

The stack doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be yours.

As a gentle reminder, at Succession we have already done this for you and have the systems in place to bring your outbound up to speed if you want to Book a Call.

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In this video, I break down exactly how we help life science companies build pipeline, close more deals, and scale their commercial operations through lead generation, sales training, and AI automation built specifically for the life science industry.