Get out of your head and into your buyers

Read time: 5 minutes

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7 Psychology Principles for Life Science Sales

Most sales training treats buyer psychology like it's universal.

"Use urgency." "Create scarcity." "Anchor high, then discount."

And sure, those tactics work when you're selling SaaS to marketers or productivity tools to HR teams.

But life science buying decisions don't work like that.

Your buyers are scientists, lab directors, procurement teams, and executives who've spent years being trained to spot bullshit. They've sat through a hundred vendor pitches that overpromised and underdelivered. They've been burned by platforms that looked great in demos but fell apart in validation.

So when you try to manufacture urgency with a fake deadline or lead with a laundry list of features nobody asked for, they tune out instantly.

But fear not! There are psychological principles that actually work in life sciences. 

Here are seven that matter when you're selling to people who know the difference between correlation and causation.

1. The future self effect: Make them see themselves using it

Your prospect can follow your technical explanation perfectly. They nod along during the demo. They ask smart questions about throughput and data formats.

Then they ghost you.

They do this because understanding something isn't the same as seeing yourself using it tomorrow.

The shift that works:
Stop describing what your platform does. Show them what their day looks like after they have it.

Instead of:
"Automated liquid handler with 96-channel head and HEPA filtration."

Try:
"Walk in Monday morning to your plates are already prepped, ready for you to load and start reading."

Why this works in life sciences:
Scientists are drowning in process. They don't need more technical specs to evaluate, they need to know if this thing makes their life less chaotic. Paint the picture of the workflow improvement, not the widget.

Quick win:
In your next demo, spend 30 seconds describing a typical Monday morning for your prospect before and after your solution. Watch how their body language changes when they see themselves in the story.

2. Social proof: Show them who else already figured this out

Your buyers are smart, but they're also risk-averse.

Nobody wants to be the first lab to try the unproven thing, especially when their boss will ask "why didn't you go with the established option?" if it goes sideways.

So when you're pitching something new or unfamiliar, you're fighting an uphill battle if you can't show that others like them have already made this work.

The shift that works:
Lead with proof that people in their situation have already de-risked this decision.

Instead of:
"Book a demo of our screening platform."

Try:
"Join 300+ biopharma teams already running screens on our platform."

Or even better:
"Trusted by 8 of the top 10 pharma companies for hit identification."

Why this works in life sciences:
Science is peer-driven. If their peers at comparable institutions are using it, that's infinitely more persuasive than your marketing deck. It shifts the question from "is this legit?" to "why haven't we adopted this yet?". Think peer-reviewed, but for sales.

Quick win:
Add one line to your outreach email that shows who else (companies, institutions, therapeutic areas) is already using your solution successfully. Don't bury it in slide 47 of your pitch deck.

3. Loss aversion: Be honest about what they're giving up

Loss aversion isn't just sales fluff. Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for integrating insights from psychology into economic science, particularly for work on decision-making and developing Prospect Theory. This introduced the concept of loss aversion; the idea that humans feel losses roughly twice as strongly as equivalent gains. 

Which means in life science sales, where your buyers are constantly evaluating risk, framing what they're losing by not acting matters more than listing what they'll gain.

Here's where life science sales gets tricky: your buyers know there's always a trade-off.

Better sensitivity usually means longer protocols. Faster turnaround often means higher cost per sample. More automation can mean less flexibility.

When you pretend those trade-offs don't exist, you lose credibility instantly.

The shift that works:
Acknowledge the limitations upfront, then show why the trade-off is worth it.

Instead of:
"Access starts at £1,500 per lab per month."

Try:
"You're currently leaving 30-50% of your experimental data unused every month because you don't have a way to analyse it."

Why this works in life sciences:
Scientists are trained to think about opportunity cost. When you frame price as "what you're losing by not having this" instead of "what you have to spend to get this," it changes the calculations going on in their heads entirely.

Quick win:
In discovery calls, ask: "What's the cost of staying with your current process?" Not just financial cost. What’s the time cost, opportunity cost, credibility cost when results take three extra weeks.

4. Relevance rule: Cut the jargon, add the outcome

Life science vendors love to lead with technical complexity.

"Multiplexed immunoassay platform utilising proprietary capture antibodies and chemiluminescent detection."

Cool. What does that actually do for me?

Your buyer doesn't need to be impressed by your architecture. They need to know if this solves their actual problem.

The shift that works:
Translate technical capability into tangible outcomes.

Instead of:
"End-to-end platform for discovery, development, and analytics."

Try:
"Replaces the four different tools your team currently uses to track experiments."

Or:
"Identify your next clinical candidate 6 months faster."

Why this works in life sciences:
Even technical buyers don't want to decode your product. They want to know if this gets them to their goal faster, easier, or with less risk. Lead with that.

Quick win:
Take your current pitch deck opening slide. Rewrite it to complete this sentence: "We help [your ICP] go from [current painful state] to [desired outcome] without [main obstacle]." Test it in your next call.

5. Anchoring bias: Give them a smaller first step

The bigger the commitment you're asking for, the easier it is to say no.

"Sign up for a three-year enterprise contract" is a heavy lift, especially when your prospect hasn't validated that your platform even works for their assays yet.

The shift that works:
Make the entry point so small, or show them what the alternative looks like, so that saying no feels harder than saying yes.

Instead of:
"Our enterprise license is £250k per year."

Try:
"Start with a £25k pilot to validate fit, then decide if the full £250k platform makes sense."

Or:
"Most teams spend £400k building this in-house. We can get you there for £250k and even better, you can find out if its right for you for just 25K

Why this works in life sciences:
Life science deals are inherently risky, validation cycles are long and internal buy-in is hard. When you offer a low-stakes way to test your claims, you remove the biggest objection (risk) and make it easier for your champion to advocate internally.

Quick win:
List out three ways prospects could test your solution without full commitment: limited scope, single workflow, one team member access. Next time you feel like your prospect is struggling with budget commitment, present the smallest one as the recommended starting point. The goal is to let them experience value before they commit big budget.

6. Urgency bias: Make your scarcity real (or don't use it at all)

Fake urgency usually doesn't work in the life sciences.

"Only 3 spots left!" sounds like a marketing gimmick when your prospect knows you're a startup trying to hit ARR targets.

There’s other potential downsides to this. When you say only 3 slots left, you could be building an unexpected alternative narrative in you prospects mind. They also might hear: small operation, capacity constrained, can’t scale as our needs grow.

But real scarcity, the kind tied to genuine constraints, can actually help deals move.

The shift that works:
Only create urgency when there's a legitimate, logical reason for it.

Instead of:
"We have 3 Implementation slots available this quarter."

Try:
"If you want to start before your Q2 studies lock, we need to kick off onboarding by the end of January."

Why this works in life sciences:
Scientists respect constraints that make sense. Limited technical resources, project timelines, operational capacity, those are all real. But arbitrary deadlines feel manipulative. Stick to the real ones.

Quick win:
Audit every place you're using urgency in your messaging. If the deadline isn't tied to an actual constraint (your capacity, their timeline, regulatory window, budget cycle), throw it out.

7. Clarity advantage: Let them know what it replaces

Your prospect isn't evaluating your solution in a vacuum. They're comparing it to what they're doing right now.

Which might be a clunky workflow involving three separate tools, two Excel macros, and a prayer that nothing breaks before the quarterly review.

When you name the thing you're replacing, you make the comparison concrete. You help them see the gap.

The shift that works:
Explicitly call out the current solution (or lack of one) that you're improving on.

Instead of:
"Cloud-native LIMS with configurable workflows and open APIs."

Try:
"One place for every sample, assay, and result in your organisation. No more hunting through shared drives or chasing people for spreadsheets."

Why this works in life sciences:
Most labs are running on duct-tape solutions they built internally years ago. When you acknowledge that reality and show how you replace it, you're not asking them to adopt something new, you're offering them an escape route from something painful.

Quick win:
In discovery, ask: "Walk me through how you currently handle [X process]." Then later in the conversation, mirror that language back: "So instead of [their current clunky process], you'd have [clean outcome your solution provides]."

How to actually apply this

These principles only work if you use them. Here's the smallest possible version to start:

Pick one deal you're working on this week. Look at your last email or your upcoming pitch. Ask yourself:

• Am I helping them see themselves using this, or just explaining features?

• Have I shown them who else like them is already doing this?

• Am I acknowledging trade-offs, or pretending everything's perfect?

• Is my language clear, or full of jargon?

• Is my ask too big, or is there a smaller first step?

• If I'm using urgency, is it real or manufactured?

• Have I named what I'm replacing?

Change one thing based on those questions and see if the conversation shifts.

The life science sales reps who consistently win aren't doing anything fancy. They're just working with buyer psychology instead of fighting against it.

If you want help putting these principles into practice Succession.bio can help you craft the messaging, and then scale your outreach. Book a strategy call here.

1. Lead Generation: We’ll build target lists, write scientifically relevant messaging, and send messages on your behalf to book qualified sales meetings with biotech and pharma companies.

2. Training for Reps: A skill development platform for life science sales reps who want to improve their sales skills, exceed their quota, and take the next step in their career.

3. Training for Teams: If you want to upskill your team around prospecting, driving to close, key account management, AI, or any other topic, we can put together a training plan specific to your organization’s needs.

4. Strategy Call: Need more than training? Want help implementing and executing your sales strategy? In a 30-minute call, we will assess your company’s current situation and identify growth opportunities.