The 12 days of upskilling: what to learn when your inbox goes quiet

Your skills development guide for December

Author

Jess Evans
November 23, 2025

Read time: 6 minutes

Welcome to the Succession newsletter where 1,000+ 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.

Are we feeling festive yet? I’m writing this having just dropped too many £££’s on a Christmas tree + decs and blasted Christmas songs all afternoon. But it isn’t quite time to open presents, watch Love Actually and eat food until I can’t move from the sofa.

So what should we be doing in the run-up to the winter break?

Firstly, don’t stop prospecting. Yes, some people are already checked out for the year, and yes, you’re going to get more ooo replies. But there are still opportunities on the table:

  • Some are scrambling to spend leftover budget before it vanishes

  • Others want to get ahead on R&D planning so they can get projects started in early January

  • Many, particularly busy senior leaders, have more time to check their emails/LI messages in the holiday period

For the next 6 weeks, so many reps will take their foot off the pedal. This means your prospect’s inbox is less noisy, so you have less competition. So while everyone else is hiding behind their Advent calendars, take advantage. 

But enough on that, because Harrison already did a great job covering this last year. For more holiday outreach tips, check out #066: Should you keep prospecting?

Give yourself the gift of upskilling

Even if you keep up the prospecting, you're likely still going to have more time on your hands than usual. So the question is: what are you going to do with it?

Scroll LinkedIn? Catch up on Netflix? Or actually invest in yourself and your sales process so Q1 2026 doesn't feel like pushing a boulder uphill?

Before you start learning and building stuff at random…

Don't just pick a tool because it sounds cool or everyone's talking about it. Start with an honest audit of where you're actually struggling and where you're wasting time.

Step 1: Map your skills across the pipeline

Think about every stage of your sales process and rate yourself honestly (1-10):

  • Prospecting: Can you consistently generate quality meetings?

  • Discovery: Do you uncover real problems and business impact?

  • Demo/Presentation: Can you connect features to outcomes that matter?

  • Handling Objections: Do you confidently push past resistance?

  • Multi-threading: Are you building relationships across the buying committee?

  • Closing: Can you drive consensus and get deals over the line?

Pick your weakest 2-3 areas. Those are your focus zones for December.

If you're not sure where your gaps are, this newsletter breaks down the 10 critical sales skills and what good looks like at each stage. It also has loads of useful resource links for upskilling in each area, because the rest of this newsletter is going to focus on learning and building new tools. 

Step 2: Identify What's Eating Your Time

Run through each of these and make a checklist of activities you do for each, mark anything that takes you more than 30 minutes per week:

  • Research & Prep

  • Outreach & Follow-Up

  • Pipeline Management

  • Learning & Improvement

Now look at what you ticked. Those are your AI-assisted, automation and upskilling targets.

Right, let's get into some examples of what you could do to explore new tools, do new things with what you’re already using and upgrade your sales process for 2026.

1. Master Clay: Your list-building & data-enrichment superpower

What is Clay?

Clay is a list-building, data-enrichment and workflow automation platform that pulls information from dozens of sources and stitches it together into one powerful table. You can also plug in your lists from other tools you may already have. 

What can Clay do?

  • Enrich contact lists with emails, LinkedIn profiles, job titles, etc

  • Scrape websites, job postings, and LinkedIn for specific information

  • Score and prioritise leads based on custom criteria

  • Personalise outreach at scale by pulling in news, funding rounds, tech stack etc

  • Connect to other tools (CRM, email sequencer, Slack) to create automated workflows

  • Use AI to analyse and summarise all that data into actionable insights

Why it matters:

If you ticked boxes for researching accounts, finding contact details, or writing personalised opening lines, Clay can cut your research time from hours to minutes.

Resources to learn Clay:

  • Clay University - Great training library.

  • YouTube: Eric Nowoslawski for outbound sales skills in general, but he also covers a number of clay workflows

2. Build custom GPTs for your specific sales workflows

Custom GPTs are like having a personal AI assistant trained specifically for your job, instead of re-explaining your context every time you use ChatGPT

Examples of Custom GPTs you could build based on the checklist:

For Research & Prep:

  • Account research GPT: Feed it a company name and it returns a structured brief (company overview, recent news, pain points, key stakeholders)

  • Meeting prep GPT: Give it your calendar, and it prepares pre-call briefs with context and suggested questions

For Outreach & Follow-Up:

  • Cold email writer GPT: Trained on your best-performing emails, your ICP, and your differentiation to write personalised first touches

  • Follow-up sequence GPT: Creates multi-touch sequences based on the prospect's behaviour and your sales cycle

  • Objection handler GPT: You input the objection, it suggests how to respond based on your training library

For Pipeline Management:

  • Deal health checker GPT: Reviews your pipeline and flags at-risk deals based on activity, stage duration, and engagement

  • Forecast analyser GPT: Helps you build realistic forecasts by analysing deal velocity and win rates

Example workflow: Building a custom email GPT based on your best 2025 emails

Your best cold emails from 2025 are sitting in your sent folder. They're proof of what actually works with your audience. Let’s use these to make your life easier and your pipeline fuller in 2026.

Step 1: Pull your winners & let AI analyse them

Go to your sent folder and grab emails that got positive replies (not just any reply, but ones that led to meetings or moved deals forward).

Now go to ChatGPT and use this prompt:

I'm going to paste some cold emails that got positive responses and booked meetings. For each email, analyse and note:

1. Pain point mentioned (what problem did I lead with?)
2. Tone and length (casual/formal/direct, word count)
3. Structure (how did I open, build, and close?)
4. CTA used (what did I ask them to do?)
5. Personalisation (what specific details did I reference?)

After analysing all emails, identify patterns:

- What do my winning emails have in common?
- Which pain points get the most replies?
- What tone and length work best?
- Which CTAs convert?

Here are my emails:
[Paste your emails here]

Step 2: Turn patterns into frameworks

Ask ChatGPT to take those patterns and create 3 reusable frameworks:

Based on the patterns you identified, create 3 messaging frameworks I can use for different situations. Structure each as: [Opening] → [Body] → [CTA]. Include when to use each framework.

You'll get something like:

Problem-Agitate-Insight: [Personalised opener] → [State problem] → [Why it's urgent] → [Insight from other teams] → [Soft CTA] Use for: Cold outreach to companies facing known pain points

Pattern Interrupt: [Contrarian statement] → [Brief context] → [Connect to their world] → [Curiosity question] → [CTA] Use for: Breaking through to busy executives

Peer Reference: [Similar company mention] → [Specific result] → [Connect to prospect] → [CTA] Use for: Warm-ish leads or when you have strong social proof

Step 3: Build your custom GPT

Go to ChatGPT → "Explore GPTs" → "Create"

Instructions template:

I am a {Job Title} at {COMPANY}, you are my personal cold email writer for life science sales.

TONE: [Paste the tone ChatGPT identified from your winners]

LENGTH: Under [X] words [based on your analysis]

STYLE: [Paste the style notes from your analysis]

MY FRAMEWORKS:
[Paste the 3 frameworks ChatGPT created]

PAIN POINTS THAT WORK:
[Paste the top 3-5 pain points from your analysis]

MY ICP: [Who you sell to]
MY SOLUTION: [What you sell, core problems solved]
MY DIFFERENTIATION: [What makes you different]

RULES:
- Always personalise with specific company details
- Use [type of CTAs] that worked in my winning emails
- Never use placeholder text
- Ask me for more info if you need it

OUTPUT: Email + framework used + rationale

Step 4: Upload your winners

Create a doc with your winning emails and upload it as "Knowledge." Your GPT now learns from real examples, not just instructions.

Step 5: Test & refine

Write 10 emails with your GPT. If they don't sound like you or match your style, adjust the instructions.

How you'll use it in 2026

Instead of: [Stares at blank email for 10 minutes]

You do:

"Write a cold email to Dr. Chen, Director of Cell Therapy at GeneBiotech. They just raised Series B ($45M) and are hiring 3 cell therapy roles. Use Problem-Agitate-Insight framework. Focus on data bottleneck pain point."

Your GPT writes an email using your proven frameworks, in your tone, with their specific details.

3. Vibe coding: build custom tools without being a developer

What is vibe coding?

Vibe coding (also called AI-assisted coding or prompt-driven development) is when you use AI tools to build functional apps and tools by describing what you want in plain English. No coding experience required (if you’ve got a hard-core coder partner like me, they’ll hate this, make sure you rub it in their face, it’s good fun)

Tools like Replit, Lovable, Bolt, and Cursor let you build working software just by chatting with an AI. They’ll even go on side quests to de-bug the code whilst you sip your mulled wine. 

Why this matters for sales reps:

You've probably thought: "I wish there was a tool that did [specific thing]..." but assumed you'd need to hire a developer or wait for your company to build it.

Now you can build it yourself in an afternoon.

What could you build that's useful for life science sales?

Map out your top 3 ideas based on your checklist from earlier. For inspiration, here are some tools we’ve built for the life science sales community:

How to vibe code: prompt styles and examples

Style 1: The "Build Me This" prompt

Direct and specific about what you want.

Example:

Build me a simple web app where I can:

1. Input a company name
2. Click "Research"
3. Get back a summary that includes:

   - Company size and location
   - Recent funding news
   - 3-5 key decision-makers with LinkedIn profiles
   - Suggested pain points based on their industry

Use a clean, modern UI with a dark mode option. Make it mobile-friendly.

Style 2: The "Here's my problem" Prompt

Describe your pain point and let the AI suggest a solution.

Example:

I'm a sales rep and I spend 30 minutes before every call researching the company and preparing talking points. I need a tool that automates this. I want to be able to paste in a company name and meeting attendee names, and get back a brief that includes company context, attendee LinkedIn profiles, and suggested questions I should ask based on their role and company stage. What's the best way to build this?

Style 3: The "Iterate on This" prompt

Start simple and add features as you go.

Example:

First: Build a basic form where I input a company name and it displays the company's website and LinkedIn page.

[After it builds that]

Now add: Pull the last 3 news articles about this company from Google News.

[After it builds that]

Now add: Use AI to summarize those articles into 3 bullet points about what's happening at the company.

I would also recommend using an AI co-pilot to brainstorm and iterate on ideas, and then give you prompts tailored to your vibe coding tool of choice. This approach helped me when exploring these tools for the first time. 

Example: building a "Meeting Prep Generator" tool

Let's walk through building a tool that prepares you for every sales call.

What you want: Every morning, see your day's meetings with a brief on each company, attendees, and suggested talking points, without manually researching each one.

Step 1: Choose your vibe coding tool

For this example, we'll use Replit (easiest for beginners).

Go to Replit.com → Create a new Repl → Choose "Blank Repl"

Step 2: Describe what you want to the AI

In the Replit AI chat, type:

Build me a meeting prep tool for sales calls. Here's what it should do:

1. Simple form where I input:
   - Company name
   - Attendee names (comma-separated)
   - Meeting date/time

2. When I click "Generate Prep", use AI to research and create:

   - Company overview (size, location, focus areas)
   - Recent company news or funding (last 3 months)
   - For each attendee: title, LinkedIn profile, recent activity
   - 3-5 pain points they likely face based on their industry/stage
   - 5 suggested discovery questions specific to their situation
   - 3 talking points that connect our solution to their challenges

3. Display everything in a clean, scannable format with sections

4. Add a "Copy to Clipboard" button so I can paste into my CRM

5. Use a professional UI with a blue/white color scheme

Make it mobile-friendly since I'll use it on my phone before calls.

Step 3: Let it build

The AI will generate the code. You'll see a working prototype appear in a couple of minutes.

Step 4: Test with real companies

Try inputting a few upcoming meetings. See if the research and suggestions make sense.

Step 5: Refine with follow-up prompts

The first version is never perfect. Improve it:

The company research is too generic. Make it more specific:

- Focus on their therapeutic areas or research focus
- Highlight recent clinical trial news or FDA approvals
- Mention if they're hiring (indicates growth)
- Flag if they've recently been acquired or merged
For the pain points section, make them more specific to life sciences:

- Consider their company stage (early biotech vs established pharma vs CRO)
- Reference common workflow bottlenecks
- Connect to regulatory or compliance challenges where relevant
The discovery questions are too broad. Make them:

- More consultative and less interrogative
- Tied directly to the pain points you identified
- Open-ended to encourage detailed responses

Step 6: Add features as you think of them

Add a "Save Prep" feature so I can store preps for recurring meetings with the same company.
Add a section that suggests 2-3 relevant case studies or resources I could reference based on their pain points.
Add the ability to connect my Google Calendar so it automatically pulls today's meetings instead of manual entry.

Step 7: Deploy and use it

Click "Deploy" in Replit and get a live URL.

Time investment: A few hours to build and refine. Saves you 20-30 mins per call.

Over a year, that could be 100+ hours back in your pocket.

Replit Resources:

4. Automate a Workflow

If you’ve smashed through the other tools and want to push the boat out, you could explore automating a workflow with tools like Make or Zapier. These are "if this, then that" tools. When something happens in one app, it automatically does something in another app.

For inspiration on what to learn and how to approach, check out #087: Using AI to Automate Processes

What now?

  1. Do your checklist

  2. Plan your development schedule

  3. Seek help when you need it

  4. Smash Q1 and beyond

Need help? Book a strategy call and we'll help you identify areas where these tools could add the most value, and even build + integrate them into your current systems for you.

Episode 75: Women in Sales Roundtable

  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.

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