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I’m about a month into my time at Succession and something I’ve seen come up a lot with our clients is discussing running softer educational campaigns to raise awareness and challenge misconceptions before launching into more direct sales outreach. 

It dawned on me that I actually spent a lot of time in my previous role, leading BD/sales at a C. elegans CRO with a novel imaging platform (pretty niche and novel for industry), selling with an education first approach. 

So I thought I’d share some insights.

If you’re trying to sell something truly new, a technology, a service, even a new way of thinking, don’t jump straight into the “ROI and demo” pitch.

Because here’s the truth:

When you go against the status quo, people’s first instinct is resistance.

Think about how rigid most life science workflows are:

• Drug discovery follows the same in vitro → mammalian model → clinical progression it has for decades.
  

• Automation still triggers knee-jerk fears of “robots replacing scientists.”
  

• AI in biotech often gets dismissed as “hype” before anyone asks what it actually does.

If your offering doesn’t fit neatly into the existing mental model, your first job isn’t to sell, it’s to educate.

Case in point: AI tissue imaging vs. the status quo

To many histologists, AI still feels like an unreliable shortcut. They’ve spent years training their eye to read tissue slides, and the idea that “a computer can do it better” triggers immediate skepticism.

But with the right algorithms, these platforms can analyze thousands of slides in hours, quantify subtle morphological changes humans routinely miss, and standardize results across studies.

The problem?
Most prospects don’t instinctively understand how the AI works, or trust that it can replicate expert judgment. You have to translate it into the language of your prospects:

• Compare it to how they already work: “Think of it as a second set of eyes that never gets tired, trained on 10 million slide comparisons.”
  

• Show exactly where it enhances their workflow, not replaces it: “You’ll still do the final interpretation; the AI just cuts 20 hours of pre-screening down to 2.”
  

• Address misconceptions head-on: “It’s not a black box, it flags the same features you already look for, you can review every call it makes.”

The goal of an educational campaign isn’t to close a deal. It’s to make them say:
“Oh. I hadn’t thought about it like that before.”

How to run an educational campaign

1. Lead with insight, not features
   – Write about the problem and the misconceptions, not your product.
   – “Why human-only slide reading misses 20% of key features” will get more clicks than “Introducing [Your AI Platform Name].”
   

2. Audit your own language
   – You live and breathe this tech every day, which means half your terminology has become second nature.
   – Stop and ask: What words or concepts feel obvious to me, but not to someone outside my world?
   – Rewrite those in a way that resonates with them, not just with you. If you wouldn’t use that term when explaining it to a scientist over coffee, don’t use it in your first campaign.
   

3. Tackle the misconceptions directly
   – List the 2-3 biggest objections you hear (“AI isn’t accurate,” “I don’t trust it with critical data”), and answer them with data or a story.
   

4. Make the case for change, not for you
   – The goal is for them to connect the dots themselves. If they finish reading and say, “We should at least explore AI-assisted imaging,” you’ve won.
   

5. Save the Pitch for Later
   – Once they’ve absorbed the idea, then follow up with a harder sell, sequencing into case studies, ROI calculators, or demo invites.

Why it works

When you teach first, you:

• Build trust as a subject-matter expert, not just a vendor.

• Get prospects using your language to describe their problems.

• Lower resistance to change, because the idea feels like theirs, not yours.

Novel tech doesn’t sell by pitch-slapping people. It sells when they see the value in their own terms.

And don’t worry, you’ll still get the immediate meetings from those already bought into the novel approaches, but you’ll also increase your chances of getting the leads who were resistant in your next campaign. 

So, next time you’re planning outreach for a truly disruptive product, ask yourself:
What misconceptions do I need to un-teach, and what insider language do I need to un-learn, before I can even start selling?

Your turn: What’s one misconception that’s stopping your prospects from even considering your solution?

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