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Succession Bio works with life science 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

We're about to launch something new, and building it has been easier than figuring out how to position it properly.

Our first draft of the headline was "Run your life-science sales pipeline in one AI-powered platform." It's accurate, but it's also exactly what every other tool says. If you swapped our logo for a competitor's, nobody would notice.

That's the trap most of us fall into when we describe our own product. We lead with what it is (the category) and what it does (the features), while the buyer is waiting to hear what changes or becomes possible for them. In other words, what outcome will you deliver that no other option can?

So we went back to basics and used April Dunford's approach to positioning. Here's how we're working through it, because the same steps work for whatever you sell.

Step 1. Start with what they'd do without you

When most teams think about competition, they picture the companies on their comparison slide. Those are your direct competitors, the products that solve the same problem in roughly the same way. But your buyer's real alternative is often indirect, a completely different way of getting the job done, or simply living with the problem.

For us, the direct competitors are other outbound and sales intelligence platforms. The indirect alternatives are where most deals are actually won or lost. A buyer might hire an SDR, have the founder do outreach on nights and weekends, bring in an agency, or buy a data tool and hope the sales team can fit prospecting in around everything else they have to do. That last one rarely works, since nearly half of reps (47%) say cold outreach is one of the worst parts of the job, according to Salesforce's latest State of Sales report.

Your value only means something compared to the alternative your buyer is actually considering. If they're weighing you against hiring a person, telling them you're "AI-powered" doesn't help them decide anything. Telling them they can have an always-on pipeline engine, without a three-month hiring process and the ramp time that follows, gives them a real comparison to make.

The same goes for the other alternatives. Next to an agency, the real question is who keeps the learnings when the contract ends. Next to a data tool, it's whether anyone on the team actually has the time or knows how to use it effectively.

Step 2. Find the value only you can deliver

Before listing anything, it's worth being clear on what differentiated value means. It isn't a differentiated feature. A feature is something your product has, while differentiated value is an outcome your buyer can now reach that only your solution makes possible. Lots of products can send emails or score leads. The question is what result your customer gets with you that they couldn't get from any of the alternatives in Step 1.

We listed everything we could say about the product, and it was a long list. Then we were honest about which items a buyer genuinely couldn't get anywhere else, and a handful survived.

• Life-science go-to-market expertise built into the product

• A learning loop that makes everything better over time

• A specialist team that can run it for you, not just software

• Life-science data on who to reach and when and the ability to act on it in one platform

To prioritize them, we asked two questions of each one. Does it create an outcome the buyer can't get elsewhere, and is it the reason they'd choose us? The data and the specialist team are real strengths, but on their own they look a lot like what a data provider or an agency offers. The first two are where the outcome is truly different.

The first is our experience building go-to-market systems for pipeline generation in the life sciences, built directly into the product. Everything we've learned across more than 3,500 campaigns, 25,000+ replies from biotech, pharma, and academia buyers, and the content and webinars we've run for life-science companies shapes who the system targets, why now is the right moment to reach them, and what to say when you do. So what does that mean for the user? It works from day one, without months of trial and error or burning through your best accounts while you figure out what lands. You get in front of the right buyers with the right message straight away, which means real conversations and pipeline in weeks instead of quarters, even if nobody on your team is a sales expert.

The second is a learning loop. Every campaign, reply, meeting, piece of content and conversation is fed back into the system, so it gets sharper at targeting, messaging and timing the longer you use it. In practice, every month should produce more qualified conversations for the same effort than the month before, instead of results that plateau or reset every quarter. Over time, your pipeline stops depending on whoever happens to be running it and becomes an asset the company owns and builds on, even when people leave.

Step 3. Demote the rest

This was the hard part. Some of what we're proud of are genuinely good features, but a feature isn't the same as value. Each of these makes it easier for a buyer to say yes, and none of them changes the outcome they get.

• Owning your data and everything the system learns, which makes buyers feel safe but doesn't get them more meetings

• Approving every message before it goes out, which builds trust but doesn't change who replies

• Connecting to your CRM, which saves admin but doesn't create pipeline on its own

• Compliance and security, which every serious buyer checks for but nobody chooses you because of

• Working across email, LinkedIn and other channels, which most tools in the category also offer

These are meaningful features to have, and buyers will ask about them. But they don't drive a different outcome, so they belong in your objection handling, not your headline.

Step 4. Find who cares most about that value

Once you know your differentiated value, it's worth revisiting your ideal customer profile. Most ICPs describe who you CAN sell to, usually by industry, size and job title. A sharper ICP describes who cares the most about the value only you deliver.

For us, plenty of life-science companies could use the product. The ones who care most are teams whose pipeline depends on a few people's time and memory, like a founder selling while running the company, a small commercial team without an SDR, or a team that has just lost a rep and watched their pipeline leave with them. For those buyers, built-in expertise and a learning loop aren't nice to have. They're the difference between having a pipeline and not having one.

Narrowing your focus this way can feel like turning business away. In practice, your message lands harder with the buyers most likely to say yes, and you know exactly who to go after first.

Step 5. Describe the same value differently for each buyer and stage

The value doesn't change by buyer all the time, but how you describe it does, because companies at different stages feel the problem in different ways. We ended up with seven first sentences for the product.

The founder with no commercial team. "You know your science. You shouldn't need to become a sales expert to get in front of the right buyers."

The small team with no SDR. "Get the pipeline of an SDR team without hiring one."

The busy sales team with no time to prospect. "Your reps should be closing deals, not losing a day a week to the soul-sucking grind of hunting for the next conversation."

The marketing team that needs qualified inbound. "Drive inbound leads your sales team actually wants to talk to, not just whitepaper downloads."

The established team that already pays for data. "You're already paying for the data. Now act on it in the same place, instead of exporting lists into three other tools and hoping someone follows up."

The team that just lost a rep. "When your rep leaves, your pipeline shouldn't leave with them." 

The team that’s hiring to grow fast. "Ramp time is your biggest bottleneck to growth. Give new reps qualified opportunities from day one and built-in skills to execute like your top rep, instead of a week-long bootcamp they half forget."

Same product, the same differentiated value, and seven very different ways in.

Where we landed

After all that, our headline went from "Run your life-science sales pipeline in one AI-powered platform" to "The all-in-ONE go-to-market system for life science commercial teams."

The subhead does the rest of the work. "Succession ONE replaces your data provider, sequencer and SDRs with one system trained on 25,000+ replies from biotech, pharma, and academia buyers. It learns from every reply, call and meeting, so your results get better every month. Run it yourself or let us run it."

The headline tells buyers what it is and who it's for. The subhead tells them what it replaces and why it gets better the longer they use it.

Try it on your own product

Take 15 minutes and answer four questions.

1. What would your buyer do if you didn't exist?

2. What can you do that those alternatives can't?

3. What outcome does that make possible for your customers?

4. Who cares most about that outcome?

Then write a single opening sentence for each type of buyer you sell to. If they all sound the same, you've found your next messaging project. And if you get stuck, ask your AI model of choice to argue against your answers. It's surprisingly good at it.

As for what we're launching, it's called Succession ONE, and we'll share more soon. If any of this resonates with you and your team, there's an early-access waitlist at succession.bio/one.

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 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.

3. 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.