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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

• 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 just signed a big new client. I'm leading this one, and I've been reflecting on how I'm approaching it, which got me thinking about the numerous different elements it takes to truly get into a large company.

The proposal we sent and the signed contract we got back both said it was one client. But it really didn't take long to work out that we weren't working with one large company at all. We were working with several distinct teams, each with its own leadership, different targets, and naturally its own way of doing things. The priorities of one group looked nothing like the priorities of the group sitting right beside it, and every team was heads-down and running hard at its own corner of the world.

That isn't a criticism, if anything it's the opposite, because each of those teams is sharp, busy and completely on top of their own stuff. It just wasn't the single, unified "company" I pictured when I saw my client count tick up by one. The best way to describe it is a federation of smaller companies all rolled into one. And once you've seen a big company that way, it's hard to unsee, because it changes how you approach every large account on your list. And so it should.

You're not aiming at a company, you're aiming at a federation

When we go after a big account, whether it's a global pharma, a tools giant or a diagnostics leader, we tend to talk about it in the singular. We say we're trying to get into Pfizer, AZ or Sanofi etc, as if there's one front door and getting through it means you're in.

There isn't really one front door. What there is instead is about twenty side doors, each leading into a different room, and the people in those rooms have often never met one another. If you work at a large, or even a mid-sized company, could you honestly say what the team down the hall is actually working on right now? The org chart looks like a tidy hierarchy with everything flowing up to a single person at the top, but as you probably know yourself, that's rarely how it behaves day to day. Each distinct team has its own budget, its own way of making decisions, and its own reasons to care or not care about what you're selling.

So the real question is never "how do I get into Company X." It's "which of teams inside Company X do I actually want, and how do I get into that one."

In pharma those teams have names. The biggest dividing lines are the therapeutic areas, like oncology, immunology and rare disease, each almost a company in itself, and cutting across them are the four worlds every drug passes through: research, development, manufacturing and commercial. Pick the one that actually feels your problem, and the rest of this is about getting through its particular door. Here's what most reps miss.

The buying signals are already published

Pharma tells you what it's about to spend money on, out loud and in public. A trial registered on ClinicalTrials.gov, a paper out of a specific lab, a poster at a conference, a slide in an R&D-day deck showing a programme moving into Phase II. Every one of those is a team with a fresh problem and, very often, fresh budget to solve it.

Most reps guess at who to contact and when. The ones who win read the science and turn up with a reason. "I saw your group just opened a Phase II in that indication" lands in a way no clever subject line ever will, because it proves you understand what they're actually doing. The signals are sitting there in plain sight.. more than half a million of them on ClinicalTrials.gov alone, with another landing roughly every fifteen minutes and almost nobody bothers to read them.

Get in under the procurement line

Every big company has a number, a spend threshold below which someone can simply buy a thing, on a card or a quick expense, with none of the approved-supplier paperwork. Above that line you're into master agreements and sourcing reviews that drag on for months. Below it, your champion can just say yes.

So stop opening by trying to sell the whole enterprise. Sell one team a piece small enough to slip under the line, get a real result, and let that result do the expansion for you. A scientist with your data in their hand is a far better salesperson inside their own company than you will ever be from outside it. Land small on purpose, then grow.

"Validated" beats "better"

This is the one that catches outsiders out, and it's pure pharma. In regulated work, especially in quality and manufacturing, swapping a supplier or a method can mean revalidation, retraining and sometimes a fresh filing with a regulator. So the product that's already locked in will beat your superior one almost every time, simply because changing is expensive and risky.

The lesson isn't to give up on accounts that already use someone else. It's to stop trying to rip out what's working, and instead catch programmes before they set. The real openings are in the new stuff: a method still in development, a tech transfer, a new product, a new site. 

The fastest way in usually skips the front door

There are two routes most reps never try. The first is that big pharma has whole teams whose actual job is to find companies like yours, going by names like external innovation, scouting or business development. They exist to bring new things in, and they can sponsor a pilot that walks straight past the usual procurement queue.

The second is simpler, and almost nobody does it. Your best new account is often your old champion's new employer. Pharma and biotech people move every couple of years, and they take their preferences with them. The person who fought to bring you in at one company will happily do it again somewhere else, except this time you start with the trust already banked. Keep track of where your champions go.

A few smaller things worth keeping in your back pocket while you do all this. Procurement feels like the enemy, but they have targets too, usually around cost and shrinking the supplier list, so showing up as the vendor who replaces three others, or who's already on their catalogue, quietly turns a blocker into an ally. Mergers, which most of the big names have been through, are one of the best moments to appear, because budgets are in motion and incumbents are being re-examined. Watch for the end of their financial year, when unspent budget suddenly has to go somewhere. And if you're offered a pilot, agree what success actually looks like before it starts, or it will sit in limbo while everyone waits on a verdict nobody defined.

One last thought, because it flips the whole thing on its head. If a big company is really a dozen companies, then the division you've already got into is the warmest pipeline you own, and the other eleven are sitting right there with nobody working them, because everyone is off chasing brand-new logos. The federation is what makes getting in hard, and it's also what makes getting in once worth so much more than a single deal.

One thing to try this week

Take one large company you've been treating as a single account and pull it apart on paper. Which team actually feels the problem you solve, and what have they published lately that gives you a reason to call? What is the smallest version of your product they could buy without tripping procurement? And if you are already in somewhere, which neighbouring team has no idea you exist? More often than not you'll find the account you'd written off as stuck is really five or six opportunities wearing a single logo, and the job was never to get into the company. It was to choose which company inside the company you want, and walk in through its door.

If this was useful, forward it to whoever on your team is staring at a big pharma logo wondering where the way in is. And if cracking large, multi-division accounts is the problem on your desk right now, it's a lot of what we do at Succession. Just hit reply or book a call.

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.