Read time: 8 minutes

Welcome to the Succession newsletter where 2,000+ 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.

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

Ask a life sciences sales leader what AI has changed about their team's job and you'll usually get a list of things that disappeared. The research that used to eat an afternoon, the first draft of every email, list-building, CRM updates, call notes etc. The fear people have + what I’m beginning to see in this space is that when everyone's outreach is well-researched and every draft is clean by using AI, it’s easy for it to appear as noise. None of that stands out and isn’t how you win. What does stand out and sets you apart from the noise are the handful of things a machine still can't do.

So I decided to not write another piece on what to fully automate. I wanted to highlight four skills that only you, a lovely homo sapien, actually has that AI doesn’t and how to leverage each of those skills alongside AI so the two combine into something sharper than either on its own. That's where you’ll win. Not AI instead of the human, and not the human refusing the tools, but the pairing that optimises your output. And I thought to be extra nice I would include prompts you can C+P and apply in your own sales process.

1. Peer credibility

Think about what it actually takes to get a Director of Assay Development to give you twenty minutes. This is someone whose inbox is littered with vendor emails, who can smell a generic pitch in half a sentence, and who has no shortage of people wanting their time. And yet some reps get the meeting. That isn't luck, it's credibility. It's the ability to talk about someone's work in a way that makes them think, wow this person actually gets it as they've clearly been near a problem like mine before. That human skill has taken years to develop. It's the accumulated feel for a field, the instinct for what a technical buyer respects, the judgment to sound like a peer rather than a supplier. It is genuinely one of the hardest things to build in this job, and it's the thing that opens the door before you've said a word about your product.

Here's where AI earns its place, and it's worth being precise about what it does and doesn't do. Getting to that peer-level fluency used to cost you an afternoon. You'd dig through their publications, scroll their LinkedIn, try to work out where their company sits in its pipeline, piece together the vocabulary of their corner of the field, and hope you'd absorbed enough to hold your own. AI collapses that entire research phase into a few minutes. It can read the abstracts you'll never have time to, map what a company at their stage is likely wrestling with and flag the claims that would quietly mark you as an outsider. Think of it as a pre-call credibility brief: everything you'd have spent hours assembling, handed to you as something you can scan before you engage. 

Prompt: You are helping me prepare for a first conversation with [Name], [Title] at [Company]. Here is what I know about them and their work: [paste their LinkedIn "about", 2-3 recent publications or abstracts, the company's pipeline stage, and the platform/assay/modality they work with]. My product is [one line]. Give me a one-page pre-call credibility brief with five sections: (1) the three technical problems someone in this exact role most likely wrestles with week to week; (2) the vocabulary and terms of art they'd expect a credible vendor to use correctly, plus any terms that would signal I don't understand their field; (3) two specific, intelligent questions that show I understand their science, not generic discovery questions; (4) the single claim about my product that would resonate most given their priorities, phrased without overreaching; (5) any claim I should avoid because it would overpromise and cost me credibility with a technical buyer. Keep it tight enough to scan in two minutes before the call.

What comes back is a half-page you can actually absorb and use how you wish. 

BUT… all AI has done is make you informed, and informed isn't the same as credible. It can teach you who this person is and what they care about in minutes, but it can't be the one who takes the call, reads the room, and turns that knowledge into the reason a scientist decides to trust you. 

The credibility is still and only yours.

2. Discovery

The best discovery moment of your career was almost certainly a question that wasn't in any script. Someone paused half a second too long, or answered the question you asked instead of the one they were actually worried about, and something in you decided to follow that natural instinct instead of moving to the next line in the doc. That is a genuinely rare skill, a human skill. Sitting in a conversation and hearing what isn't being said, catching the shift in energy when a topic gets close to something real, sensing the objection a buyer is only half-raising and drawing it out before it hardens into a no. You don't learn any of this from a deck, it's built over hundreds of calls. It’s the accumulated pattern recognition of someone who has learned to really listen  and pick up the subtle signals that humans express.

AI can't do any of that in the room, and I’m convinced it never will. Where it can be useful is before and after your discovery call. Beforehand it can hand you a map of the objections and questions someone in this role is likely to raise. But the more valuable thing it can do which most people ‘never get round to’ is the after part. Every call you have is training data you're currently throwing away. You finish the call, jot a few notes in your CRM and move on. AI can take the transcript and act as a coach who was sitting beside you, showing you the exact moment the buyer went quiet on budget, the follow-up you left on the table, the concern you talked straight past. It turns every conversation into a lesson for the next one. 

Prompt: Here is the transcript of a discovery call I just had with [Name, Title] at [Company], a [type of buyer] in [field]. [Paste transcript.] Act as a sharp sales coach who understands technical life-science buyers. Give me: (1) the moments where the buyer showed hesitation, a shift in energy, or an objection they only half-said, quoting the exact line and telling me what was probably underneath it; (2) the one question I should have asked in the moment and didn't; (3) anything I claimed or implied that a technical buyer might quietly have doubted; (4) the three highest-value questions to open my next conversation with them; (5) one thing I did well that I should keep doing. Be direct, I'd rather hear the blunt version.

What comes back is the feedback a manager sitting in on every call would give you, except no manager has that kind of time. The line where they hesitated, the question you should have asked, the claim a technical buyer quietly didn't buy.

BUT… AI can only ever review the call once it's over. It can't feel the pauses and translate what that means or decide in the moment to abandon your plan and follow the new thread that just opened. The coaching AI provides sharpens your instinct over time. 

The instinct itself is yours.

3. Aligning the committee: political navigation

You already know large pharma isn't one buyer, it's a federation, and getting a deal through it is one of the most human skills in all of sales. It's knowing who really controls the budget even when a different name sits on the org chart. It's sensing that your enthusiastic champion doesn't actually carry the influence they think they do, and finding the person who does. It's reading which stakeholder is quietly against you, and why, before they say a word in a meeting you're not even in. None of that lives in a doc, it's earned in your investigation process. 

What AI can do is make sure you're never blindsided by a seat at the table you forgot existed. That's how these deals usually die, a stakeholder nobody was talking to, procurement or QA or IT or a regulatory reviewer, surfacing late and stalling all your momentum. AI can map the likely buying committee for a purchase like this, including the roles everyone forgets, tell you what each of them tends to care about, and give you a starting message framed in their language instead of yours. It can even draw the thing out for you, a visual org chart showing where each person sits, who reports to whom, and where the real decision-making power clusters, so at a glance you can see who you're already engaged with, who you're missing, and who you most need to target next. It builds the scaffolding of the account in minutes, so your energy goes into the relationships rather than the mapping:

Prompt: I'm working an opportunity at [Company], a [size/type] in [field], to sell [product, one line]. The people I know about so far: [list names, titles, and anything you know about each - champion, blocker, silent, end-user]. Based on how buying decisions typically work in a [company type] of this size, build me a multi-threading plan: (1) map the full likely buying committee for a purchase like this, including the roles people forget - procurement, QA/regulatory, IT, finance; (2) for each role, what they actually care about and what would turn them into a blocker; (3) for each role, a one-line value message framed in their terms, not mine; (4) who my likely economic buyer and champion are, and exactly what I should ask my champion to do internally; (5) the single biggest risk of this deal being killed by someone I'm not currently talking to; (6) lay the whole thing out as a simple visual org chart - show reporting lines where you can infer them, mark who I'm already talking to versus who I'm missing, and highlight the people I most need to target. Then give me the detail as a table I can drop into my CRM.

What comes back is a map you can actually see: an org chart with every seat at the table, the reporting lines between them, a clear marker on who you've reached and who you haven't, and the one name you'd forgotten who could quietly sink the whole thing. If you’re a visual learner like me, this is a gem.

BUT… a map of the committee is not the same as trust with the people on it. AI can draw you a perfect chart of who sits where but it can't build the quiet rapport that makes your champion stay loyal to you. 

Working the room is all yours.

4. Closing

Closing is the stage people most want to hand to AI, and the one where you matter most. A deal isn't closed by a good email. It's closed in the tense moment after you've said your price, when you hold the silence instead of rushing to fill it, and read whether "I need to think about it" is real hesitation or a polite no. It's the belief a buyer can sense in you, or can't. That nerve, knowing when to hold firm and when to rethink the offer is probably the hardest skill of the four I’ve mentioned and probably took you years of deals to build.

AI's job here is to make sure that nerve is backed by real prep, not waffle. Walking in unprepared is where confidence turns into panic. So before the conversation, have AI pressure-test the deal: where it's most likely to fall apart, the objections you'll probably hear, and what you can trade, and in what order, so you never give ground for nothing. It's the prep a good sales coach would run you through with you but now it’s available for every deal instead of only the big ones:

Prompt: I'm heading into a [closing/negotiation] conversation for a deal with [Company] worth roughly [value], selling [product]. Where things stand: [paste context - where they're keen, where they're hesitant, pricing discussed, timeline, any competitors in play, anything the champion has told you]. Run a pre-mortem: (1) assume this deal dies in the next 30 days and give me the five most likely reasons, ranked; (2) for each, the early warning sign and the move that heads it off now; (3) the objections I'm most likely to hear in the room, with a strong, non-defensive response to each; (4) a concession ladder - what I can give, in what order, and what I ask for in return each time so I never give something for nothing; (5) my walk-away logic, the point at which this deal isn't worth chasing. Be blunt about my weak spots.

What comes back is the reasons you'll lose ranked in order, a response ready for every objection you'll hear, and a concession ladder that stops you giving ground for free.

BUT… no amount of prep can hold the silence for you or manufacture belief you don't have. AI can hand you the plan but the deal is still won in the room. 

Closing the deal is all yours.

The bottom line

Look at the pattern across all four. At every stage of a deal, AI is doing the same job: collapsing the hours of research, prep, review and mapping that used to sit between you and the moment that actually matters, and handing that time straight back to you. What it never does is show up to the moment itself. It doesn't take the call, read the room, build the trust, or hold its nerve when the deal is on the line. Those four things are what your buyers are really paying for. And they're worth treasuring precisely because AI has made everything around them cheap. The teams who win the next few years won't be the ones who automate the most, nor the ones who refuse to. They'll be the ones deliberate about the line: let AI do everything right up to the human moment, then bring everything you've got to the moment itself.

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.