Three Biggest Mistakes with Conference Follow Up
What separates a full pipeline from a full stack of business cards.
Read time: 5 minutes
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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 have all been there. You spend a full week traipsing the giant hallways of a conference, making small talk, remembering names, collecting business cards. Lots and lots of business cards. Now comes the follow up, not the most glamorous part of life science sales but no doubt essential if your team wants to see the max ROI from an event.
Get it right and it helps you stand out to buyers and open up tangible pipeline that makes all the long flights and time away from home worthwhile.
Here are the three most common mistakes we see, and some ways to systemise your follow up and make your life easier.
1. Generic outreach
"Nice to meet you!", "Hope you had a great week", "Great to connect with you". Scientists', and especially senior people's, inboxes get flooded with these the week after an event. It is the easiest way to make sure your message goes nowhere.
You need to be specific. Compare these two:
Hi Sarah, great to connect at AACR last week. Would love to set up a call to discuss how we might work together.
Hi Sarah, I caught your poster on the ctDNA sensitivity work at AACR. The bit on low tumour fraction samples was the part I keep thinking about. We work with a few groups running into the same wall.
The second one takes an extra two minutes and it tells the reader you were actually paying attention. That alone puts you ahead of most of the field.
A golden rule for outbound to scientists: if you can reference their work, do it. Scientists love to talk about their work.
2. A pile of cards and no system
The number of reps I speak with who dread organising a stack of business cards after an event is really high. Not to mention deciphering the little annotations you scribbled on the card mid conference.
It can take a day or two to get these leads organised and uploaded to your CRM, and all of that is time you could spend writing good messages or catching up on everything else that piled up while you were travelling.
We built a business card scanner to help with exactly this. Fly through the stack, digitise the information, skip the slow Excel file.
Here's the link: https://leadcapture.succession.bio/
3. Missing contact details
You had a great chat with a few people at the drinks reception, then remember later you never got their card. You check ZoomInfo and there's no email address, and all that rapport you built is evaporating in front of you.
Or worse, you guess an email and it bounces. Best lead of the week and you can't even follow up.
We have sent 1.5 million emails.
That gives us a lot of data on what a valid address looks like, so we built our own email finder off the back of it. First 10 credits are free and we don't ask for card details, so it is a useful one to keep in your pocket for an emergency.
Check it out: https://emailfinder.succession.bio/
So how do you nail event follow up?
Get stuck in. Don't put it off and systemise the workload where you can. Doing that alone will separate you from a lot of the field.
Be thoughtful with the messaging and add some personalisation. It makes a real difference to reply rates.
And watch the timing. The week after a big event, everyone's inbox is a warzone. Hitting send on the Tuesday while the conversation is still fresh beats a better written email that lands ten days later, when they have forgotten your face.
As the summer comes into its final stretch and reps prepare for the second conference run of the year, keep these in mind. Your follow up is where the ROI actually shows up.



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