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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

I spent 17 years in pharma and biotech, at the bench, and I got a lot of vendor emails. What those vendors never saw was what happened after their email landed.

Most of the time, I didn't reply. Not because the email was rubbish, but because the timing was wrong. What I did do was have a nose around: their profile, their company, what they'd been posting. Then sometimes months later, when the problem finally turned up on my desk, theirs was the name I remembered.

The email got them on my radar. Their profile and posts kept them there. They'll have logged me as "no response." Truth is, I was one of their warmest leads.

That rep was doing two jobs. They were running outbound, and without clocking it, they were running marketing too. Only one of those shows up in the CRM. And only one of them gets paid.

The job nobody wrote down

Every life science rep is doing some version of this now. Research the account, book the meeting, run the demo, close the deal. And on top of that: keep a profile that makes sense when a buyer comes snooping, post something worth reading, and stay visible to the accounts that aren't ready yet.

That second job matters more than it used to. Company pages now reach roughly 1.6% of their own followers, down from 7% in 2021. Personal profiles typically get several times the reach of the company page. And when your buyer asks ChatGPT who can sort their problem out, most of the LinkedIn content it cites comes from individuals' posts, not company pages.

The rep's profile is the shop window now. Their posts are the brochure.

The 5% trap

Research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and LinkedIn suggests only around 5% of your market is ready to buy in any given quarter. That's the bit your reps get paid on.

The other 95% are future buyers, and they don't turn up as a blank slate. 6sense found buyers pick a favourite before they speak to a single salesperson, and that favourite wins around 80% of the time. Becoming that favourite happens months before there's a deal, and it doesn't show up in this quarter's number.

Which means it's nobody's job.

Your comp plan is your sales and marketing strategy. Whatever you pay for is what gets built. If you only pay for the 5%, don't act shocked when nobody's looking after the 95%. And the minute the quarter gets busy, it's the first thing to go.

You won't feel it for six months. Then you'll feel it proper.

In a 10-person biotech or tools company, there's no marketing team to catch it. If the rep doesn't build the audience, nobody does.

What to tell your reps on Monday

1. Sort the profile out. It's what I was reading when I didn't reply. Your headline should say what problem you solve and for who, in your buyer's words. Not your job title.

2. Spend 15 minutes a day on target accounts' posts. Proper comments, not "Great insights!" It keeps your name in front of the people who aren't ready yet.

3. Post what you hear. Every objection and every "actually, our problem is..." in your outbound replies is next week's post. Pick three topics and stick with them for 90 days.

Pay for what you want built

Revenue stays the target. That's not up for debate. But if you want reps building next year's pipeline, reward it in a way you can actually track.

The simplest version is a commission accelerator. Set a quarterly activity standard. If a rep hits it, their commission rate on that quarter's closed deals goes up, say by 10%.

The standard might be:

• One post a week, drawn from real customer conversations

• Hosting or co-hosting one webinar or event

• Keeping their LinkedIn Social Selling Index above an agreed score (LinkedIn tracks it for you)

All of it takes minutes to check. And because it bumps up commission rather than paying out separately, a rep only earns it when they also close. Nobody's posting their way to a bonus.

Just keep an eye on the posts. Four "excited to share" updates a month doesn't count, and you know it doesn't.

The job has changed. Change the job.

Further reading

• LinkedIn is dead...or is it?: what changed in reach, and why being citable matters

• The LinkedIn Cheat Sheet Part 2: profiles, pillars and posts in detail

• Your Webinar Shouldn't End When Everyone Logs Off: how to

Apple Podcast | Spotify | YouTube

Get more replies by using content!

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.