You need to build pipeline into biotech & pharma but don't know where to start. This guide walks you through every step, even if you don't have a sales team yet - from zero infrastructure to a repeatable lead generation engine.
This was written for a specific situation. If a few of these sound familiar, you're in the right place.
Before you build anything, you need to understand why the standard startup go-to-market (GTM) playbook breaks when your buyers are both highly technical AND highly skeptical - this is what you'll be facing when talking to scientists, operations, and technical/engineering prospects within biotech & pharma.
Most B2B outbound advice is written for software-as-a-service (SaaS). These deals are typically smaller in deal size (<$10k annum), less technically complex, and thus have shorter sales cycle (potentially <3 months).
But selling into biotech & pharma usually doesn't work this way. The scientists/engineers you're selling to are much more skeptical, deal sizes can be massive (>$100k if not into the millions), solutions are technically complex, and the buying team on your client's side (e.g. procurement, legal, and IT) will be even MORE skeptical than the end-users regarding contracting and implementation.
You DEFINITELY can't brute-force your way into biotech/pharma accounts with volume - a 10,000-email blast or a blind LinkedIn DM campaign that might generate a dozen meetings in SaaS will leave a trail of burned domains and tarnished reputation when you're targeting scientists and technical buyers at a CRO or CDMO. Additionally, pharma/biotech as a TAM (total addressable market) isn't huge, and the buyers you're dealing with are likely quite senior, so building trust is a must.
Instead, your outbound motion needs to be precise, multi-channel, and built for a long game. As with most B2B sales cycle, a "no" now is very rarely "never" - a prospect who isn't ready today might be your biggest deal 12 months from now.
And that's the key here - when you build this GTM engine correctly, it compounds. Biotech & pharma buyers typically have long memories and want to buy from who they know and trust. So becoming known as a credible, relevant vendor will make selling a whole lot easier.
Your pharma/biotech GTM strategy needs to be built around precision, relevance, persistence (in moderation), and timing - never just volume.
It's fine if you only have a fuzzy idea of your ICP at this stage (partly why you might be reading this guide). The point of your first few outbound campaigns is to book meetings, but even more importantly it's to learn who responds, what they care about, and what specific language resonates. This all feeds back into your ICP understanding.
To start though, we need an ICP hypothesis:
Look at existing customers (if you have any), pilot users, or companies that engaged but didn't close. What do they have in common? Industry segment, company size, development stage, region, the role of the internal champion - even 3–5 data points reveal a pattern worth testing.
Work backwards from your product. Who has the problem you solve, and who has budget authority to buy? In life sciences, this means mapping your product to a specific workflow or bottleneck, then identifying which role at which company type owns that workflow.
It's imperative that you understand who within your target accounts is involved in both purchasing and using your product/service.
For example, a bioprocess equipment sale might involve a Process Development Scientist who feels the pain daily (and would be advocating for your platform/instrument), a VP of Manufacturing who owns the budget (and needs to understand how your instrument fits into the entire plant workflow), and a Procurement lead who controls the purchase order. Each of these personas has different motivations, objections, and language, and you need to understand all of them (even if you're only reaching out to one or two initially).
For each persona, write down: their title and function, the specific problem your product solves for them, how they currently deal with that problem (the status quo), and what you hypothesize would make them take a meeting with a stranger - and reasons why they might say no. This will directly shape the list you'll build in Step 04 and the messaging you'll write in Step 05.
When we ran outbound for a laboratory informatics startup, we targeted 400+ contacts across biotech, pharma, and CDMOs. Key finding: When targeting their ICP (at the Director and VP Level), VP-level LinkedIn sender profiles achieved a 37% connection acceptance rate vs. 4–12% for junior profiles. In technical B2B, prospects connect with peers, not junior reps. This kind of insight only surfaces from running real campaigns, and changed our approach around which personas we prioritized for outreach.
You don't need to be everywhere at once. Pick 2–3 channels to start, based on your budget, team capacity, and where your buyers actually spend time. Run them for 4–6 weeks and measure before expanding. Here's how each channel works, and what to expect.
The tried and true outbound B2B channel. Despite the gurus saying "Email is dead", it very much isn't - but it's not the same as even a few years ago. The advantage with email is that you can test multiple messaging, personas, and positioning iterations in rapid succession, faster than other channels. The downside is that if it's done wrong, you'll get nothing out except a burned domain and wasted time.
Where life sciences decision-makers live, and where they vet you before responding to any other channel. LinkedIn is both an outreach tool and a credibility check, as prospects will likely look at your profile before replying to your email or after answering your call. Connection requests with short, relevant notes consistently outperform InMails - and connection requests without ANY messages (assuming you have mutual connections and a well-positioned profile) seem to perform the best. This channel is slower but builds durable relationships that compound over time.
Most companies selling into life sciences don't cold call - which is exactly why it works. Cold calling is the only "live" outbound channel (other than conferences). Even when calls don't book meetings, they generate invaluable market intelligence and fast feedback on your messaging/positioning. Nothing in outbound replicates the quality of information you get from a live conversation.
The medium IS the message - and your LinkedIn content IS a sales channel. When a CEO or senior leader at your company posts consistently on LinkedIn with genuine opinions and industry insight (not canned corporate-speak about their company), it warms every other channel and establishes their subject authority. Prospects who've seen your content are more likely to accept a connection request, reply to an email, or take a call. This channel takes time to build but creates compounding returns that make all your outbound more effective.
Biotech & pharma likes to meet in-person, and that's where conferences come in. The companies that get the most out of conferences pre-book meetings 3–4 weeks in advance through targeted outbound to confirmed attendees, not just waiting for the partnering portal to open up. This turns a passive "let's walk the floor" conference strategy into a structured pipeline generation event.
The real power is in the combination. A prospect who sees your LinkedIn post, gets a connection request, receives a relevant cold email, then gets a voicemail referencing both creates a completely different impression than one who gets a single email from an unknown sender. Multi-channel outreach builds the familiarity that precedes trust.
Your lead list is the fuel for every channel you chose in Step 03. A brilliant cold email sent to the wrong person is still a wasted email. This step is about building a targeted, signal-enriched list — starting with companies, then narrowing to the specific people you'll actually reach out to.
Build a list of 50–150 target accounts that match the profile you defined in Step 02 — the right industry segment, the right company size, the right development stage, the right geography. This is your account-level target list, and it's the foundation everything else builds on.
As for where to source accounts, you can start with general B2B databases like Apollo/ZoomInfo/Lusha and then add additional layering from life science specific vendors e.g. SciLeads. Additionally, BioPharmGuy has lists of companies in biotech/pharma for free which can make a good starting point.
Not all accounts on your list are equally ready to buy. The difference between a good list and a great list is signal-based prioritization - using real-world activity data to identify which companies are more likely to engage right now.
Signals worth tracking include (the exact ones will depend on your specific product/service): recent funding rounds, new job postings, leadership changes, regulatory/clinical milestones (FDA approvals, IND filings, Phase 1 success, Phase 2 failure), scientific/whitepaper publications, partnership announcements, and any other relevant press releases.
A tool like Clay lets you aggregate these signals into a single workspace. You can build a Clay table with your target accounts, then enrich each row with data from multiple sources - pulling funding data from Crunchbase, job postings from LinkedIn, tech stack signals from BuiltWith, and news mentions from Google News. This gives you a living, prioritized account list rather than a static spreadsheet that goes stale in a week.
You can then use AI to help you build a prompt that you can feed these signals to + company info to get a "score" that prioritizes which companies you should reach out to first.
If you don't have the budget for a tool like Clay, you can also use the internet search/deep research function in your favorite AI tool or using AI agent creators like Airtop to build agents that will do this signal search + prioritization for you.
Once your account list is prioritized, it's time to identify the actual people you'll reach out to at each company. This is where the persona work from Step 02 becomes operational. For each high-priority account, identify 2–4 contacts that match your target personas - typically a mix of the end-user who feels the pain and the budget holder who can approve a purchase.
For contact-level enrichment, you can start with something like Apollo as your first data source — it's affordable and covers a wide swath of B2B contacts. If Apollo doesn't return a valid email or phone number, you can move to a second pricier source like Lusha or FullEnrich. This is called waterfall enrichment: you query your cheapest data source first, then cascade to more expensive or specialized sources only for the contacts where the first source came up empty. This keeps costs down while maximizing coverage.
Start with 100–200 total prospects across your target accounts, not 5,000. You want a tight, researchable list where you can personalize outreach and learn from responses. Quality of targeting matters infinitely more than volume at this stage.
A typical enrichment waterfall for life sciences outbound: start with Apollo for email and phone. If no email found, try FullEnrich or Lusha. If no phone number found, try a second phone data provider. For very senior contacts at large pharma companies, direct dials are notoriously hard to find - expect to need 2–3 data sources to get 70–80% coverage across your list.
This is where strategy becomes action — each channel requires its own infrastructure, warm-up period, and execution playbook. Don't skip the setup — the most common reason outbound "doesn't work" is that it was never set up properly in the first place. Below is what you need for each channel you selected in Step 03.
Cold email is unforgiving if you cut corners on setup. Sending from your primary domain, skipping warm-up, or blasting 500 emails on day one will land you in spam and potentially damage your company's email reputation for months. The order of these steps matters — get the infrastructure right before you send a single message.
Register 2–3 domain variations of your brand (e.g. if your company is acmebio.com, purchase acmelabs.io, getacmelabs.com, tryacmelabs.co). Never send cold outbound from your primary domain — if a sending domain gets flagged for spam, you burn that domain, not your company's main email reputation. Domains cost $10–15/year each.
Don't register all your domains on the same day from the same registrar with sequential naming patterns — spam filters can detect that fingerprint. Stagger purchases across a few days and vary the TLDs (.com, .io, .co).
Immediately after purchasing each domain, configure three DNS authentication records before doing anything else (there are lots of guides online for this, and some services that will do it automatically):
p=none for new domains.As of 2026, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft all enforce sender authentication — roughly 40% of cold email deliverability failures trace back to a misconfigured DNS record. Most email platforms (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365) walk you through setup. After configuring, send a test email to a Gmail address, open it, click "Show original" in the menu, and confirm that SPF, DKIM, and DMARC all show PASS. If any show FAIL, stop and fix it before moving on.
Brand-new domains with no history look suspicious to email providers. If you start sending from a domain the same week you registered it, spam filters will flag it immediately. You need to let each domain age for 2–3 weeks before creating any inboxes or sending any emails.
During this aging period, do three things:
This is dead time in your calendar but not wasted time — use it to build your prospect list, write your email copy, and set up your sending tool so you're ready to move the moment aging is complete.
If you want to skip the aging period, you can buy pre-aged or pre-warmed domains and inboxes from providers like Instantly (which offers pre-warmed accounts built into its platform), Litemail, or ScaledMail. These come with domains that are already weeks or months old, DNS already configured, and in some cases warm-up already completed, so you can connect them to your sending tool and start warming or sending within days instead of waiting multiple weeks. Prices range from roughly $5–15 per inbox.
This can work, but comes with a real risk (beyond you not having control over the domain name): you don't know the domain's full history. A domain that was previously used for spam, sits on a blacklist, or has a damaged reputation will hurt your deliverability worse than starting fresh. If you go this route, check every domain against a blacklist tool like MXToolbox before you buy, verify that the provider gives you full admin access (not just rented inboxes you lose if you cancel), and confirm the domain has clean SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records. Buying pre-aged domains is a legitimate shortcut for teams that need to move fast, but buying from the wrong provider is a gamble that can set you back further than just waiting out the aging period yourself.
Once your domains have aged, create 2–3 inboxes per domain using real names, not generic addresses like info@ or sales@. Set up a complete email signature on each inbox including a full name, title, company name, phone number, and a link to your website or landing page.
Then connect every inbox to an inbox warming tool (Instantly and Smartlead have built-in warmers). Warming tools simulate real email conversations, covering sending, receiving, opening, and replying. This is all to build sender reputation with email providers. Run warming for a minimum of 4 weeks before sending a single cold email. Brand-new domains with no sending history may need 6–8 weeks to fully stabilize.
Start at 5–10 emails per inbox per day and ramp slowly to a maximum of 30–50 per inbox over 4 weeks. Never spike volume — going from 10 to 100 overnight is the fastest way to get flagged. After warming, run an inbox placement test (most sending tools have this built in) to confirm your emails are actually landing in primary inboxes, not spam or promotions.
Keep warm-up running indefinitely alongside your live campaigns. Don't turn it off once you start sending, as the ongoing engagement signals help maintain your sender reputation.
Before loading a single contact into your sending tool, run your entire prospect list through an email verification service. There are literally dozens of these; MillionVerifier, ZeroBounce, NeverBounce, and Clearout just to name a few. These tools check each email address against the receiving server and flag addresses that are invalid, inactive, or risky, depending on the specific tool. Remove any that come back as invalid/inactive, while you might need to take a risk with sending to catch-all addresses, as these verifications services aren't 100% reliable.
Once you start sending emails, check your bounce rate closely. Anything above roughly 2% and you could damage your sender reputation, and eventually lead to domain blacklisting.
Your first email should be under 80 words, plain text, no HTML templates, no images, and no more than one link. Don't even track clicks or open rates, as that can also set-off alarm bells with spam filters.
Lead with the prospect's problem, not your product, not your company, not your features. A cold email is a relevance test: does this person have the problem you solve, and do they care enough to reply? Ideally you've segmented your list enough where the messages you write (with the help of AI) can be very specific to their specific pain-points, not generic industry level challenges.
Where possible, tie your outreach to a specific buying signal - a recent funding round, a new hire in a relevant role, a technology adoption, or a leadership change. Signal-based emails that reference a specific trigger consistently outperform generic outreach by 3–5x. If you can explain why you're emailing this person right now and not six months ago, your reply rate will be significantly higher.
Include a single, low-friction call to action — it can be a 15-minute call, but what can work better is a free resource or something that's a value add to that prospect (this is also something you can add as part of your other channels). Write at least 2–3 messaging variants per persona so you can A/B test subject lines, opening lines, and calls to action from day one.
A meeting ask is usually not the best first move, especially in a cold email AND with skeptical technical buyers. Three alternative CTAs that can outperform a calendar link:
1. Custom Intel/Resource. Provide a customized resource relevant to the prospect and related to your offering. This could be a landscape or market overview, a competitor comparison, or a technical benchmark. Generate these using publicly available data and AI workflows. This positions you as someone who did their homework and that this email is specifically for them, not some template.
2. Relevant Content Share. Share a relevant piece of content you found or have made. Internal examples can be a case study or whitepaper relevant to the prospect's use case. You can share resources published by others too, including scientific publications or industry reports relevant to their workflow. The key is that it's genuinely useful, not a thinly veiled pitch.
3. Warm Intro to Someone in Your Network. Know someone or an organization that might be worth the prospect knowing? Offer to make an intro. Or if there's anything the prospect would want help with that's not related to your offering, ask if you can help get them in touch with the right person in your network. This builds goodwill and reciprocity before you ever pitch.
This is where it gets creative, and requires some perseverance. It might take you weeks and a dozen+ follow-ups to get a reply. The key is persistence but not in a frantic, one-email-everyday way. Each follow-up should add new value or a new angle, not just "bumping this to the top of your inbox." Reference a relevant case study, share an industry insight, or reframe the problem from a different angle. At the end of the sequence, you can still send further emails but space them out by weeks or even months, and only surface these when something relevant shows up in the news/industry to that prospect.
For maximum impact, layer in LinkedIn touchpoints alongside your email sequence. For example, a profile view before your first email and then a connection request between emails 2 and 3 can help build familiarity and increase the chance your next email gets replied to. We'll talk about omnichannel a little later on.
Plan for 6–9 weeks of total infrastructure setup before you send your first campaign. The timeline: 2–3 weeks of domain aging (buy domains and configure DNS on day one, then let them sit), followed by 4–6 weeks of inbox warming. That means if you want to start outreach on July 1st, you need domains purchased and DNS configured by mid-April, inboxes created and warming by early May, and your first cold emails going out no earlier than mid-June. Build this lead time into your planning, as it's the most common bottleneck for teams trying to launch cold email quickly.
LinkedIn outreach in pharma & biotech is uniquely effective because your target buyers are likely using the platform and check their messages. Execution, especially at scale, requires careful thought about who's sending, the sequences and messaging strategy, and (if you go the automation route) how to safely manage volume without risking your account.
This is the single most important decision in your LinkedIn outreach setup. In technical B2B, seniority of the sender matters enormously. A connection request from a CEO or VP gets 3–5× the acceptance rate of one from a junior BDR. Decide which profiles in your organization will be the "face" of your LinkedIn outreach. Ideally, these are people whose title, experience, and profile carry credibility with your target personas — a founder selling to VPs, a CSO reaching out to R&D leaders, etc.
Ensure these profiles are set-up properly. This means a solid headline covering what they do and who they help, filled out about section, professional looking headshot, LinkedIn banner included. All these need to be up-to-date, or you're risking people not trusting the account.
If you're planning to use a LinkedIn automation tool (like HeyReach), you need to warm up these accounts similar to cold email. LinkedIn monitors activity patterns and will restrict accounts that suddenly spike in volume.
The starting pace using automation depends on how active these accounts already are on LinkedIn. For example, if it's a sales/BD rep who is constantly on LinkedIn, sending connection requests and DMs, you can probably start at a higher initial pace (eg. 5-10 actions per day per action type - across LinkedIn connections, profile views, DMs, etc.). Tools like HeyReach will allow you to set all these action types individually. On the other hand, if it's a C-Suite executive who barely touches LinkedIn, you might do better starting off with 2-3 actions per day. In both scenarios, ramp up conservatively, adding 1-2 additional actions per work day to a max of 18-20 actions per day.
LinkedIn isn't a stranger channel like email, so you can typically get away with a bit more templating than with cold email. Still segment out your prospect list by persona (eg. different messages for scientists versus manufacturing), but your messages can be shorter, more direct in ask, but still referencing a general problem/interest in learning more about their role. Since it is LinkedIn and we're all there to do business, asking up-front for their business (being forward about WHY you're reaching out) can help get to the point and avoid needless follow-ups.
Regarding connection requests: qualitatively we've seen blank connection requests do BETTER than sending a connection request with a message. This really depends on the specific profile (e.g. senior profiles can more easily get away with this) and the number of mutual connection requests. Experiment yourself (A/B test) to see what works.
To be absolutely clear, automation tools ARE against LinkedIn's terms of service, and any automation tool that says otherwise is lying to you. That said, Linkedin is either letting it happen to a small degree, or (more likely) it's very hard to detect if you're not being ridiculous with your activity levels (considering the number of businesses that still exist that offer LinkedIn automation).
Tools like HeyReach let you automate connection requests, follow-up messages, and profile views across multiple LinkedIn accounts, which is super powerful for scaling. The risk is that LinkedIn can restrict/throttle (and sometimes ban, though this rarely happens) accounts that violate their terms - but if you're smart about it, the risk is basically negligible.
So ALWAYS make sure to: warm up the accounts first, keep daily volume conservative (<20 activities a day at a max), and don't be spammy (if people say no thanks, respect that and stop messaging them; be targeted with your connection requests too).
One last note: we'd recommend AGAINST automating liking posts or using AI to post comments - the comments almost always come off inauthentic, and you may end up inadvertently liking a post you probably shouldn't have.
Cold calling, we'd argue, has the biggest alpha right now considering AI is flooding every other channel, and it's the highest effort, most manual channel right now. It also requires more setup than most teams expect - to be done effectively and at scale, you need a dialer, reliable phone data, a system for tracking call outcomes, and a way to sync everything back to your CRM. Here's the full infrastructure and execution guide.
You technically can have your reps do cold calls from their business mobiles, but it's inefficient, there's no call recording or CRM sync, and you risk flagging those personal numbers as spam on caller ID with no way to swap them out.
Instead, use a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) dialer. VoIP tools let you make calls over the internet using virtual phone numbers, meaning you can buy, manage, and rotate numbers without needing physical phone lines. They also give you call recording, transcription, CRM integration, and analytics that a mobile phone never will.
Just starting out: Aircall or Dialpad. These are standard VoIP dialers that let you dial sequentially (one call at a time), record every call, transcribe conversations, and sync call data to your CRM automatically. They're affordable, easy to set up, and more than enough if you're running a small calling team or doing under 50 dials a day. Either one will get you started with professional cold calling infrastructure in a day.
Advanced + money to spend: Nooks If you're running higher volumes or want to maximize conversations per hour, Nooks has a bunch of additional features and is built for bigger teams doing higher volume cold calling, but it is much pricier per seat. Biggest winner would be the automated phone number rotation, which cycles your outbound number every 30–50 dials to prevent spam flagging (more on this below). It's a bigger investment but dramatically increases calling efficiency.
You may hear about parallel dialers (tools that call 3–5 numbers simultaneously and connect you to the first person who picks up) or power dialers (which auto-dial the next number the moment your current call ends). These are built for high-volume SaaS outbound where connect rates are low and where deals aren't super complex or high value.
We'd strongly recommend AGAINST using them for calling into biotech and life sciences. Your total addressable market is small, your prospects are senior, and every conversation matters. Parallel dialing creates awkward delays when a prospect picks up, and power dialing pressures reps to rush through calls without adequate research. In technical B2B, the quality of each conversation is worth more than squeezing in 10 extra dials per hour. Use a standard sequential dialer and focus on preparation and conversation quality instead.
When you're cold calling from VoIP numbers, these numbers can get flagged as "Spam Likely" or "Scam Risk" on recipients' caller ID. It's more likely to happen than not, but it's both preventable and manageable if it does happen.
First, register all your outbound numbers with registry services, depending on your business's geography. These will allow you to check the spam-level of your number (for free), and also let you set caller ID for a fee if you so choose. Free Caller Registry (freecallerregistry.com) if you're in the US covers the three major US carriers — AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. For calling outside the US, Hiya Number Registration (hiya.com) covers 40+ countries including Canada, the UK, and Australia.
Important: these tools do not prevent your numbers from being marked as spam. What they do is register your numbers as belonging to a legitimate business (reducing the likelihood of false flagging) and let you check whether your numbers are currently labeled as spam. Check your registered numbers weekly - if any are flagged, swap them out for fresh numbers in your VoIP tool (buying a new number costs a few dollars or can be free for swapping out numbers).
The most effective spam prevention method is phone number rotation — having 2-3 numbers on file, and rotating between them every 30–50 dials so no single number accumulates enough call volume to trigger spam detection. Nooks does this automatically, but with Aircall or Dialpad you'll need to rotate numbers manually, which is manageable at lower volumes but becomes tedious at scale (and can break the workflow of your reps).
For international calling, some VoIP tools offer local numbers in other countries but this depends on geography rules and business registration (e.g. some countries will only give you a local number if your business is registered/has an office there). Despite this, most VoIP services have international dialing credits or plans so you can call into Europe, Asia, or wherever your prospects are with a +1 number without excessive per-minute charges. Check your provider's international rates before you start as they can vary significantly.
Your cold calling is only as good as your phone numbers. Unless you have the $$$ to jump right to waterfall enrichment like with FullEnrich, start with Apollo for initial phone data, and call into these before finding new numbers. For contacts where Apollo doesn't have a direct dial, you can then move to a pricier but more comprehensive B2B data provider like Lusha, or move to waterfall enrichment like with FullEnrich. This waterfall approach (same principle as email enrichment in Step 04) maximizes coverage while keeping per-contact costs low. Expect 20–30% of phone numbers to be wrong or disconnected regardless of source - this is normal. Flag bad numbers immediately so you don't waste dials on them, and find new ones.
Not all phone numbers are created equal. Before your reps start dialing, run your phone list through a validation layer to assign "activity scores" to help prioritize calling. This will not be perfect and you will still run into dead numbers/wrong numbers, but it will help your reps prioritize which numbers they should call into. Below are a few options for doing this:
TrestleIQ is a phone validation API for outbound teams. It checks whether a number is active or disconnected, identifies the line type (mobile, landline, VoIP), and provides a phone activity score that tells you how likely the number is to actually reach a live person. Running your list through Trestle (we do this via n8n) before loading it into your dialer can cut wasted dials significantly, which at scale means your reps are spending that time on real conversations instead of voicemails and dead lines.
For teams that have bigger budgets, tools like TitanX have built more proprietary workflows around "behavioral signals" on top of phone data, which they purport can lead to connection rates exceeding 15% (which is a lot for cold calling where average connects are 1-4%).
Even without a dedicated intent tool, you can approximate this by cross-referencing your call list against the account-level signals you already collected in Clay or your CRM. If a company just raised a Series B and posted three job openings in your target department, those contacts go to the top of the dial sheet. Layering this with the call intent/activity mentioned above can lead to even better call performance.
Every call — connected or not — needs to be logged in your CRM with a disposition code, call notes, and a next step. Set up your dialer to sync call data (recording link, duration, disposition, notes) back to your CRM automatically - most dialers have this option at a certain tier, or you can build custom workflows yourself or working with an automation agency. If your dialer and CRM don't have a native integration, use a tool like Zapier or Make to bridge them. The goal is minimal manual data entry for reps.
Cold calling into biotech & pharma is not telemarketing. You're not reading a script to hundreds of random people in a B2C setting; you're having a short, targeted conversation with a senior technical buyer to figure out if there's a fit. The distinction matters because it changes everything about how you prepare.
Have the first 15–30 seconds of your intro memorized. This is the only part that should be scripted - your name, your company, and a permission-based opener that gives the prospect control. Something like: "Hi, this is [name] from [company] — if you have 30 seconds I can explain why I called, and if it's not a fit you can hang up on me." The "you can hang up on me" line sounds counterintuitive, but it works as it lowers the prospect's guard because they feel in control of the conversation. You'll still get hung up on at times, but it's reduced compared to just pitching up front.
After the opener, explain why you called them specifically. Reference something concrete — their company's pipeline stage, a recent hire, a technology they use, a clinical milestone. Then ask a question to uncover fit & establish authority (show you know what you're talking about), not pitch your product. For example: "I saw that Acme Bio is developing novel mAbs — curious if you're outsourcing drug substance manufacturing?"
Your call has three possible outcomes worth pursuing: disqualify quickly (they're not a fit — move on), gather intel (they share useful information about their situation, priorities, or buying timeline - we discuss Dispositions in more detail below), or sell the next step (if qualified and they're interested, book a meeting while you're on the phone - don't send a calendar link via email after and hope). If they're interested, stay on the call until the meeting is scheduled. If they're genuinely interested, they'll do it right there.
Have responses ready for 3–5 common objections ("we already have a vendor," "not in our budget right now," "send me an email"), but don't script the full conversation. The moment you start reading, the prospect hears it and checks out. There's A LOT more detail we can get into here - but this GTM guide is long enough already. You can "Book a Strategy Call" with us for free advice on your cold calling strategy.
Most people dread cold calling because they frame it as "bothering strangers to pitch them", which isn't entirely true. Your goals on a cold call are: learn as much as possible about the prospect (ask questions), disqualify quickly if they're not a fit, and if they are qualified, sell the meeting or next step.
Rejection is part of the process and the worst you'll get is an earful from someone who is likely already having a bad day - be grateful the Jetsons aren't real and your prospect can't punch you through the phone. If you do get an irate prospect, it's usually not about you. Come from a place of genuine curiosity and assistance and leave it there.
For actually doing it, we'd recommend setting dedicated call blocks (30–60 minutes of focused dialing), front-load them in your day so you're not dreading them all afternoon, and set weekly goals ("5 hours of calling this week") rather than obsessing over individual outcomes.
One tactic that works surprisingly well: gamify rejection, like set a goal to get rejected 50 times this week. Track your rejections on a whiteboard or somewhere prominent if you want. Know your numbers precisely - how many rejections does it take to get one meeting? Once you know the ratio, every "no" is measurably closer to a "yes." It sounds silly, but it genuinely rewires how your brain processes the discomfort.
Obviously call during the workday - don't call before 8:30am or after 5:30pm (make sure you check timezones). Don't overthink the "best time to call" - everyone has an opinion, but the data varies wildly by industry and role, and it's easy to use this as an excuse to put off calling. The most important thing is to actually pick up the phone and make some dials.
You'll increasingly encounter AI receptionists that answer with something like "Hi, if you give me your name and reason for calling, I'll see if this person is available". Don't use your normal opener here.
Instead, say something like "Hi it's [my name] calling for [prospect's name]." That's it, dead simple. Leave some curiousity so they pick up the phone.
If you want to be cheeky, you can also do "Hi it's [my name] transcription failed." - yes, say out loud "transcription failed". This is because these AI receptionists only provide a quick written message to the prospect via their lock screen so the prospect can decide if they want to pick-up with a quick read. So the "transcription failed" might spark their curiousity enough to pick up the phone.
This section draws heavily from the work of TitanX, whose approach to call dispositions is the most operationally rigorous we've seen in B2B sales. Most pipe gen teams treat call dispositions as admin busywork — a binary system where a call either becomes a meeting or goes into a pile of "everything else." This is a big mistake that will cost you revenue.
The core problem is that if your disposition system only distinguishes between "meeting booked" and "not a meeting," you lose every time a real conversation gets filed under "everything else." Even if your reps are leaving detailed notes from the call, the actual disposition of the call (and an avenue for more strategic follow-ups) gets lost in the fog.
Even more importantly when 80–90% of conversations register as "failures" because they're not meetings, you'll drive the wrong rep behaviors - rushing to pitch and pressuring for meetings instead of having genuine conversations and gathering valuable intel from prospects.
In the ideal scenario, dispositions should help define the next step, specifically how and when to best approach that prospect again.
The most important disposition category that most teams are missing. A lead gets the "Activated" disposition when the prospect showed one or more of the Three I's during the conversation:
The prospect acknowledges the problem and that the timing isn't quite right. This is different from a "Not Now" prospect. A "Not Now" prospect has a specific later date when they can revisit — they won't think about this until then. A prospect showing intent will probably think about their problem between now and the next time you talk; they just can't say when. They need time, not different timing.
Something in the pitch cracked through the status quo. The prospect is thinking differently - they asked a few questions, saw a problem for the first time, or saw the problem in a genuinely new light. They're not asking for more yet, but they stayed on the line and engaged. That's meaningful and worth following up on.
The prospect is actively asking for more information — but with specificity. "Send me a comparison of how that's different from what [Competitor] does" is interest. "Send me some stuff" where "stuff" is undefined is usually a polite brush-off. The test: if they can articulate what they'll do with the content you send, they're interested. If they can't, they're trying to get off the phone.
"Meeting booked" is not the only win. An activated lead is someone whose thinking changed during the conversation, and that person is dramatically more likely to convert to a meeting on a follow-up call than a cold contact.
Here's a practical disposition framework and the specific follow-up action each one triggers. As we mentioned, every disposition should define a next step.
| Disposition | What It Means | Next Step |
|---|---|---|
| Meeting Booked | Prospect agreed to a meeting | Confirm meeting, send calendar invite, prep AE with call notes |
| Activated | Showed intent, intrigue, or interest (the Three I's) | SDR sends follow-up email, CCs AE, logs notes and follow-up date. AE adds to dedicated activated-lead calling blocks |
| Referred | Prospect pointed you to someone else at the company | Reach out to the referral, mention the referring contact by name |
| Not Now | Prospect has a specific future timeframe | Set a follow-up task for the date they specified. Coordinate with marketing for timed nurture around that date |
| Not Interested | Clear no — no problem acknowledged, no engagement | Remove from active calling. Route to long-term marketing nurture with educational content |
| Not Me | Wrong persona — they don't own this problem | Ask for a referral before ending the call. Update your persona targeting data |
| Bad Data | Wrong number, disconnected, or no longer at company | Flag the record, re-enrich the contact through your data waterfall, or remove from list |
Once a lead is activated, it stays activated until a more definitive outcome occurs (Meeting Booked, Not Interested, Referred). Don't re-disposition on every callback — this corrupts your reporting. Route activated leads to your AE with full context so they can prioritize warm follow-ups. Consider paying your outbound reps for activations, not just meetings, because this can skew their efforts towards booking useless meetings as opposed to digging for intel. And treat activated callbacks as a distinct channel with its own metrics — the connect rates and conversion rates will look nothing like your cold call numbers.
LinkedIn content is a slow-burn channel that makes every other channel more effective. Here's how to execute it well.
This should be your CEO, founder, or a senior leader, basically someone with a credible title and a genuine point of view. Prospects in life sciences connect with and trust peers. The person posting needs to actually care about the content of the posts, and is ideally having real conversations with customers and prospects that inform their content.
The biggest mistake companies make on LinkedIn is turning every post into a product pitch. The posts that build real authority are the ones where you take a stand on an industry topic, share an opinion informed by real customer or prospect conversations, challenge a common assumption, or highlight a problem your market faces. If you're informed by the questions prospects are asking and the concerns they're raising, you'll never run out of content ideas.
Post 2–4 times per week. Don't aim for viral posts — aim for showing up reliably in your target audience's feed so that when your cold email or connection request arrives, they recognize your name. The compounding effect of consistent posting over 2–3 months is far more valuable than a single post that gets 50,000 views and is forgotten. On this note, don't scrutinize impressions too much - the goal should be getting the right message out there to the right people, and your target audience might be quite niche. You can go viral and get 50k+ impressions but not a single lead if it's not relevant to your target prospect.
Every cold call, every customer meeting, every discovery conversation surfaces questions, objections, and insights that your broader market would find valuable. Turn those into posts - either through call recordings you can feed to AI, or transcribe a self-interview about your customers (anonymized) and other insights that you can use as LinkedIn content fuel. "Had a call this week with a VP of Manufacturing who told me..." is more compelling than any thought leadership you could invent in a vacuum. This creates a flywheel: outbound conversations generate content, content warms future outbound conversations.
Month 1 of outbound is about learning. You're testing messaging angles, channels, and personas simultaneously, and the data from those first 4–6 weeks tells you where to double down.
Leave behind vanity metrics like email open and click rates (which you shouldn't be tracking anymore anyway). Focus on these:
Which titles respond? Which subject lines and hooks drive replies? Test at least 2–3 messaging angles per persona in your first month.
Not all replies are equal. A 5% reply rate where everyone says "not interested" is much worse than a 3% reply rate where half of these replies are interested
The only metric that directly maps to pipeline. Track originating channel for every meeting booked.
Which titles are getting activated? If managers activate at 7% but VPs activate at 2%, your messaging is reading like a manager script delivered to someone who doesn't own the problem. Activation rates by title tell you where your messaging is weak.
Even conversations that don't convert can still reveal valuable prospect information, including their current buying frame, competitors they've evaluated, and what pain points are top of mind. Feed this into messaging and targeting.
Every 2 weeks or so, review your data and make one meaningful change - swap a messaging angle, adjust your target persona, try a new channel, or refine list criteria. Don't change everything at once. Outbound in life sciences is a compounding game: small improvements accumulate into a significantly better engine over 2–3 months.
Outbound in technical markets requires 2–3 months to build real momentum. Month 1 is infrastructure and testing, month 2 is where patterns emerge, and month 3 is where the engine starts to feel repeatable. Don't ditch strategy after only 4 weeks of data.
The goal of a GTM sprint is to build a repeatable system that you can keep running afterwards. Whether you bring outbound in-house or keep working with an external team, you need a documented playbook that captures everything you've learned.
Your ICP definition (refined with real campaign data). Messaging frameworks — which hooks worked, which didn't, why. Every email template, LinkedIn message, and cold call script tested, with performance data attached. Target list criteria and sourcing methods. Channel-by-channel performance breakdowns. Objection handling notes from real conversations. Competitive intelligence from prospect calls. Call disposition data and activation rates by persona. CRM workflows and reporting. Complete technical setup documentation including domain configurations, warming schedules, and tool integrations.
This playbook turns a 3-month experiment into a permanent capability. Without it, you lose institutional knowledge, repeat mistakes, and start from scratch every time someone new touches outbound.
At the end of a sprint, you have two paths: take the playbook and run it yourself, or keep an external team running and optimizing it while your team focuses on closing. Either works - the important thing is that the playbook exists regardless, so you're never locked into a single provider or person.
We run this exact process for companies selling into life sciences. Three real engagements:
Everything in this guide is exactly what we execute for clients. If you'd rather have a specialized team build and run your GTM sprint instead of you doing it yourself, here's how it works.
Book a 30-minute strategy call. We'll walk through your market, your current setup, and whether a GTM sprint makes sense for your stage.
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