Problem · Life science
Our CRO's new business comes only from PIs who already know us.
The scientific founders are the business development team. There is no ideal customer profile, no segmentation by therapeutic area or model type, no systematic prospecting, and no consistent follow up, so opportunities quietly disappear over a nine month sales cycle. Corstrate's 2026 write up of small CRO business development names those exact gaps. Our COO lived them for a decade selling custom models for a genetic engineering CRO.
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A CRO under $2 million: Baseline at $2,500 a month for a technical post, a newsletter to past clients, and social that shows the lab. At $3 million with a site and no paid demand: Catalyst. At $5 million needing meetings this quarter: Kinetic, with an outbound seat to lab managers and a meeting number in writing. Pricing is published.
Researchers search before they email
A PI does not call a vendor to learn what a conditional knockout is. They search for the specific strain, promoter, targeting strategy, and turnaround, and compare two or three providers on their websites. BioInformatics puts 60 percent or more of the buying process complete before a rep is contacted. If your site cannot carry the technical comparison, you were eliminated before the email. A 12 page brochure site with the words flexible, high quality, and client focused is not a differentiator; Corstrate lists those three words as the ones every small CRO uses.
Who to call, and who not to
For purchases under roughly $50,000, the lab manager or core facility director handles vendors, compares quotes, and places the order. The PI approves. Outbound to lab managers referencing the lab's recent publication and the model it implies gets read. Outbound to PIs with no context gets deleted. Timing matters: outreach converts in the months after grant notices go out, when the money is real and the timeline is short.
The system for a CRO, by revenue
Under $2 million: publish. One deep technical post a month, one newsletter to every past client, social that shows the lab rather than stock photos. That is enough to be found and cited, and it reactivates past clients who forgot you exist. At $3 million: add one Google Ads campaign against the model and service terms buyers type, with a landing page per service and leads worked within a business day. At $5 million: add one outbound seat working lab managers with a monthly meeting number in writing, plus programmatic page expansion, 50 entity pages at a time, to keep owning the search. Someone on your side with scientific credibility takes the meeting.
The claims layer a generalist skips
If your content touches preclinical efficacy or a translational outcome, some claims want a named scientific reviewer before they publish. We run that as a review gate: a claim library, a reviewer you name, a sign off log. $500 to $1,200 a month depending on tier. It is the difference between content that ships weekly and content that waits for a scientist's spare afternoon.
Questions on this problem
On the specific queries, yes. A global CRO has one page about mouse models. You can have 147. Researchers search specifically, and specific pages win.
A scientist on your side. Founder knowledge closes a technical sale. Our seat prospects, qualifies, confirms, and briefs.
Our COO is a molecular biologist who sold custom models for more than ten years and ran operations at a medical school department. She is on every life science account.
George Stoff, Founder and Lead Engineer
Thirty years building software, brands, and demand. On every account.