Your marketing team celebrates 1,500 new leads this quarter. Your sales team says 1,490 are worthless. Sound familiar?

If you’ve spent more than a week in a commercial function inside a life science company, you have undoubtedly witnessed this debate between marketing and sales teams. Both sides have ample evidence as to why they’re right in their assessment, but at the end of the day, if opportunities aren’t growing, then both sides, and indeed the company, lose.  

Our study of 130+ commercial leaders in life science tools and services exposed the real cost: 25% lead generation effectiveness. 2% qualification rate. Over $200 million wasted annually — and that’s before counting lost market share to competitors who understand scientific skepticism.

If leads aren’t responding, they’re not ‘bad leads’.  Very likely, they’ve stalled because of scientific skepticism. And most companies trigger it without realizing it.

The problem: You’re treating scientific skepticism as a barrier when it’s actually how scientists naturally make decisions. 

Scientists actually rely on their skepticism to guide them. And if you don’t understand the four types of skepticism they rely on, you’ll keep losing momentum and wasting marketing and sales efforts.

Let’s diagnose and fix your funnel by understanding and eliminating the four types of skepticism scientists face. 

1. Curiosity Skepticism: “Why Should I Care?”

This is the biggest deal-killer. It stops scientists before they even start, and is the easiest one to overlook.

The Mistake: You lead either with rote scientific education of science, applications, KOLs, or with product content, like features and benefits

Here’s why that fails: Scientists don’t engage because your offering is relevant. They engage because it challenges their thinking.

The Reality: Most companies capture names under the guise of ‘education’, but not curiosity. Education is the information scientists consume idly. It doesn’t drive customers to action. Curiosity pulls prospects forward.

The Fix: present a provocative insight or perspective they aren’t expecting, Challenge assumptions. Create intellectual tension.

If your narrative doesn’t challenge assumptions, it won’t move a scientist an inch (or centimeter), and they remain skeptical as to why they should care enough to engage.

2. Momentum Skepticism: “This Feels Like Regression”

This one causes more pipeline drag than anything else in modern commercial operations.

The Mistake: A scientist downloads your breakthrough data. Your response? Six emails about basic applications they may or may not care about. Their momentum evaporates instantly.

In a recent collaboration with a client, we reached out to over 225 opportunities that had stalled, and found an interesting pattern for why these prospects hadn’t moved forward: they were missing 2 critical pieces of information to finalize their decisions. But when we reviewed the nurture content that the company had sent them, there was a big mismatch, actually taking these opportunities backward along the consideration cycle. When we re-aligned nurture content to focus specifically on what was slowing down buyers, sales velocity more than tripled. 

The Reality: Scientists build momentum through hypothesis formation. Every backward step doesn’t just slow progress; it signals that you don’t understand their sophistication.

The Fix: Map content to their hypothesis formation, not funnel stage. 

If they engaged with advanced content, follow with:

  • Validation data they need for internal buy-in
  • Peer-reviewed evidence
  • Budget justification frameworks
  • Implementation roadmaps

Every backwards step creates friction.

And friction kills deals.

3. Readiness Skepticism: “You’re Selling Before I’m Evaluating”

The Mistake: Scientists operate by forming and then validating a hypothesis. You operate on quarter-end urgency.

Until scientists form a hypothesis, persuasion feels intrusive. This misalignment destroys trust.

If you rush your scientific buyer, the buyer retreats. 

The Reality: You win when you help them form their hypothesis. And this takes a specific sequence of content than typical nurture campaigns we see. 

The Fix: Align your marketing stages with their decision stages:

  • Need recognition – They learn about a need
  • Evidence gathering – They look to see if the need is real
  • Problem personalization – They consider if it’s relevant to them
  • Hypothesis formation – They craft a plan to satisfy their need
  • Product Evaluation – They which commercial options will meet their hypothesis
  • Validation & Commitment – They validate their hypothesis and commit

Align every interaction to their stage, not yours.

4. Bias Skepticism: “You’re Leading With Claims, Not Evidence”

Scientists can spot bias a mile away. And they’re trained to reject it.

The Mistake: Your marketing messages read like the conclusion of a paper. Even if the conclusion is factual, and the company has ample proof to support the claims, it doesn’t mean it won’t trigger the scientist’s bias filters.  

The problem isn’t a lack of evidence or data. It’s that the ‘conclusion’ of the argument is delivered way too early, and out of sequence. Again, this is usually a well-meaning attempt by the company to increase sales velocity, but it often backfires because scientists sense bias. 

The Reality: Scientists are trained to be skeptical of claims that arrive before evidence. When  you try to persuade too early, your attempt will feel biased. And if scientists sense bias, they don’t investigate it. They simply disengage.

The Fix: This isn’t just about order of messaging,  it’s about trust. When you follow the pattern scientists use to evaluate truth, you bypass their bias filters.

Are you Feeding Skepticism, or Reducing It?

Look at your commercial engine honestly:

  • You generate leads, but you don’t build momentum.
  • Your content (webinars, blogs, trade show presence) is scientific communications.
  • You want more “qualified” deals, but you nurture everyone the same way.
  • You assume stalled opportunities are either because of budgets or a sales problem.

This isn’t a performance issue.

It’s a sequencing issue.

Skepticism appears when the journey doesn’t match the buyer’s internal process.

You Don’t Need More Leads. You Need Less Skepticism.

If you suspect skepticism is slowing your opportunity generation — even if you can’t pinpoint exactly where — we can help.

We run an Opportunity Generation Health Assessment that diagnoses:

  • where prospects are getting stuck,
  • which skepticism type is stalling your deals,
  • and what changes will create immediate momentum.

We’ve studied scientific skepticism for over 20 years, and have developed practical tools to detect and overcome it in a multitude of commercial situations. We can show you exactly where your prospects are getting stuck, and the specific changes that will create momentum.

Schedule your Opportunity Generation Health Assessment.