By Stephen Manobianco, Managing Director, PSG Life Sciences | Last updated: September 25, 2026
| QUICK ANSWER New Harvard Business Review Analytic Services research shows most B2B companies have a go-to-market execution problem, not a strategy problem -and in life sciences, that gap usually lives with the PhD scientists and technical specialists who carry the customer conversation and with sales, marketing, and technical teams that aren’t operating as one unit. Closing it takes structured commercial coaching for scientists, a high-performance team alignment process, and a CRM that gives everyone the same view of the buyer. |
In September 2025, Harvard Business Review Analytic Services surveyed 522 people involved in B2B sales decisions (the report, Aligning Go-to-Market Execution with Strategy to Better Address Complex Buyer Journeys, was sponsored by LeanData). The respondent pool is cross-industry -technology, manufacturing, consulting, financial services -not life sciences specifically. But I’ve spent 25+ years selling into research markets, and every pattern in this report shows up in life science commercial teams, usually in a more acute form.
Here’s what the data says, and what it means if your customer-facing team is built on PhD scientists.
What does the HBR research say about B2B go-to-market execution?
| DIRECT ANSWER: The HBR research finds that 83% of B2B organizations call their go-to-market strategy very important, but only 38% describe it as very effective and only 32% say their sales, marketing, and other teams are very aligned in executing it. |
The headline numbers from the survey:
- 83% say their GTM strategy is very important for selling to B2B buyers; only 38% say it’s very effective.
- 92% agree GTM strategy should align with the buyer journey -but only 29% say their organization understands today’s buyer journey very well.
- 78% say they need better coordination across the GTM systems used by marketing and sales.
- Only 32% say their sales, marketing, and other GTM teams are very aligned.
A Bain & Co. partner interviewed for the report makes the point every CEO needs to hear: when execution isn’t set up properly, adding budget or headcount doesn’t move outcomes. In other words, hiring another rep into a broken system just gives you a more expensive broken system.
Why does the strategy-to-execution gap hit life science companies harder?
| DIRECT ANSWER Life science companies feel the execution gap more because their customer-facing roles are usually filled by PhD scientists and technical specialists who were hired for scientific depth, not commercial skill, and because they sell to buying groups of PIs, lab managers, core directors, and procurement that each weigh different criteria. |
The HBR report calls out buying groups as a central complication: more stakeholders, each shaped by different touchpoints before a vendor ever gets a meeting. In the survey, 34% report difficulty engaging all members of a buying group, and 31% cite a lack of knowledge of the individual buyer roles involved in the decision.
In life sciences, that buying group is the PI who cares about data, the postdoc who runs the protocol, the lab manager who owns the budget, and the procurement team that owns the vendor list. A scientist-turned-seller will instinctively talk to the person who shares their vocabulary. That’s the PI or the postdoc. The deal often stalls somewhere else.
What separates go-to-market “leaders” from “laggards” in the HBR data?
| DIRECT ANSWER: GTM leaders in the HBR research are distinguished less by strategy than by execution discipline -they are far more aligned across teams, more likely to train their sales people, more likely to share common metrics, and far more likely to understand how their buyers actually buy. |
HBR segmented respondents into leaders (36%), followers (42%), and laggards (22%). The gaps are striking:
| Execution factor | Leaders | Laggards |
| Sales/marketing/other teams very aligned | 63% | 11% |
| Understand today’s buyer journey very well | 53% | 11% |
| Prioritize improving collaboration across teams | 81% | 49% |
| Training sales teams to improve effectiveness | 58% | 42% |
| Aligning on a shared GTM strategy | 51% | 30% |
| Cross-training sales and marketing on each other’s roles | 36% | 13% |
| Revenue growth achieved from better buyer-journey understanding | 64% | 37% |
Source: Harvard Business Review Analytic Services survey, September 2025 (n=522).
Read that table as a commercial leader and two things jump out. First, alignment is the single biggest separator -63% vs. 11%. Second, the leaders invest in people: training, cross-training, role clarity. That’s not a technology story. That’s a coaching and team-operating-model story.
How do you prepare PhD scientists to execute a go-to-market strategy?
| DIRECT ANSWER Prepare PhD scientists for commercial roles with structured, life-science-specific coaching applied to their live accounts -covering discovery, buying-group mapping, account planning, and CRM discipline -with their manager involved so the new behaviors stick. |
The HBR survey’s top execution challenges read like a job description for a newly promoted Field Application Scientist:
- A lack of feedback from buyers to improve approaches (39%)
- Insufficient time to customize approaches for different customers (39%)
- Reaction time too slow to act on customer and prospect signals (38%)
None of these are knowledge problems. Your PhDs know the science cold. They’re skill and habit problems: asking discovery questions instead of presenting data, qualifying the buying group instead of the friendliest scientist, logging the signal in the CRM instead of in their head. At GENEWIZ, where we scaled revenue from $17M to over $100M, the scientists who became top performers weren’t the ones with the best publication record. They were the ones who learned to run a disciplined commercial conversation.
The report also notes that among companies using AI in GTM, 45% use it to coach sales reps. A B2B sales consultant quoted in the report puts it bluntly: “I don’t want my sales reps practicing on buyers.” Neither do we. Scientists should rehearse on real account scenarios with a coach, not burn a key lab relationship learning how to handle a pricing objection.
That’s the design behind Bench to Business, PSG’s 12-week coaching program for PhD scientists, Field Application Specialists, technical sales teams, and business development professionals in customer-facing life science roles. It uses real accounts rather than generic role plays, brings managers in at kickoff, midpoint, and capstone, and ties coaching directly to discovery, stakeholder mapping, account planning, and CRM execution.
| Promoted a great scientist into a customer-facing role -and the pipeline hasn’t followed? Bench to Business is a 12-week, life-science-specific coaching program led by Steve Manobianco that turns scientific expertise into commercial execution, applied to your team’s live accounts. Explore Bench to Business Coaching → |
How do sales, marketing, and technical teams become a high-performance team?
| DIRECT ANSWER: Sales, marketing, and technical teams become a high-performance team by agreeing on shared goals and metrics, clarifying who owns each stage of the buyer journey, setting explicit decision-making and conflict-resolution protocols, and reviewing wins and losses together on a regular cadence. |
The HBR data on this is unambiguous. The most-cited challenges in designing GTM strategy include ineffective coordination between teams (43%) and internal teams with misaligned or conflicting goals (42%). The top steps companies are taking to fix collaboration are clarifying roles and expectations (48%) and defining common metrics and KPIs (48%).
In a life science company, “internal teams” usually means four groups with four scorecards: sales chasing bookings, marketing chasing MQLs, application scientists protecting their time, and product management protecting the roadmap. The Bain partner in the report observes that no single function owns the customer journey end to end, so the handoffs are where deals leak -and that most companies skip the post-cycle conversation about what happened and what should change.
PSG’s Sales & Marketing Alignment process is built to fix exactly that. Unlike traditional training, it works on real issues in real time, and teams leave with what it takes to operate as a High-Performance Team (HPT):
- Clear goals and agreement on business priorities
- Commitment to winning for the business over self-interest
- Defined protocols for decision-making
- Personal and team ownership and accountability
- An agreed-upon conflict resolution process
- A depersonalized feedback methodology
| Sales, marketing, and your application scientists pulling in different directions? PSG’s High-Performance Team alignment process gets commercial and technical teams onto shared goals, shared metrics, and clear ownership of the buyer journey. See Sales & Marketing Alignment Services → |
What role does CRM play in closing the execution gap?
| DIRECT ANSWER CRM is the operating system for GTM execution -it’s how coached behaviors and team agreements become visible and measurable -but the HBR data shows most companies own a CRM without getting a unified view of the buyer from it. |
CRM is the most commonly used GTM tool in the survey, cited by 75% of respondents. Yet the number-one execution challenge is siloed data that doesn’t give a holistic view of buyer or account engagement (43%), and the number-one design challenge is systems that don’t integrate well (48%).
Coaching and alignment only compound when they’re wired into the system. When a scientist maps a buying group, it should live on the account record. When the HPT agrees on a shared definition of a qualified opportunity, it should be a lifecycle stage and a dashboard -not a slide. That’s why Bench to Business and HPT alignment work best alongside a CRM configured for how scientific buyers actually evaluate, validate, and buy.
| Own a CRM but still can’t see the whole buying group? PSG Life Sciences is a HubSpot Gold partner that configures HubSpot around life science buying groups, sample and quote workflows, and shared sales-marketing dashboards. See HubSpot Life Sciences Pro → |
Where should a life science CEO start?
| DIRECT ANSWER: Start with a narrow pilot -one product line, one customer segment, one team -that combines scientist coaching, team alignment, and CRM visibility, prove the revenue impact, then scale it. |
The HBR report recommends piloting new execution models before rolling them out, and an Adobe executive in the report advises picking a very specific slice -a single product set, customer segment, and geography -getting it right, and then expanding. That matches what works in life sciences:
- Pick the slice. One product family and one buyer segment where your scientists are already in front of customers.
- Coach the people. Put the customer-facing scientists through Bench to Business on those live accounts.
- Align the team. Run the HPT process with sales, marketing, and technical support so everyone agrees on goals, stage ownership, and metrics.
- Instrument the CRM. Make buying groups, stage definitions, and follow-up speed visible in HubSpot.
- Review the cycle. Hold a joint win/loss review at 90 days -the conversation most companies skip -then scale what worked.
The companies that win aren’t the ones with the best GTM slide. They’re the ones whose scientists, marketers, and sellers execute the same plan, on the same data, toward the same number.
About the Author
Stephen Manobianco is Founder and Managing Director of PSG Life Sciences, a Princeton, NJ–based fractional commercialization firm and HubSpot Gold partner serving biotech, CRO/CDMO, life science tools, reagent, and diagnostics companies. As VP of Global Sales and Business Development at GENEWIZ, he helped scale revenue from $17M to over $100M. Over 25+ years he has coached several hundred scientists into customer-facing roles, and he leads PSG’s Bench to Business coaching program.
| Is your scientific team ready for the commercial world? Talk to Steve about a commercial readiness assessment covering your customer-facing scientists, team alignment, and CRM execution. Contact PSG Life Sciences → |
Quick-Reference FAQ
What does the HBR research say about B2B go-to-market execution?
The HBR research finds that 83% of B2B organizations call their go-to-market strategy very important, but only 38% describe it as very effective and only 32% say their sales, marketing, and other teams are very aligned in executing it.
Why does the strategy-to-execution gap hit life science companies harder?
Life science companies feel the execution gap more because their customer-facing roles are usually filled by PhD scientists and technical specialists who were hired for scientific depth, not commercial skill, and because they sell to buying groups of PIs, lab managers, core directors, and procurement that each weigh different criteria.
What separates go-to-market “leaders” from “laggards” in the HBR data?
GTM leaders in the HBR research are distinguished less by strategy than by execution discipline -they are far more aligned across teams, more likely to train their sales people, more likely to share common metrics, and far more likely to understand how their buyers actually buy.
How do you prepare PhD scientists to execute a go-to-market strategy?
Prepare PhD scientists for commercial roles with structured, life-science-specific coaching applied to their live accounts -covering discovery, buying-group mapping, account planning, and CRM discipline -with their manager involved so the new behaviors stick.
How do sales, marketing, and technical teams become a high-performance team?
Sales, marketing, and technical teams become a high-performance team by agreeing on shared goals and metrics, clarifying who owns each stage of the buyer journey, setting explicit decision-making and conflict-resolution protocols, and reviewing wins and losses together on a regular cadence.
What role does CRM play in closing the execution gap?
CRM is the operating system for GTM execution -it’s how coached behaviors and team agreements become visible and measurable -but the HBR data shows most companies own a CRM without getting a unified view of the buyer from it.
Where should a life science CEO start?
Start with a narrow pilot -one product line, one customer segment, one team -that combines scientist coaching, team alignment, and CRM visibility, prove the revenue impact, then scale it.
Source: Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, Aligning Go-to-Market Execution with Strategy to Better Address Complex Buyer Journeys (research report sponsored by LeanData; survey of 522 B2B decision-makers, September 2025).