Why life science companies are losing deals they should be winning: March events snapshot

Most people go to industry events to be seen. The more useful thing is to listen.

Our team spent March at Festival of Biologics, Analytica, DCAT Week and BIO Europe Spring – and what we heard, beneath the pitches and the stand conversations, was a sector working through some significant and consistent challenges.

Here’s what the market is telling us right now.

👉 The gap between capability and perception is wider than it should be

Almost every organization we spoke to has evolved – new services, expanded geographies, deeper technical expertise. But their positioning hasn’t kept pace with who they’ve become.

At BIO Europe Spring, this came up repeatedly: companies that have genuinely transformed their offering over the last few years, still being met with the market perception they built half a decade ago. In a sector where trust and credibility drive decisions, that lag isn’t just frustrating. It’s commercially damaging.

👉 Pipeline pressure is exposing the limits of how growth is being pursued

At Festival of Biologics, the conversation kept returning to leads – where they come from, how reliable they are, and whether there’s any real engine behind them.

Layer in what we heard at DCAT, and the picture sharpens: Q2 is proving a tougher selling environment, with budgets and deal momentum often weighted toward Q1 and Q4. That seasonality is exposing just how reliant many businesses still are on episodic activity rather than consistent demand generation.

For many businesses, the honest answer is that BD is still largely manual. Conferences, referrals, and personal networks are doing the heavy lifting.

Demand generation as a discipline – building scalable, always-on visibility with the right audiences – barely features. And with marketing teams running lean, often one or two people absorbing far more than a marketing remit, there’s rarely the bandwidth to change that.

👉 Content is being produced; strategy is not

This one came up in almost every room. Teams are creating assets – blogs, whitepapers, social posts – but without a clear sense of who they’re for, where they’re going, or what they’re supposed to do commercially.

At BIO Europe Spring, we heard from multiple companies that content had become a habit rather than a strategy. The output exists. The intent behind it is harder to find.

👉 Technical excellence is not a differentiator if you can’t communicate it

Nowhere was this clearer than at Analytica. The hall was full of genuinely impressive capability – instrumentation, analytical technology, laboratory solutions built on years of expertise. But stand after stand defaulted to specs. Features. Demonstrations.

The broader story – what problem does this solve, who does it serve, why does it matter – was largely absent. In a market where differentiation is already difficult, leading with what you do rather than why it matters is a missed opportunity every time.

👉 The scrutiny on marketing has sharpened… and it’s coming from the top.

Across all three events, we heard a version of the same shift: marketing decisions are increasingly being made, or at least interrogated, at the C-suite level. The question being asked isn’t “what did you produce?” It’s “what did it contribute?”

Companies that have invested in activity without outcomes are carrying the weight of that, and they’re approaching the next conversation about marketing spend with considerably more caution.

👉 The market is consolidating — and networks are becoming a growth lever

Another shift that surfaced more clearly at DCAT: M&A activity has slowed in some areas, but the influence of private equity is becoming more visible in how companies show up.

We’re seeing more examples of portfolio companies collaborating; shared presence at events, combined meetings, coordinated BD activity.

That signals something important: growth isn’t just about individual brand visibility anymore. It’s about how effectively you activate the network around you.

For PE-backed businesses especially, there’s a real opportunity to leverage collective credibility, shared audiences, and cross-portfolio positioning to unlock conversations that wouldn’t happen in isolation.

Events are often written off as relationship maintenance. And they can be, if that’s all you’re looking for.

But pay attention to what’s underneath and they become exponentially more valuable; the candid conversations, the repeated frustrations, the questions people keep coming back to. A live read of where the market actually is.

The question worth sitting with isn’t whether these challenges exist in your organization. It’s whether you’re addressing them before your competitors do.