Winston Francois builds sales development programs that respect a 12-24 month buying cycle, keep outbound messaging inside Sunshine Act and anti-kickback lines, and coordinate with medical affairs instead of tripping over it. We embed as your fractional SDR/BDR function, not a cadence template with your logo on it.
The Problem
Standard SDR Cadences Assume a Buying Cycle That Does Not Exist Here
Most SDR tooling and training comes out of SaaS, where a 5-touch sequence over 14 days either books a meeting or the lead dies. A health system evaluating a new therapy or a device goes through committee reviews, formulary cycles, and budget windows that run 12 to 24 months.
Sunshine Act Reporting Turns Every HCP Touch Into a Compliance Event
Under the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, transfers of value to HCPs get reported and published, and outreach that offers meals, event access, or anything resembling an inducement has to be tracked and justified. Most SDR teams have no idea their outreach templates reference things that need to flow into an Open Payments report, or they avoid any HCP outreach with real substance because nobody explained where the line actually is.
Health-System Buyers and Individual Prescribers Are Two Different Sales Motions Running Through One SDR Desk
Qualifying an institutional or health-system buyer means mapping a P&T committee, a procurement function, and an IT security review, none of which an individual prescriber ever sees. Qualifying a prescribing HCP means understanding their patient population and clinical workflow, not a procurement process.
Outbound Messaging With Any Clinical Content Has No Compliance Review Path
The moment an SDR email references efficacy, a trial result, or an indication, it stops being a sales message and becomes promotional material that Legal, Regulatory, and Medical Review would normally scrutinize for months before a campaign launch. SDR teams either strip out anything specific, which produces outreach so generic it gets ignored, or they send clinical claims that never touched a compliance reviewer, which is the kind of finding that shows up in an FDA warning letter.
SDRs and MSLs Are Contacting the Same Prescriber With No Idea the Other Exists
Medical Science Liaisons are having scientific exchange conversations with the same HCPs an SDR is trying to book a commercial conversation with, and in most biotech and pharma companies these two functions run on separate systems with zero shared visibility. A prescriber gets an MSL call about a clinical question and an SDR cold email about the same product in the same week, with neither team aware of the other's outreach.
Territory and Account Ownership Fights Slow Down Every Real Opportunity
When a health-system opportunity surfaces, sales, key account management, and sometimes a regional MSL all believe they own that relationship, and nobody has agreed on where SDR-sourced pipeline hands off. Deals stall in the gap between qualification and the first real sales conversation because it is unclear whose calendar the meeting belongs on.
How We Help
We start with a two-week audit of how outbound actually happens today – what SDRs are sending, to whom, on what cadence, and which of those touches already run through a compliance review versus which ones never have.
From the audit we build two separate qualification and cadence models, because a health-system buyer and an individual prescriber are not the same sale.
We build a compliance fast-lane specifically for SDR volume – a pre-approved message library reviewed once by Legal, Regulatory, and Medical Review, so SDRs are choosing from vetted language instead of freelancing clinical claims in a cold email.
We integrate the SDR desk with whatever system your medical affairs team already runs – Veeva or an equivalent – so an MSL touch and an SDR touch on the same HCP show up on one shared timeline.
On execution, we set explicit handoff rules between SDR-qualified pipeline and the account owner – sales, key account management, or a fractional CXO function – so a health-system opportunity does not sit in a no-man's-land while three departments argue about whose calendar it belongs on.
Measurement here is not SaaS-style meetings-booked-per-week.
We work embedded and fractional, which means the person who built your institutional-buyer qualification model is the same person your compliance team calls when a message needs a fast review three months from now, not a consultant who handed off a playbook and left.
What we deliver
- SDR/BDR outreach and cadence audit with Sunshine Act and anti-kickback exposure flagged line by line
- Separate qualification and cadence models for institutional/health-system buyers versus individual prescribing HCPs
- Pre-approved, compliance-reviewed message library with a defined fast-lane review path for anything new
- SDR-to-MSL coordination workflow inside your existing medical affairs system (Veeva or equivalent) to prevent double-contact
- Defined handoff rules between SDR-qualified pipeline and account owners (sales, KAM, fractional CXO)
- Cycle-stage tracking built for 12-24 month buying timelines instead of meetings-booked-per-week metrics
- Documented SDR training and onboarding process reflecting the two distinct sales motions
The reason biotech and pharma SDR programs stall is not that outreach is too slow – it is that the cadence, the qualification script, and the compliance review are all borrowed from a SaaS playbook built for a sales cycle one-tenth as long as the one you are actually running.
Our Methodology
We run in 90-day sprints. Days 1-15 are the outreach and compliance audit – pulling real templates, real cadences, and mapping every touch against Sunshine Act and anti-kickback exposure, plus a first look at where SDR and MSL activity already overlap. Days 16-45 are build: the two qualification models, the compliance-reviewed message library, and the SDR-to-MSL coordination workflow inside your existing systems. Days 46-75 run the new model against live accounts, not a pilot list, so we catch the handoff friction and cadence-timing issues that only show up with real prospects. Days 76-90 are handoff and documentation – training your SDR team on the two motions, and leaving compliance with a review process they can actually sustain without us in the room.
This is different from a typical SDR consulting engagement in one specific way: we do not deliver a cadence template and a script deck. We build the qualification logic, the message library, and the MSL coordination workflow inside your actual tools, and we stay on to run point when compliance flags a new message or when an SDR is unsure which motion applies to a given account. A qualification model nobody in your compliance or medical affairs team trusts gets ignored within a quarter, so we build it with them, not for them.
How We Work
The first 30 days are diagnostic. We sit with your SDR team, compliance, and medical affairs to map real outreach activity and real overlap points, and we come back with a build plan scoped to what your stack and team can actually absorb, not a generic SDR playbook.
Days 31-60 are build and integration. We work inside your CRM and outreach tooling directly with your SDR managers, writing the message library, setting up the MSL coordination workflow, and testing the institutional-versus-HCP qualification split against live accounts.
By day 90 your SDR team is running dual-motion cadences with a working compliance fast-lane and a real-time view of MSL activity on shared accounts, not a rollout plan for one. From there we typically stay on fractional – weekly during active ramp, biweekly once the model is running clean – so your SDR managers have direct access to the people who built it when a new product launch or a new territory changes the picture.
If your biotech or pharma company needs a sales development function that will not get you a Sunshine Act finding or a compliance freeze, we should talk.
- Outbound messaging that clears compliance review without slowing SDR volume to a crawl
- Qualification models matched to the actual buyer – institutional committee or individual prescriber
- Elimination of double-contact between SDR and MSL outreach on shared accounts
- Cleaner handoff from SDR-qualified pipeline to the account owner
- Pipeline tracking that reflects real progression through a 12-24 month cycle
- Lower compliance and anti-kickback exposure across outbound activity
If your biotech & pharma company needs sales development (sdr/bdr) leadership, we should talk.
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Frequently asked questions
How do you keep SDR outreach compliant with the Sunshine Act and anti-kickback rules?
We audit every existing template and cadence for transfer-of-value triggers first, then build a pre-approved message library that Legal, Regulatory, and Medical Review sign off on once instead of reviewing every individual send. Anything outside that library routes through a defined fast-lane review, so compliance is a checkpoint SDRs actually use instead of a wall they route around.
Why does a standard SDR cadence not work for biotech and pharma buyers?
Most SDR cadences are built for a 30 to 90 day SaaS sales cycle where silence means the deal is dead. A health-system or HCP buying decision can take 12 to 24 months and go quiet for legitimate reasons – committee timing, budget cycles, or clinical review – that have nothing to do with buyer intent, so we build cadences and reengagement triggers around that reality instead of a SaaS clock.
How do you prevent our SDRs and MSLs from contacting the same HCP without knowing it?
We build a shared visibility layer inside whatever medical affairs system you already run, typically Veeva, so an MSL touch and an SDR touch on the same contact show up on one timeline. That single fix usually resolves the double-contact problem faster than any policy memo does, because it makes the overlap visible before either team sends anything.
Do you qualify health-system buyers differently than individual prescribing HCPs?
Yes, and treating them the same is one of the most common mistakes we find. A health-system sale runs through a committee – procurement, P&T, IT security, budget owner – and the qualification script has to map that structure, while an HCP conversation is about clinical relevance and patient population fit.
What happens when an SDR wants to reference a clinical claim in an email?
That message goes through the compliance fast-lane we build during the engagement rather than getting sent unreviewed or stripped down to something meaningless. The library gives SDRs pre-approved language for the claims that come up most often, and anything new gets a defined turnaround time instead of disappearing into a generic review queue built for full campaign material.
What does a sales development engagement cost for a biotech or pharma company?
Engagements are scoped fractional, typically in the range of $12K-$30K per month depending on team size, the number of systems we integrate with, and how much compliance review infrastructure already exists. That covers the embedded team building and running the program, not a fixed deliverable list, because the audit usually reshapes the highest-priority work.
Is this a fit for a company that does not have an SDR function yet?
Yes, and it is often more straightforward than fixing an existing team that has been running a borrowed SaaS playbook for a year. Building the institutional-versus-HCP qualification split and the compliance fast-lane from scratch means there is no bad habit to unwind first, just a program built correctly from the first outreach.
