What It Really Takes to Build a Commercial Machine in Life Sciences with Elliott Berger

In this episode of the Active Ingredients podcast, host Thomas Dove speaks with Elliott Berger, Executive Strategy & Marketing Advisor, Board Director at Orientation Marketing & Fractional CMO.

Elliott began his career as a Management Consultant before joining Johnson & Johnson (J&J), where he worked across strategy, marketing and sales. He then spent 14 years at Catalent, helping transform a private equity-backed business into a multi-billion dollar public company. He now advises investors and senior executives across the contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO), contract research organisation (CRO) and biotech landscape.

In this conversation, Elliott shares what it takes to build a commercial engine that delivers results in life sciences. He covers how to align marketing, sales and commercial operations, what makes CDMO commercial strategy different from large pharma, and how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is beginning to change the way commercial teams work.

Key Takeaways

- Learn why a structured commercial system matters more than individual talent, and how even skilled people will underperform without a clear framework.

- Discover Elliott Berger’s three ingredients for great leadership: vision and strategy, building a strong team, and finding the right mix of delegation, attention to detail and a drive for excellence.

- Understand how to spot where a commercial engine is failing to convert, whether the problem sits at the top of the funnel, during the sales process, or in onboarding and delivery.•

- Explore why healthy friction between marketing and sales signals that both teams are doing their jobs, and why the absence of that friction should concern commercial leaders.

- Gain practical advice for building commercial strategy in the CDMO space, where selling to pharmaceutical and biotech organisations requires a very different approach from large pharma.

- Identify why senior leaders moving from large pharma to CDMO environments often struggle, and what mindset and skill shifts are needed to adapt to faster-paced, more uncertain commercial settings.

- Apply lessons from Elliott’s approach to customer experience across the full client lifecycle, from the first site visit through to onboarding and ongoing delivery, and why any weak point can cost you the relationship.

Snippets

- "Being good or average is not good enough — you have to be excellent. Because if you're good, somebody who is excellent will eat your breakfast."

- "I often think of a leader like an orchestra conductor. You've got to know where you're driving the music and who is good at doing what, where."

- "You can build a commercial machine on top of good factories. You cannot easily build good factories underneath a good commercial machine."

Timestamps & Topics

The following timestamps are approximations:

- [01:14] -- Key Ingredients: Three essential traits for great leadership

- [05:19] -- Career Origins: From management consulting to life sciences

- [12:06] -- Leadership Realisation: When Elliott recognised he was a leader

- [20:20] -- System Failures: Where most organisations break down commercially

- [26:12] -- CDMO Strategy: How commercial strategy differs from large pharma

- [44:06] -- AI and Commercial Teams: How AI is changing commercial strategy in life sciences

Resources

- Follow Elliott Berger on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elliott-berger/

- Follow Thomas Dove on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lifesciencesexecutivesearch/

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