When You’re the Small Fish
Small companies tend to think the problem with their CDMO is leverage. If we only had more volume, the thinking goes, we would get more attention, better slots, faster answers. Leverage helps, and it is real. But the programs I have seen get genuine partnership from a CDMO were rarely the biggest ones on the floor. They were the ones that brought the CDMO along for the journey.
That distinction matters, because you cannot change the first thing. A clinical-stage program does not move the kind of volume that commands priority, and no amount of pushing makes you a bigger customer than you are. You will not out-leverage the commercial products sharing that facility. If your plan for getting attention is to be important enough to demand it, you have already lost, because you are not, and everyone involved knows it.
What you can do is make them care about your outcome anyway. And the lever for that is not volume. It is partnership, built early and honestly, before you need anything from it.
I learned this most sharply during a high-stakes transfer on a short timeline, the kind of situation where there is no slack for the relationship to go wrong on top of everything else. What carried it was not leverage, because we did not have any. It was transparency from the very beginning. Being honest about what was at stake, for us and for them, before there was a problem to manage. Understanding what I was going to need from them and saying so upfront, rather than surfacing it later as an emergency. Making sure they understood not just the deadline but why it mattered, and what a good outcome meant for both sides.
That is the part most small companies skip. They treat the CDMO as a vendor to be managed and their own needs as things to raise when they come up, which trains the relationship to run reactively, one fire at a time. A program that shows up only when something is urgent teaches the CDMO to see it as noise. A program that is clear and honest from the start, about the stakes, the timeline, and what it will need along the way, becomes something the people on the other side can actually plan around, and want to.
Bringing a CDMO along for the journey is not a technique you apply in a crisis. It is a posture you set from the first conversation, and most of it is unglamorous.
It starts with being easy to work with, which sounds trivial and is not. Clean tech transfers. Decisions made quickly instead of sitting in your court for two weeks. Documentation that is right the first time. Not making their project manager chase you for the things they need. A small customer who is low-friction to serve is one the team quietly wants to help, because you are not the account that makes their week harder. You cannot buy priority, but you can make yourself the program people do not mind prioritizing.
It means being clear about your needs before they become urgent. If you know a critical window is coming, say so early, while there is still room to plan around it, rather than surfacing it as an emergency when the room is gone. Naming what you will need before you ask for it is what lets the other side actually build it into their schedule, and it is the difference between a partner who can prepare and a vendor who is constantly reacting to you.
It means making the shared stakes explicit rather than assuming they are understood. Tell them what a good outcome means for the program, not just the deadline but why it matters. Most companies keep this to themselves and then wonder why the CDMO does not share their urgency. Urgency you have not explained is just pressure. Urgency you have made legible, with the reasons attached, is something a partner can get behind.
And it is worth being honest about the fact that your success is their business too. A clinical-stage program that hits its milestone is a program that raises its next round, advances toward approval, and turns into a commercial product with commercial volume. The small transfer today is the meaningful customer in a few years. The CDMOs and the individuals who understand that treat early-stage programs differently, because they are not just running your batch, they are investing in a relationship that could matter to them later. You do not have to oversell this. You just have to make sure it is visible, because it is real.
Some of this also comes down to where the real work happens, which is rarely the account level. The commercial contact matters, but the people who determine whether your timeline holds are the scheduler, the floor lead, the person actually running the process. Knowing them, and being someone they are glad to go to bat for, does more for your program than any amount of escalation from above.
And when you do have to hold a line on a timeline, hold it plainly and only when it counts. A program that treats every date as critical trains everyone to stop believing it. Firmness is a currency, and it is worth more when you are not spending it constantly.
None of this changes the fact that you are the small fish, and it is not meant to. It changes what being the small fish costs you. Leverage would let you demand attention. Partnership earns it, and the attention you earn tends to be steadier and more willing than the kind you could ever force. You will not be the biggest thing on their floor. You can still be the program they are genuinely glad to have, and on a short timeline when it matters most, that turns out to be worth more.