Fractional BD
Fractional Business Development: How to Create a Blueprint of Growth for Your Firm
Feb 3, 2025
The Need for Fractional Business Development
As technical, highly-engineered products get increasingly complex, acting as a technical partner to your client can set you apart. Identifying, analyzing, and resolving challenges prospects and customers are having creates sustainable and highly profitable net new revenue. This is the core of business development.
Business development (BD) requires a strategic approach to generating revenue. Fractional business development has emerged as a game-changing concept, offering engineering firms the opportunity to tap into specialized expertise and drive sustainable growth.
By leveraging the power of fractional business development consulting services, companies can unlock new opportunities, optimize their operations, and achieve their business objectives.
The Problem
Consider this situation: your team has created a disruptive product to solve a major problem in an underserved market. You know you need to grow, so you’ve brought on sales staff to pound the pavement and capture initial sales from early adopters.
This is not sustainable, and revenue varies wildly. You know you need to educate the market, develop thought leadership, and create a product portfolio to serve a broader customer base. Several questions arise at once:
What other products should we develop?
How do we create and cultivate new customer relationships?
How can we make a dent into the large industry leaders’ share?
How do to explain what we’ve done to as many people as possible?
How do we get our long-term customer nurturing BD efforts aligned?
How can we develop a strategy for marketing and content to create an inbound engine to match our direct outbound?
The [first part of the] Solution
Business Development aims to seek and resolve organizational problems and opportunities that lead to innovative solutions that generate long-term value. As a result, BD accelerates growth metrics at all points along the sales funnel: top-funnel leads, mid-funnel pipeline opportunities, and bottom-funnel conversions.
BD can accelerate growth by adding to these areas, making it an efficient and smart investment for high-growth companies. They are market experts, adept at competitive analysis, SWOT’s, technology evaluations and opportunities, new market segment identification, and everything in between. They are best suited to direct marketing and communications a deep knowledge of the business landscape.
BD is absolutely essential to creating sustainable growth for your growing company, as it inspires confidence and trust with new prospects and the industry while strengthening those relationships.
BD looks outside your company to inform internal activities.
But hiring a high-quality full-time BD representative can be expensive.
You’ll need someone with direct or translatable experience to your industry. That level of BDR can command a total comp package of $300,000 or above, depending on region.
It’s usually too big a step from knowing you’re ready for long-term growth to being able to afford someone experienced—and great—at it.
How could you afford A-list talent at an annual spend 25-30% of a FT hire…BEFORE bonus and benefits?
Enter Fractional Business Development.
What is Fractional Business Development?
Fractional business development (FBD) is a model where companies engage with experienced business development professionals on a part-time or project basis, usually for 6- or 12-month engagements. The primary goal of BD is sustainable growth…and the degree of sustainability is measured by pipeline.
Fractional BD experts bring a wealth of knowledge, skills, and industry insights to the table, providing strategic guidance and support to help engineering firms navigate complex business challenges. By working with a fractional business development consultant, companies can access top-tier expertise without the need for a full-time in-house hire.
Fractional differs from in-house, as the scope is usually better defined and easier to stick to. Full time BD reps (and even managers/directors) tend to convert into ambitious salespeople during tight revenue periods. It solves a short-term pain, but drains the fuel from the long-term growth engine you wanted to begin with, stalling momentum.
Strategic Benefits of Fractional Business Development for Engineering Companies
Fractional business development offers numerous advantages for technical engineering companies.
Some key benefits include:
Cost-effectiveness: Engaging a fractional consultant eliminates the need for a full-time salary and benefits, making it a more affordable option for many firms. You get all the expertise, but for a time period you choose.
Flexibility: Fractional engagements allow companies to scale their business development efforts up or down based on their specific needs and budget.
Diverse expertise: Fractional consultants bring a broad range of experiences and insights from working with multiple clients across various industries.
Fresh perspectives: An outside consultant can provide an objective viewpoint and challenge existing assumptions, leading to innovative solutions and strategies.
Team growth: bringing in a fractional BD partner instantly expands team capability. They bolt on skills that complement what your internal team member already do well, compounding the efficiency and quality of output.
Thought leadership: A well-known Fractional BD partner can help you gain visibility through their network.
As an embedded, retained resource, Fractional BD is uniquely suited to [finally!] deliver external insights to create internal strategy.
Fractional business development is a powerful tool for technical engineering firms looking to drive growth, expand their market presence, and achieve their business objectives. By leveraging the expertise of experienced consultants, these companies can access the strategic guidance and resources they need to succeed in hyper-competitive markets.
Whether it’s identifying new opportunities, creating strategic partnerships, guiding NPD and content efforts, or optimizing sales and marketing, fractional business development services can create sustainable growth for engineering firms years after their engagement ends.
Earn the growth your business deserves
