The fractional economy has exploded, and with it has come a flood of people calling themselves fractional BDMs who have never actually built a pipeline from scratch or taken ownership of a revenue number. Hiring the wrong one is not just a waste of money. It delays your growth by six to twelve months while you discover the gap, exit the engagement, and start over.
I built this evaluation framework based on years of operating as a fractional BDM and watching companies make every hiring mistake in the book. Use it to filter the field quickly and hire someone who will actually move your pipeline.
Step 1: Get Clear on What You Actually Need
Before you evaluate anyone, you need a crisp answer to this question: what specifically does success look like in the first 90 days? If you cannot answer this, every candidate will sound equally plausible and you will default to chemistry, which is the worst way to make this decision.
Write down three to five measurable outcomes you want from the first quarter. Examples:
- Outbound sequence live and generating 15+ discovery calls per month
- ICP documented and validated with at least 20 qualified conversations
- HubSpot or Salesforce pipeline stages cleaned up and deal tracking established
- At least two partnership conversations initiated with complementary vendors
- First 10 qualified opportunities created and in active pipeline
When you share these with candidates, their reaction tells you a lot. Strong fractional BDMs will push back on what is unrealistic, propose adjustments, and add metrics you had not considered. Weak ones will nod enthusiastically at everything.
Step 2: Ask for Specific Pipeline Numbers
This is the most important question in any fractional BDM evaluation: tell me about the pipeline you have generated in your last three engagements. Not revenue. Pipeline. Give me the numbers.
What you are looking for: specific dollar amounts, deal sizes, sales cycles, and what happened to that pipeline. Did it close? At what rate? What was the average ACV? What was the source mix between outbound, inbound, and partnerships?
What you do not want to hear: vague statements about building relationships, growing teams, or supporting revenue initiatives. If they cannot give you numbers, they did not own the pipeline. They assisted someone who did.
I generated over $100M in pipeline across 10+ companies over the past several years. I can give you specific breakdowns by engagement, by channel, and by outcome. That is the level of accountability you should expect from any fractional BDM you hire.
Step 3: Evaluate Industry Fit
A fractional BDM who has sold SaaS to mid-market operations leaders will be significantly more effective for a SaaS company targeting that buyer than a generalist who has sold across many different products and buyers without depth in any.
Ask specifically: which of your prior engagements is most similar to what we are asking you to do here? Walk me through that engagement in detail. What was the ICP, what was the outbound motion, what were the conversion rates, and what would you do differently?
The depth and specificity of that answer tells you whether they have genuine expertise in your market or whether they are going to spend the first three months figuring out things an experienced operator would already know.
Step 4: Test Their Strategic Thinking
Give every candidate a real problem from your business before you hire them. Something like: here is our current ICP definition and our last quarter's pipeline report. In your first 60 days, what would you focus on and why?
Strong fractional BDMs will ask clarifying questions, identify gaps in the information you provided, and give you a specific, opinionated answer about where they would start. They might challenge your ICP definition based on what they see in the pipeline data. They might identify a segment you are underserving. They will have a point of view.
Weak candidates will describe their general process without engaging with your specific situation. Be suspicious of anyone who gives you a templated answer without referencing the actual details you shared.
Step 5: Check References Specifically About Pipeline
Reference checks are often done perfunctorily, with questions so general that they produce useless answers. Do not ask if the candidate was a pleasure to work with. Ask specific questions about pipeline.
Questions to ask references:
- What specific pipeline outcomes did this person own, and did they hit their targets?
- What was the outbound motion they built and what were the response rates?
- How did they respond when results were not meeting expectations?
- Would you hire them again, and if not, why?
- What was their biggest strength and what was the gap you had to work around?
The reference who describes someone as strategic, a great thought partner, and excellent at building relationships without mentioning pipeline numbers is inadvertently telling you that this person was not accountable for revenue outcomes. That is a problem.
Step 6: Evaluate Their Tech Stack Fluency
A fractional BDM who is unfamiliar with the tools your team uses will spend their first month in your system learning rather than producing. Ask specifically about their experience with HubSpot, Salesforce, Apollo, Clay, Outreach, and LinkedIn Sales Navigator, because these are the tools that show up in most B2B BD stacks.
Better yet, ask them to walk you through how they would set up a basic outbound sequence in whatever tool you use. Not a theoretical description. A live walkthrough or a quick screen share. Someone who has built pipelines in these tools can do this in ten minutes. Someone who has only read about them cannot.
Step 7: Negotiate Structure Before Scope
Before you agree on a monthly rate, agree on the structure. How many hours per week are included? What are the defined deliverables? What does success look like at 30, 60, and 90 days? What is the notice period if the engagement is not working?
I recommend starting with a 90-day engagement with defined milestones and a mutual review at the end. This gives both sides a chance to evaluate fit before committing to a longer term. Any fractional BDM who resists this structure is protecting themselves at your expense.
If you want to evaluate what working together might look like before committing, book a strategy call. We can walk through your BD situation, I can share how I would approach it, and you can evaluate whether my style and experience match what you need. No pressure, no pitch. Just a real conversation about your pipeline. Visit my pricing page for current engagement structures.