One of the most common misconceptions I run into is that a fractional business development manager is essentially a part-time consultant who gives advice on Zoom calls and sends a monthly strategy memo. In practice, the highest-value fractional BDM engagements look nothing like that. They're embedded, operational, and directly accountable for pipeline outcomes. Here's exactly what a quality fractional BDM does — week by week, deliverable by deliverable.
The Difference Between Advising and Operating
Before breaking down the responsibilities, it's worth making a distinction that most companies miss when evaluating fractional candidates: the difference between an advisor and an operator.
An advisor tells you what to do. An operator does it, or directly manages the people doing it. A fractional BDM should be an operator first. That means they're in your CRM, they're on calls with prospects, they're writing and testing outbound sequences, they're sitting in on partnership conversations. The value isn't in the insights they share on a slide deck — it's in the pipeline they generate and the systems they build.
When you're evaluating a fractional BDM candidate, ask yourself: "Is this person describing what they would tell us to do, or showing me what they have done?" The former is advisory. The latter is operational. You want operational.
Week-by-Week Breakdown: First 90 Days
Week 1–2: Diagnostic and Discovery
The first two weeks of any quality fractional BDM engagement should look like deep investigative work, not strategy slides. Here's what I do in every engagement during this period:
- CRM audit: Pull your full pipeline, analyze deal stages, look at close rates by source, rep, and customer segment. The data tells a story that's almost always different from what the founder or sales leader believes.
- Customer interviews: Talk to 5–10 of your best customers. Not about features — about why they bought, what they were afraid of, what almost stopped them, and what words they use to describe their problem. This is gold for messaging.
- ICP stress test: Map your closed-won deals against your stated ICP. In my experience, there's a 20–40% gap between what a company thinks their ICP is and what their actual best customers look like.
- Competitor intelligence: Understand what your top 3–5 competitors are saying to your target buyers and where your differentiated positioning is genuinely defensible.
- Team assessment: If you have BDRs or AEs, spend time understanding their strengths, gaps, and what's blocking them from hitting quota.
The output of weeks 1–2 is a written diagnostic that gives you an honest picture of where your BD motion is working, where it's broken, and what the highest-leverage opportunities are. This document should be direct and specific — not a diplomatic summary, but a genuine assessment.
Week 3–4: Strategy and System Design
Based on the diagnostic, weeks 3–4 are about designing the system. This isn't a theoretical exercise. It's building specific, executable plans with owners and timelines:
- Refined ICP and target account list: A specific, scored list of companies to target in priority order — not "mid-market SaaS companies" but a list of 200 named accounts with firmographic and technographic data enriched.
- Messaging framework: Pain-point-based messaging for each buyer persona, mapped to your actual differentiation. This means writing real subject lines, email bodies, and call scripts — not just documenting the strategy.
- Channel prioritization: Which channels (outbound email, LinkedIn, cold calling, events, partnerships, referrals) will generate the fastest and most cost-effective pipeline given your ICP and deal size.
- Tech stack assessment: Is your CRM configured correctly? Are you using a sequencer? Do you have enrichment tools? Are your lead routing and pipeline stage definitions set up to give you clean data?
Month 2: Execution and Early Testing
This is where the work shifts from design to execution. A fractional BDM should be doing real work during this period, not just overseeing it:
- Launching outbound sequences and personally running the first two weeks of outreach to test message-market fit before handing off to reps
- Making initial outreach to partnership prospects — not delegating these calls, but making them
- Running weekly pipeline reviews with reps to coach deal progression
- Iterating on messaging based on response data — which subject lines are working, which pain points are resonating, which sequences are generating replies
By the end of month 2, there should be a measurable outbound motion running, initial partnership conversations in flight, and a rep cadence that's being tracked against KPIs.
Month 3: Scale and Handoff Preparation
The third month is about scaling what's working and beginning the knowledge transfer process so your company doesn't become dependent on the fractional BDM indefinitely.
- Training internal reps on the proven sequences and objection-handling approaches
- Creating playbook documentation that captures exactly what's working and why
- Building reporting dashboards that give you visibility without the fractional BDM needing to be in the room
- Identifying whether the engagement should continue, scale, or transition to a permanent hire
Core Ongoing Responsibilities (Months 3–12)
For engagements that continue past the initial 90-day setup, here's what a fractional BDM owns on an ongoing basis:
Pipeline Generation and Management
This is the job. A fractional BDM should own pipeline targets the same way a full-time BD leader would — not as an output they're responsible for creating alone, but as a number they're accountable to in front of the CEO or board. Pipeline reviews, weekly. Deal progression, daily awareness. Escalation to leadership when deals stall, immediately.
Outbound Sequence Optimization
Outbound is never set-and-forget. A quality fractional BDM is looking at open rates, reply rates, and meeting rates weekly, and making incremental improvements. A sequence that was converting at 3% in month 2 should be converting at 6–8% by month 5 through systematic testing of subject lines, hooks, CTAs, and timing.
Partnership Development
For companies where channel partnerships are part of the growth model, a fractional BDM manages the full partnership lifecycle: prospecting potential partners, structuring referral or co-sell agreements, running partner onboarding, and measuring partner-sourced pipeline. This is time-intensive and requires senior-level conversations that a BDR can't have.
Rep Coaching and Enablement
Great fractional BDMs make the people around them better. That means listening to call recordings, sitting in on discovery calls, giving direct and specific feedback, and running skills training sessions. If you have reps who aren't performing, a fractional BDM should be able to diagnose whether the problem is skill, motivation, tooling, or ICP mismatch — and address it.
Weekly Reporting to Leadership
Every fractional engagement should have a consistent reporting cadence. I send a weekly update to every client that covers: pipeline added (by source), meetings booked, pipeline progressed, blockers encountered, and next week's priorities. This should take the CEO or sales leader 5 minutes to read and give them complete visibility into what's happening.
What a Fractional BDM Should NOT Be Doing
This is just as important. Scope clarity prevents disappointment on both sides.
- Not closing deals alone: A fractional BDM generates and progresses pipeline. Closing complex enterprise deals typically requires the founder or a full-time AE who has full context on the relationship. The fractional BDM is an accelerant, not a replacement for your closing team.
- Not managing your full marketing function: Content strategy, demand generation, brand positioning — these overlap with BD but are distinct functions. A fractional BDM who tries to own all of it will do none of it well.
- Not working 40 hours a week at retainer rates: If you're calling your fractional BDM every day and expecting full-time availability, you've misunderstood the model. If the workload justifies 40 hours/week, it's time to transition to a full-time hire.
- Not building your product: I mention this because it happens — fractional BD leaders sometimes get pulled into product feedback sessions, customer success escalations, or investor prep. Some involvement in these is healthy and normal. Owning them is not.
Deliverables You Should Expect at Each Stage
| Timeline | Deliverable |
|---|---|
| Week 2 | BD diagnostic — honest assessment of where pipeline is coming from, where it's breaking, and what your real ICP looks like based on won/lost data |
| Week 4 | Refined ICP document, messaging framework (pain-point matrix), and target account list (200+ named accounts, scored and prioritized) |
| Month 2 | Live outbound sequences with initial performance data, first partnership conversations underway, rep coaching sessions completed, weekly reporting live |
| Month 3 | Sales playbook (documented and accessible), measurable pipeline contribution, optimized sequences with >4% reply rate, trained internal reps running independent sequences |
| Month 6 | Established outbound motion generating consistent pipeline, 2–3 partnership relationships active, internal team capable of running core motions independently |
How to Know If Your Fractional BDM Is Actually Performing
The metrics that matter most vary by company stage, but here's a baseline framework for evaluating a fractional BDM engagement:
Months 1–2 (Building Phase)
- Has the diagnostic been delivered with specific, actionable findings?
- Are outbound sequences live and generating measurable reply rates?
- Is there a documented ICP and messaging framework?
- Are weekly reports arriving on schedule with clear data?
Months 3–6 (Execution Phase)
- Is qualified pipeline being generated at or above the agreed target?
- Are outbound metrics improving month-over-month (reply rate, meeting rate)?
- Are partnership conversations converting to active referral relationships?
- Is the internal team becoming more capable, not more dependent?
Months 6–12 (Scale Phase)
- Could your team run the core outbound motion without the fractional BDM for 30 days?
- Does the pipeline contribution from this engagement clearly exceed its cost?
- Is the playbook documented well enough that a new hire could pick it up?
If the answer to the first question in months 6–12 is "no," the engagement needs to change. Dependency is not a success metric — it's a risk. The best fractional BDM engagements end with the company significantly stronger and more capable than it was before, regardless of whether the engagement continues.
If you want to see what an embedded fractional BD engagement looks like in practice — the real work, the real deliverables, the real pipeline outcomes — let's have a direct conversation about your company's current stage and what you need to break through.