Fractional but Foundational - Why Strategic BDMs Are A Game-Changer for Purpose-Led Start-Ups

You’ve started a business, you’ve got your vision, you’ve got a product to the point that it’s saleable and maybe even scalable, but you’ve only got so many hours in the day.

Plus, your background is technical, clinical or administrative, it’s not sales. Not only could your time be better spent on other parts of the business, but you don’t have experience translating the benefits of your product into language that buyers listen to.

You know what you’re trying to achieve by bringing this product to the market, you know how it’s going to help the organisation or people you’re presenting it to, but that’s often not enough to get a sale over the line.

That’s where bringing in fractional BDM support can help. Because you may not be ready to scale an internal sales team yet, and you may not be sure what it is you need from a sales function right now either. You also want to stay true to your values and why you started the business, rather than grow for growth’s sake, and bringing in fractional support keeps you aligned to that mission.

A fractional BDM is flexible, stays up to date with news and policy from across the market instead of one portion of it, builds a pipeline steadily and sustainably, and brings an external perspective to your current sales process. They can adapt pitch decks, messaging, and engagement approaches with insight, so that your product is described in ways that well-received, and that ultimately generate sales so that you can achieve the organisation’s goals.

A BDM with knowledge of the landscape you’re trying to sell into, with established networks and a track record of engaging the right stakeholders with a balance of persistence and trust-building is an asset to a start-up, or a business that needs sales but can’t commit to a full-time sales person at that moment.

I’ll give a couple of examples of clients that I’ve worked with in the past that have benefited specifically from a fractional BDM set up for the NHS space. One was relaunching a product after a hiatus from the market. The landscape had changed, stakeholder roles and responsibilities had changed, and market priorities had shifted.

Having an external perspective about how to approach the market differently, framing the wins in the past as relevant to new pathways, setting expectations for sales conversions, and developing processes to improve feedback between the sales, marketing, and distribution functions of the business was essential to their growth in the NHS.

Another had use cases in the landscape, but the NHS wasn’t their main focus. Having NHS use cases builds so much credibility in the wider healthcare market, but it does have particularly long sales cycles, and requires a lot of stakeholder engagement to get a single contract across the line.

Having a fractional BDM with the insight into market changes that will affect decision making timelines, is able to spend time engaging and re-engaging a number of stakeholders at the same organisation bit by bit over months, and can leverage relationships in the market to keep deals progressing is ideal for such a client.

There are so many ways that fractional BDM support can often be the better option for purpose-led companies. If any of the above resonates with you, and your team needs smart growth that won’t compromise your values, let’s talk.

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