You’re A Fractional What?

In an economy where sharing rides, sharing housing and sharing errands, is it a stretch to think of sharing a person to provide business development?

Other fields have had person-sharing (fractional) for many years. The law profession recognized that many companies cannot afford a full time lawyer yet need someone focused on specific tasks with regularity. They want someone on their side. In these cases, a fractional lawyer comes to your office several times a month to work on your specific projects. This person may work for 10 or 20 clients at a time.

The accounting field also realized that many companies cannot have a CPA on staff. The CPA’s expertise is only needed from time to time. Therefore, fractional CPAs are contracted for the performance of regular tasks and other projects as needed.

Having been a direct employee overseeing business development at several companies, if I did my job correctly, I ran out of work. I took a product, found new business opportunities and set up the needed avenues for sales/distribution. Unless the company had the resources (manpower and money) to pursue other applications or had new products that needed a home, I had worked myself out of a job. The recently-found business opportunities just needed regular account managers to oversee them once established.

Is business development so sacrosanct that it can only be performed by someone in-house? I have been involved in business development for over 25 years. From my observations, business development need not be an in-house position. Fractional business development is very do-able and in some cases should be the preferred method to go-to-market.

Fractional business development allows one person to operate outside of the organization to pursue new business opportunities. This person is not dragged into unneeded meetings or given additional responsibilities because they have free time. They are focused only on finding new avenues, new products, new fields or new customers. In some companies, this is even handled as a “skunkworks” project so only a few people know it is going on until a given level of success is achieved. This type of freedom to poke-and-probe, unencumbered by the organization can produce great results.

The fractional business development model can provide tremendous freedom to pursue business wherever it can be found. It can remain unhampered by the organization while only devoting the time (be it 15 hours a week or more) needed to achieve the goals. Is fractional business development a method to be considered? In my opinion, yes.

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