Chapter 129Fractional Chief Business Development Officer
Jon Guttenberg
I have spent most of my career working in and around media companies. After 15 years inside of media companies, I've spent the past 20 years outside of them advising them on developing and executing growth strategies. My work involves (1) helping companies better define their customer, product, and positioning; (2) developing and executing against that; and (3) supporting their efforts to grow by other means (e.g., M&A, fundraising, partnerships).
In a fractional role, people need to get comfortable with you, they need to understand what you can do for them, and they have to get a sense of your style and approach to see if it's compatible with theirs. Trust is essential. Engagements oftentimes require several introductory meetings to help people get comfortable and during those meetings you will be giving “free advice.” I don't worry all that much about giving some advice up front since ultimately you are looking to build a long‐term relationship. If you could answer all of someone's questions in an hour and you didn't get paid for that single hour, that's fine. I look at this for the long term. If you can answer someone's questions in an hour or two, you are better off having that person come back to you in the future when their problems are greater or refer you to other clients since they now have a better understanding of what you do (although I will say there are people that even though I didn't plan ...
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