If you are a Fractional CMO or an agency owner, you probably know the “Biz Dev Paradox” intimately, even if you’ve never called it that.
It goes like this: You land some great clients. You put your head down and do what you do best – building 12-month roadmaps, running strategy, and elevating their brand. You might even get distracted building out your own internal tech, shiny new SOPs, or perfecting your service packages.
And then you look up, and your own pipeline is bone dry.
You were so busy serving your clients and tinkering under the hood of your own business that you completely neglected to feed it.
Our cohort of marketers talked about that this week in our All Hands On Deck meeting. Even at the highest levels of marketing leadership, it is incredibly easy to let the saboteur of perfectionism keep you out of the sales arena. When you are trying to level up or shift your business model, the fear of “not having the container perfectly set” becomes a convenient excuse to stop having sales conversations.
So what is one to do? We like frameworks around here – so here’s a simple one get unstuck.
- Think About It. Fractional CMOs are inherently cerebral. We love strategy. We want to make sure the target persona is right, the messaging is dialed in, and the deliverables are flawless. Thinking is essential, but it can also be a trap. If you stay in “think” mode too long, it’s no longer strategy – it’s stalling. You have to know when the plan is “good enough” to take to market.
- Pray About It. We tend to put this second because, as driven problem-solvers, our human default is usually to think our way out of a problem before we actually take it to God in prayer. But the truth is, it starts and ends with God. This isn’t about some vague idea of “trusting the process” or having a generic faith that things will eventually work out. It is about placing your full faith in God, who cares deeply about your work, blesses your success, and gives you the wisdom and discernment you need when you’re stuck. When you are elevating your business, you often have to cut the cord on old ways of doing things before new opportunities arrive … which is terrifying. But when you pray about it, you can detach from the pressure of the outcome. You get to faithfully show up, and let God handle the provision.
- Do About It. This is where the bottleneck usually happens. You have thought about it, you have prayed about it, but eventually, you have to do a whole lot of doing. Biz dev requires reps. It requires picking up the phone, reaching out to your network, and risking the “mess of success.” If you aren’t failing occasionally, you aren’t trying hard enough. A messy, imperfect sales conversation is infinitely better than a perfect strategy sitting in an empty pipeline.
Don’t let the desire to build the perfect system keep you from having the conversations that actually grow your business.
