How fractional IT leaders are winning work and building their pipeline

Most fractional careers (certainly mine) are built on referrals from former colleagues and employers. That makes sense: they are people who have seen your work and trust you. But referrals are a bank, not a tap. Every engagement draws on them, and unless new names are going in, the balance eventually runs out.
In our view, the reason it runs out is capacity. Fractional roles in essence are temporary roles, but the expectations rarely are. When you are delivering for several clients, the first thing to go is the activity that brings in the next client. Posting stops, catch-ups get cancelled and the pipeline quietly empties. If you stop topping it up while you deliver, it is already empty by the time a contract ends.
That is why we encourage fractional leaders to treat their own business development like a client. A fixed slot in your diary each week, protected in the same way you would protect a board meeting, is where we would start.

The strongest personal brands are not built on announcements about new roles or finished projects. They are built on opinions. One fractional leader at the event has turned his thinking into longer-form content and finds prospective clients recognise their own challenges in it. You do not need to go that far, but you do need a point of view.

We believe in outcomes over outputs, and the same applies to your brand. Clients do not buy your job history. They buy your ability to solve their challenges. So, talk about the challenges you solve and what you think about them, not just what you have been doing. One useful opinion a week on LinkedIn is plenty. People will not read every post, but over time they will notice you have something to say.

Specialising in a sector can help. Referrals stay close when people in an industry know each other and move between businesses, and it is easier to walk into a business with authority when you speak its language. But many business technology challenges s look much the same wherever they sit, and plenty of successful fractional leaders work across several sectors.

The sector matters less than the clarity. Your focus can be an industry, a type of challenge, or a stage of growth, but people need to be able to describe what you do in one sentence. If they can’t, they will struggle to refer you. It is worth writing that sentence down and testing it on someone outside technology. If they can repeat it back, you’re in a good place.

After years in technology, most fractional leaders have networks full of IT people. They are good to know, but they are rarely the ones hiring a fractional IT leader. That decision usually sits with the CEO, CFO or COO. If those people are missing from your network, your referrals will mostly be one IT person recommending another.

The quickest way to change that is to start with people you already know. Old colleagues remember you, or at least the projects you did together and a catch-up can quickly turn into a referral.

Partners are another route that is easy to overlook. Integration partners and managed service providers (MSPs) often meet businesses that need independent IT leadership before they are ready for a major project, and for one fractional leader at the event they now bring in around two thirds of their work. As a solution-agnostic business, we understand why this works. Partners refer people they trust to put the client’s interests first, not a product. That trust becomes part of your brand.

A simple place to start is a list of ten senior business leaders and partners you have lost touch with. Message a couple of them each week and the conversations soon start to add up.

We think the fractional leaders who avoid a trough have something running in the background. This could be automated LinkedIn outreach to senior decision makers, or offering a free half hour call to anyone who asks, including businesses too young to need them yet, and being honest when they are not the right fit. That honesty keeps you in mind when those businesses grow. Manual or automated, the important thing is that something keeps conversations going while you are busy with client work.

If selling makes you uncomfortable, you are not alone. It helps to think of sales differently. Sales is about understanding what a buyer needs, matching it with what you offer and finding out quickly when there is a fit, or not. That is diagnosis, and diagnosis is what good IT leaders already do every day. You do not need to be a brilliant salesperson, just an adequate one. If you want support, a marketer in your network, such as a fractional CMO, can help you sharpen your message.

Winning work is only half the challenge. Having the capacity to deliver it is the other half, and this is where brand and pipeline meet.

Working alone limits how much you can take on. Several fractional leaders at the event were turning down projects for that reason and one was quoting months for work a client wanted in weeks, because they would be doing all of it themselves. Every time that happens, the pipeline you worked hard to build leaks. A client who hears that you cannot take something on, or that it will take far longer than they hoped, may not come back, however strong your reputation.

That is why we believe the most successful fractional IT leaders do not try to do everything themselves. Strategy only creates value when it turns into action, and action needs people. Fluid works alongside fractional IT leaders to provide developers, business analysists and project managers when you need them. You stay the strategic lead. We help you deliver, so you can say yes to bigger projects and still have time to keep your pipeline moving.

Go back to the three contracts ending in the same month. The problem was never your ability. It was that everything which brings in new work had stopped while you were busy delivering. The fix is a routine that keeps running whether or not you have time for it.

So how are fractional IT leaders winning work? By treating their brand and pipeline as part of the job, not something to fix when the work dries up. Share a clear point of view so people remember you. Make sure your network includes the people who buy. Keep something running in the background while you deliver. And build the capacity to say yes when the right opportunity comes along. Start now, while you are busy, and the next contract is far more likely to be on its way when the current one ends.

We’re planning more The Fractional Table events and content, and you can stay part of the conversation by joining our Fractional Table group on LinkedIn. Alongside this we’ve started Sales 101 for Techies, a new series sharing our practical advice on winning new business, so keep an eye out for it there.

If you’d like a delivery team behind you without the overheads of building one, get in touch with the Fluid team.