A senior acquisition team inside your company, without the headcount.
Talk to JoeBuilding the function internally means one senior hire, a long ramp, and years of relationship-building before the first proprietary deal comes through the door. Two hundred thousand dollars a year before anything closes, and no guarantee the person you hired can actually do it.
Mid-size companies solved this exact problem in finance a generation ago. The fractional CFO was not a compromise. It was the recognition that you need senior financial judgment without needing it forty hours a week. Fractional Corporate Development applies the same logic to acquisitions.
6 to 12 months
typical time to recruit and ramp an internal corporate development hire
$150K to $225K
all-in annual cost of that hire, before the first deal closes
$25M+
the deal size where investment banks start paying attention
| Hire someone | BluGrowth | Investment bank | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who does the work | Your hire, alone. Quality depends on who you can recruit at this salary. | A principal with decades of corporate development inside Fortune 50 acquirers. Same person at kickoff and at close. | Senior banker pitches. Junior analysts execute. |
| Your priority | Dedicated, but limited to one person's capacity. | A deliberately small practice. Two or three mandates at a time, never more. | Below their minimum. Expect to rank behind the $50M clients. |
| Deal network | Starts at zero. Years to build broker and lender relationships. | Brokers, lenders, attorneys, and CPAs who transact at exactly your deal size. | Institutional channels. The people who trade $5M to $20M companies are a different network. |
| Time to market | 6 to 12 months to recruit and onboard. | Active sourcing inside 30 days. | Scoped to one transaction. Defined start, defined end. |
| Between deals | On payroll whether the pipeline is live or not. | The pipeline keeps running. The next deal is in motion while this one closes. | Relationship resets. New fees, new ramp. |
| Annual cost | $150K to $225K all-in. | Monthly retainer plus a reduced success fee at close. | Engagement fees plus success fee per deal. Minimums often exceed the percentage at this size. |
| If it does not work | Severance, recruiting costs, months of lost momentum. | End the engagement with notice. No severance, no HR process. | Engagement fees are non-refundable. Minimum success fees may still apply. |
You create an email address at your domain. When we contact a business owner, that owner hears from your company, not from an advisory firm they have never heard of. That matters more than it sounds. An owner who is not for sale will take a call from a fellow operator in their industry. They will not take a call from an intermediary.
Everything that goes out under your name is yours to review. Some clients read every message. Others leave it to us entirely.
The reputation that outreach builds belongs to you. When you are known in your market as a serious acquirer, that is your asset and it stays with you.
Working sessions to define the thesis and the target profile. We set up email and outreach materials under your brand and build the target universe. First outreach goes out.
Full outreach running. We refine the target list against what the market tells us and set your review cadence. Most clients want a weekly check-in. That plus decisions as deals develop is what the engagement asks of your time.
Live pipeline, early owner conversations developing, and financial modeling starting on the ones that qualify.
The retainer is monthly. No per-deal engagement fees, no LOI milestones. The success fee at close runs on a modified scale and is lower than what a one-off engagement would cost you.
The retainer exists for a reason beyond payment. An engagement without one drifts. The invoice each month is what keeps both sides moving on a process that otherwise slides.
The structure is designed to be obviously right if you are doing one or more deals a year. If you are not, say so on the first call and we will tell you this is not the right fit.
Sometimes an owner comes to us with a specific target already identified, or already under LOI. We will take that work on a single-deal scope.
One caution, offered honestly. If you are already under LOI and you used the seller's broker template, the structure is probably wrong. Total consideration gets negotiated and everything else gets copied from a form. What happens to the rolling stock, how the inventory is treated, whether the real estate should be carved out, how much of the value is personal goodwill and what that does to your tax position. Those terms decide whether the deal closes and what it is worth when it does.
Most deals we see under LOI will not close as written.
The test is whether you intend to buy more than one company. If you are doing a single deal and then stopping, hire someone for that deal. Fractional Corporate Development is for owners building acquisition into how the business grows.
A broker finds you a deal, almost always representing the seller, and earns a fee at close. We run your acquisition program. We represent you, we tell you when a deal does not fit, we structure the offer, and we design the capital stack. We are never paid by the other side.
You create an email address at your domain. We operate under your name when we contact owners and manage deal activity. An owner who is not for sale will take a call from a company in their industry. They will not take a call from an advisory firm. Your brand, your relationships, and the reputation it builds stays with you.
A monthly retainer plus a success fee at close on a modified scale. No per-deal engagement fees and no LOI milestones. The structure is designed to be obviously right if you are doing one or more deals a year.
Acquisitions between two and twenty million in enterprise value. The core of the work is between three and ten million, where a single SBA loan stops covering the deal and the capital stack gets complicated.
The specialty is the process of buying companies, not any one sector. The deepest experience is in industrials, manufacturing, distribution, and home services including HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and landscape. No restaurants and no cannabis, because we cannot get them funded.
We will look at it on a single-deal scope. Be prepared for the answer that the structure needs to change. Most LOIs written off a seller's broker template will not close as written.
We are not a registered broker-dealer and we do not place capital. Most of what we structure is debt. When a deal needs equity we introduce parties we know and someone else papers it.
Thirty minutes on your acquisition goals and whether this works for both sides. Every engagement is built around the client, and the fee structure follows from the scope. We walk through both on the first call.
Talk to Joe