Business Development & Account Executive
Location: California
Status: Independent Contractor (1099)
About the Role
This is a Business Development role, not a traditional sales position. The distinction matters. You will be engaging with founders and operators who have built 7- and 8-figure enterprises. They are sophisticated, time-constrained, and immediately able to tell the difference between someone who genuinely understands their world and someone who is following a script.
You own the full sales value chain, from the moment a prospect books a consultation call to the day a contract is signed, and from that signing through the life of the client relationship. There is no sales administrator, no account management hand-off, no support team beneath you. You run the pipeline, manage the follow-up, handle objections and negotiations, build proposals, execute contracts, and retain the clients you close. This is what full-cycle ownership means in practice.
On the front end, your primary responsibility is to take inbound consultation calls booked through our website and convert qualified prospects into clients. These consultations are free, which means your job starts before any pitch. You will provide genuine value during the call: asking sharp questions, offering real observations, and demonstrating operational intelligence. The close follows naturally from credibility. After the call, you own every step of the follow-up process: timely outreach, contextually appropriate messaging, objection handling, negotiation, and booking, until the prospect converts or has been moved to a long-term nurture position.
On the back end, you are the primary relationship owner for every active client. You stay involved post-sale. You conduct regular check-ins, surface and resolve issues before they escalate, and lead all conversations about renewals, scope changes, and contract modifications. Our clients are founders who have made a meaningful investment in this relationship. The experience of working with On Call COO, from first call through ongoing engagement, lives or dies on how this role is executed.
Beyond executing the function, you are also responsible for maturing it. We are building this discipline from the ground up. You will document what works, build the playbooks and templates that make the process repeatable, identify where automation can extend your capacity, and contribute to the hiring and transition plan for adding a Sales Administrator when volume justifies it. You are not just a performer in this role, you are its architect.
Key Responsibilities
Business Development
Lead free consultation calls with inbound prospects sourced from the company website, conducting discovery, qualifying need and fit, and presenting the appropriate On Call COO service offering.
Provide genuine business insight and quick operational wins during consultation calls, demonstrating subject matter credibility that builds trust and establishes the firm's value before any offer is made.
Qualify prospects against defined criteria and identify which service tier or offering best fits the client's current situation, goals, and budget.
Close qualified prospects at deal values typically ranging from $10,000 to $50,000+, with contracts ranging from project engagements to ongoing fractional retainers.
Build customized written proposals that articulate the recommended engagement scope, expected outcomes, timeline, and investment, tailored to each client's business context.
Draft and execute client contracts that accurately reflect the agreed-upon terms, serving as the binding documentation for each engagement.
Represent the firm at industry events, conferences, and networking forums as directed, building relationships that generate future inbound demand.
Prospect Management & Follow-Up
Own the complete post-call follow-up process: you are responsible for every prospect touchpoint between the consultation call and a closed deal or final disposition. Nothing sits in a queue waiting for someone else.
Send timely, contextually appropriate follow-up communications after every consultation call, adapting messaging to each prospect's specific business situation, tone, and expressed concerns, not sending generic templates.
Manage all inbound prospect responses: triaging replies, answering questions, addressing concerns, and advancing conversations toward a decision.
Handle objections and negotiate directly with prospects: on price, scope, timing, or fit, exercising sound judgment about when to hold, flex, or walk away.
Book and manage follow-up calls proposal reviews, ensuring the sales process moves forward without unnecessary friction or delay.
Maintain an accurate and current CRM pipeline in HubSpot, logging every interaction, follow-up sent, response received, and next step committed to. The CRM must reflect reality at all times.
Monitor pipeline health and proactively identify stalled deals, determining whether re-engagement, a different approach, or a long-term nurture disposition is appropriate.
Move non-converting prospects into appropriate nurture workflows and manage re-engagement when signals of renewed interest emerge.
Account Management
Serve as the primary point of contact for every active client post-sale, owning the relationship from contract signing through the full life of the engagement.
Conduct scheduled client check-ins as defined by engagement tier to assess satisfaction, engagement health, progress against goals, and any emerging challenges.
Proactively identify and resolve client concerns, service delivery issues, or misaligned expectations before they escalate, coordinating with the delivery team as needed.
Lead all client conversations about retainer renewals, engagement extensions, scope changes, and contract modifications, negotiating terms in a manner that protects the firm's interests while preserving the relationship.
Identify opportunities to expand the client's engagement into additional service offerings or increased retainer scope, and present those opportunities at the right moment in the relationship.
Maintain accurate client account records in HubSpot, including engagement status, relationship health notes, renewal dates, and any open issues or commitments.
Act as the client's internal advocate, ensuring the delivery team understands each client's priorities, expectations, and context throughout the engagement.
Provide the owner with regular updates on client satisfaction, retention risk, and account growth opportunities.
Process Development & Sales Operations
Document the sales process as you execute it; capturing what works, what doesn't, and building the written playbooks, scripts, templates, and SOPs that make the function transferable and scalable.
Develop and refine the qualification framework, follow-up cadence, objection handling guide, and proposal structure based on real-world results, not assumptions.
Build and maintain the HubSpot pipeline structure, deal stages, CRM properties, and reporting dashboards so the function is measurable and improvable over time.
Track and report on key sales metrics; conversion rate by stage, average sales cycle length, close rate, retention rate, and revenue from expansions; and bring data-driven recommendations to the owner.
Identify opportunities to automate routine administrative work (follow-up sequences, CRM updates, scheduling) and either implement those automations directly or prepare clear requirements for implementation.
Contribute to the hiring plan and role definition for a Sales Administrator when pipeline volume justifies the addition, including defining the scope, onboarding documentation, and handoff process for that role.
Serve as the internal voice of the sales function, surfacing market feedback, prospect objections, and pattern observations that inform service positioning and offer development.
Required Qualifications
5–8 years of experience in full-cycle B2B business development, consultative sales, or management consulting, with a proven track record of personally owning the process from first contact through close. Experience with team-supported or handed-off sales models is not a substitute.
Corporate background with deep, first-hand knowledge of how businesses operate at a functional and organizational level; finance, operations, leadership, growth dynamics. You must be able to speak to these topics with authority, not generality.
Demonstrated ability to engage credibly with founders, C-suite executives, or senior operators. This means executive presence, active listening, and the ability to ask the kind of questions that make a founder feel genuinely understood.
Personal experience with the types of operational challenges Fractional COO services address; ideally through having lived these challenges in a corporate, consulting, or operator role. You bring your own stories and examples to the conversation, not just ours.
Demonstrated ability to handle objections, negotiate deal terms, and manage complex, multi-touch sales cycles without support; exercising judgment about when to push, when to flex, and when to disqualify.
Exceptional written communication skills. Your follow-up emails must be contextually intelligent, not templated. Your proposals must be client-specific and persuasive. Your contracts must be precise.
Experience building and presenting written proposals and scoping client engagements in a consulting or professional services context.
Prior experience managing client relationships in a professional services or consulting environment, including renewal conversations and scope negotiations.
CRM proficiency with a demonstrated habit of disciplined pipeline management; HubSpot experience preferred.
Demonstrated experience building, documenting, or improving sales processes — playbooks, qualification frameworks, follow-up cadences, or reporting structures. This role builds the function; prior experience doing that matters.
Self-directed, highly organized, and comfortable operating as the sole owner of a function with minimal oversight in a fully remote environment.
Preferred Qualifications
Background at a management consulting firm or advisory practice
Proven experience selling to or working directly with founder-led, privately held businesses in the 7- to 8-figure revenue range.
Prior experience as the first or only sales hire at a professional services firm, you know what it means to build while you sell.
Comfort with both inbound conversion and event-based relationship development.
Familiarity with proposal software (PandaDoc or similar), digital contract execution, and sales automation tools (HubSpot Sequences, Zapier, or equivalent).
What We Are Not Looking For
This role is not a fit for someone whose sales experience depends on a support structure; a BDR feeding pipeline, a sales admin managing follow-up, an account manager handling renewals, or an ops team keeping the CRM clean. If you have always operated as a specialist within a larger sales organization, this role will ask more of you than you may expect.
Equally, this is not a fit for someone whose credibility in a conversation with a founder would come from theory rather than experience. We are not looking for someone who has studied operations, we are looking for someone who has lived it, can draw on real examples, and can speak peer-to-peer with a founder who has been running a business for a decade.
And finally, this is not a fit for someone who views process documentation and playbook development as administrative overhead. That work is a core deliverable of this role, not an afterthought. The person who thrives here sees building the function as part of the job, not a distraction from it.
What Success Looks Like
Within 30 days: the CRM is clean, deal stages reflect reality, and the follow-up process is running without gaps or delays. The owner has stopped worrying about whether prospects are being followed up with.
Within 60 days: consultation calls are being conducted and proposals delivered independently. The first process documentation, a follow-up cadence guide, an objection handling reference, or a qualification checklist, has been drafted and shared with the owner.
Within 90 days: close rate is at or above the firm's existing benchmark. Every active client has a documented check-in schedule and a clear next renewal date. No deal or client relationship is invisible.
Within 6 months: a functioning sales playbook exists. Key metrics, conversion rate by stage, average cycle length, retention rate, expansion revenue, are being tracked and reviewed. The owner's involvement in the day-to-day sales function has materially reduced.
At 12 months: the function is built. The person in this role is closing new business, retaining and growing the client base, and has a clear recommendation on whether and when to add a Sales Administrator beneath them.
What This Role Looks Like
Independent Contractor (1099) — no benefits included in rate
Base compensation (depending on hours worked): $90,000–$120,000 annualized equivalent, reflecting full-cycle ownership across BD, follow-up, account management, and process development
New business commission: 8–12% on all closed contracts (structure finalized based on candidate profile)
Retention incentive: additional bonus structure tied to client retention and renewal rates (to be defined)
On-target earnings (OTE): $150,000–$220,000+ annually at current pipeline and client base volumes
New business commission subject to clawback provisions on contracts cancelled within 90 days of signing
High-performance candidates will be considered for a sales leadership role as the team scales
Our Core Values – And Yours Too
At On Call COO, we lead with values. These aren’t just words, we live them every day, and we’re looking for someone who does the same.
Foster Inclusion – We value diverse voices and perspectives.
Take Action with Certainty – We make bold moves, even when things aren’t perfect.
Trust the Process – We know good things take time, and we show up with consistency.
Lead with Joy – We do meaningful work and have fun doing it.
Encourage Bravery – We speak up, step forward, and stretch ourselves.