Insight · Ownership

Business development in your firm runs on whoever has a free afternoon.

Four ways to fix that, with Singapore numbers: a partner with a mandate, a marketing manager, a full-time director, or an outside consultant. The four signals that say the firm needs senior ownership now, and the cases where the right answer is none of the above.

Gary McRae, management consultant based in Singapore, PMC accredited and CAIG certified

By Gary McRae

Management consultant · Singapore · PMC accredited · CAIG certified

Last reviewed 11 September 2026 · 9 min read

Most management committees start with the wrong question. They ask what a marketing director costs, or what an outside consultant charges, when the question that decides the year is whether anyone in the firm is accountable for winning work at all.

The two look the same and are not. The first is procurement. The second is a decision about the firm. This essay answers the second: the Singapore cost of each option, a four-signal test for whether the firm needs senior ownership now, and the cases where it does not.

The four options, with the numbers

A partner with a mandate. The default. Priced in lost billings, which is why it happens in the slack and stops in a good year. It works when the partner has protected hours and someone underneath them who runs the cadence. It fails when the mandate is the only thing that changed.

A marketing or business development manager. The salary is a recruiter’s question. The cost that matters is that a manager needs a brief written for them and a senior reviewing the work, and that senior is the role the firm was trying not to create. Without it, the manager runs events.

A full-time senior hire. A CMO-level executive in Singapore costs between SGD 350,000 and 600,000 in year one, once the 17 percent CPF contribution, benefits, recruiting fees and a four-to-six-month productivity drag are added. A marketing director at a firm of this size sits below that. Get the number from a recruiter before the committee votes on it.

An outside senior consultant. Singapore market rates for outside senior marketing leadership sit in three bands. Strategy only, around ten hours a week: SGD 5,000 to 8,000 a month. Embedded, fifteen to twenty hours a week with a weekly cadence: SGD 10,000 to 15,000. Project work, a review, a design, a rebuild of positioning: SGD 5,000 to 40,000 depending on scope. Annualised, a retainer is SGD 60,000 to 180,000. Put that next to what the firm spent on marketing last year. That is why the sensible shape for a partnership is a project with a defined end, funded from partnership investment, not a retainer.

The 4-Signal Test

Three of four true: the firm needs senior ownership now and cannot hire it. One or two: start with a review, not a build.

01
Nobody can say where the work comes from
The firm has a coordinator running the seminars and the newsletter. The work is fine. Ask which three referral sources produced last year’s new matters and the room goes quiet. Nobody sits above the activity, so nobody can say what it is for.
02
The firm is between 6 and 60 fee earners
Below 6 there is nothing to design, and no budget to design it with. Above 60 there is a marketing director already. In between, a full-time senior hire costs more than the committee will approve, and a junior hire cannot hold the room with the partners.
03
The budget can carry a project, not a payroll line
Outside senior marketing leadership in Singapore runs SGD 5,000 to 15,000 a month in the market, SGD 60,000 to 180,000 a year. A full-time senior hire lands between SGD 350,000 and 600,000 in year one. If the firm can fund the first as a defined project from partnership investment and cannot fund the second, that is the signal.
04
Someone inside can own it afterwards
A business development manager, the practice manager, or a partner with a mandate and protected hours. Whoever comes in from outside designs it and hands it over; someone has to receive it. If nobody can, the firm does not have a consultant problem. It has a hiring problem, and that comes first.

What the benchmarks say, and what they do not

Industry benchmarks across roughly 500 documented fractional CMO engagements report a return of three to five times the fee inside twelve months, measured as additional pipeline or revenue. The specific lifts cluster: lead quality up around 45 percent within six months, acquisition cost down 25 to 35 percent, lead-to-client conversion up 30 to 50 percent.

Speed is the number people miss. An outside senior produces a plan in four to six weeks. A full-time hire produces one in three to four months, after a four-to-six-month recruiting cycle. The difference is half a year of decisions.

The benchmarks come from companies with marketing teams and sales pipelines, not from partnerships, and they average across the ones that hired correctly. Treat them as direction, not as a forecast. A firm that fails the 4-Signal Test and hires anyway is not in the sample.

The grant, until 29 September

Singapore’s Enterprise Development Grant covers up to 50 percent of eligible management consultancy costs for an SME, including diagnosis and the design of the function. The consultant must hold PMC accreditation, the Practising Management Consultant standard (SS 680) administered by SBACC. Most outside marketing consultants in Singapore do not.

EDG closes to new applications on 29 September 2026. EDGE replaces it on 30 September, and its terms for consultancy are not published. Enterprise Singapore decides what qualifies, under either scheme, not the consultant. The detail, and the seven-step application, is in the grant essay.

When the answer is none of the above

The firm is below 6 fee earners. There is no function to design. The partners’ own network is the plan, and a half-day on positioning is the right amount of outside help.
The firm needs hands, not a design. The positioning is clear and the referral sources are known; what is missing is someone to run the events and send the alerts. Hire a manager or engage an agency. Design without hands stalls.
The firm is above 60 fee earners. There is a marketing director already. A senior outside view on the committee’s commercial agenda may still fit; the Quarterly exists for that. A build does not.
Nobody inside can receive it. Whoever designs the function hands it to someone. If that someone does not exist, hire them first.

What partners ask

“We could hire a mid-level marketer for the same money.”

Yes. And a mid-level marketer needs a brief written for them and a senior reviewing the work. That senior is the role the firm is trying to avoid creating. The two are not substitutes. They are sequential: design first, then hire the person who runs it.

“How do we know it will deliver?”

Buy it in phases with a decision point. A four-week review first, in writing, with a recommendation the committee can act on or not. A build only if the review says so, with a date at the midpoint where the firm decides whether to continue. The exposure before any decision is one phase.

“They will have other clients.”

Yes. A senior consultant carries two to four engagements at a time, and the firm does not get exclusive attention. What to require: published hours, one named point of contact, and a conflict check the way the firm would run one on a client. Anyone who refuses the conflict check is the wrong person.

“What if we need more than fifteen hours a week?”

Then the firm is ready to hire, and the engagement should end in a handover to that hire. Most outside engagements end one of three ways: the function is handed to someone inside, the firm hires full time, or the committee concludes that business development was not the constraint. All three are good outcomes. An open-ended retainer is not one of them.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a consultant and a fractional marketing executive?

A consultant is engaged for a defined piece of work with a defined end: a diagnosis, a design, a handover. A fractional executive is retained by the month and sits inside the operating cadence for as long as the retainer runs. The retainer suits a business with a marketing budget line and a team to direct. The project suits a management committee that wants a defined scope, a defined end, and a point where it can stop.

How long should an outside engagement run?

Retainers typically run three to twelve months. Project shapes are shorter: a review of how the firm wins work takes four weeks; designing and standing up the function takes twelve to sixteen. Anything past eighteen months has become a hire, and should be one.

Long contract, or month to month?

Neither. A defined phase with a decision point beats both. A long contract locks the firm into work that may stop landing; month to month makes the engagement easy to drop the first time a partner is busy. The right shape is a phase with a date on which the committee decides whether to continue.

Can an outside consultant replace the agency?

Usually not. They are different layers. The consultant designs the function and sets the standard; an agency produces the work. A consultant may recommend consolidating or replacing an agency, but the role sits above execution, not in place of it.

Should a partner own business development?

In most firms of this size a partner already does, by default, and it competes with billable hours, which is why it happens in the slack. A partner can own the mandate. Someone else has to own the cadence, the numbers and the follow-up, or the function stops every time the partner has a busy month.

What tells the committee the engagement is working?

Three early signals. Meetings end with decisions rather than opinions. Any partner can say in one sentence who the firm is for and where its best work comes from. Work shipped after the engagement starts has a measurable lift against the numbers from before. If all three are absent at the decision point, stop.

Sources

About the author

Gary McRae is a management consultant in Singapore. MCR.AE is management consultancy for how a professional services partnership wins work: business development, marketing, and who runs both, for firms of 6 to 60 fee earners. He ran digital and marketing technology inside a global law firm, as Associate Director of Marketing: the website, the CRM, the systems the firm paid for, under partner governance, with fee earners as internal clients. 12+ years in Singapore. PMC accredited (SBACC), CAIG certified (NTU).

Find him on LinkedIn.

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