Every building products business doing $1M to $10M eventually prices up a BDM hire for Queensland. Most of them then quietly shelve the spreadsheet, because the total is bigger than the job ad suggested. Let's put the real numbers on the table, then compare them honestly against the fractional model.
What a full-time construction BDM actually costs
The advertised salary is the start, not the total. For an experienced construction industry BDM in QLD, a realistic annual picture looks like this:
- Base salary: $110,000 to $150,000 for someone with genuine builder relationships
- Superannuation on top of base
- Vehicle or allowance: $15,000 to $25,000 a year once fuel, insurance and servicing are in
- Commission and bonus: typically another 10% to 30% of base when they perform
- Phone, laptop, CRM seat, expenses, industry events
- Recruitment: agency fees routinely run 15% to 20% of first-year salary
All in, a performing construction BDM is a $180,000 to $230,000 a year commitment. And that's when it works.
The cost nobody budgets: the miss
Here's the number that should scare you more than the salary. A bad BDM hire takes three months to recruit, three months to show they're not working, and three more to exit and restart. That's nine months of full cost, call it $130,000 plus, for a territory that went backwards, because a mediocre rep doesn't just fail to open doors, they close a few on the way through.
What fractional looks like against that
The fractional model restructures both the cost and the risk. Using SiteKey's model as the worked example: a one-off $5,000 Market Entry Package (product immersion, written QLD sales plan, mapped target list, pipeline built in your CRM), then 10% commission on invoiced sales, with a 5% trail on repeat orders from opened accounts for 12 months.
Run the comparison at $500,000 of first-year QLD revenue:
- Full-time BDM: roughly $180,000 to $230,000 of cost, committed before a dollar lands
- Fractional at 10%: $5,000 up front plus $50,000 in commission, paid only as invoices land
At low and uncertain revenue, fractional wins by a street. And there's a crossover point worth being honest about: somewhere north of $1.5M to $2M in annual QLD revenue, a good full-time hire becomes the cheaper option per dollar sold. That's not a flaw in the model, that's the model working. A fractional BDM's job done well builds the territory to the point where hiring full-time finally makes sense, and you inherit a warm pipeline, a working CRM and live accounts to hand them.
What you give up with fractional
A fair comparison lists the trade-offs. You share the person's week with other clients (capped at three at SiteKey, never two in competing categories). You get less ad hoc availability than a salaried employee sitting in your Monday meetings. And you must be comfortable measuring on outcomes rather than hours. If you want someone at a desk from 7am, hire an employee.
The decision in one paragraph
If QLD is already producing $2M+ a year for you, hire full-time and pay for the best. If QLD is a blank column on the forecast, a hope, or a fly-in experiment, don't commit $200k to find out. Spend $5k, get the plan and the pipeline, and let the commission model prove the territory before a salary ever touches your P&L. The full breakdown of what's included is on the Market Entry Package page, and common questions are answered on the FAQ.