An alternative to hiring a business development manager

What a business development manager gives you

A business development manager (BDM) is a salesperson whose job is new clients. A good one finds the businesses worth talking to, gets in front of them by phone, email and in person, works out what they need, quotes, negotiates and closes. They also look after the relationship once the work starts, so the next job comes from the same client.

That is what most owners picture when they think about hiring: someone who sells the way they would, while they get on with the work. For the right business, nothing replaces it. The real questions are whether your business is ready for one, and whether the job you need done is the whole of sales or only the start of it.

What a BDM costs (October 2026)

In October 2026 SEEK put the average BDM salary in Australia at between $105,000 and $125,000, based on salaries in employers' job ads. SEEK notes that some advertised figures include super and some don't. Where they don't, the super guarantee adds 12% (the rate since 1 July 2025), so a $115,000 base becomes $128,800, or about $10,700 a month.

That is before the costs with no standard figure: workers' compensation insurance, payroll tax once your wages pass your state's threshold, a phone, laptop and car or allowance, and usually a commission. A full-time employee also gets four weeks of paid annual leave a year, which is time paid but not selling.

Then there is the wait. Nousu Collective's comparison of outsourced sales models cites a 2026 analysis putting an in-house sales development rep (a junior prospecting role) at three to four months to reach full productivity. A BDM learning a business they don't know yet faces a similar curve. Our guide to what introductions cost sets out the full breakdown, and how to work out how many new clients each option needs to win just to pay for itself.

When hiring a BDM is the better choice

Hire when most of these are true:

• Your jobs are big enough. If one new commercial client is worth tens of thousands in gross profit a year, a salesperson who wins a handful of them pays their way.
• Demand is steady. There is enough work out there to keep someone selling full time, every week, not just in a busy season.
• The sale needs a person. Site visits, walk-throughs, tenders, pricing on the spot and negotiation all need someone in the room. Email can open the door, but someone has to walk through it.
• You can manage them. Someone has to recruit, train and back them, and judge whether it's working. If that someone is you, count your hours too.

A BDM also builds knowledge you can't buy by the month. Over time they learn which property managers pick up the phone, which builders pay on time and which facilities managers are about to retender. That knowledge stays in your business, at least while they do.

When Curlew is the better choice

Plenty of owners who think they need a BDM really need the first half of the job done: finding the right businesses and getting a conversation started. That is the part Curlew does. It finds local businesses that could buy from you or refer customers to you, reads each one's website, writes to them by email in your business name, answers the replies and passes anyone interested to you with the thread. You take it from there, the way you already win work.

It costs $99 a month including GST, with no setup fee and no contract. Sending starts at about 10 businesses a day and builds over four to five weeks to up to 50 a day, Monday to Friday. You approve the first email before anything is sent. Research and drafting are done by our proprietary system, and our team in Brisbane checks the work.

It tends to suit you better than a hire when:

• Your jobs are too small, or your work too seasonal, to carry a salary of more than $128,000 with super.
• You're happy to have the first proper conversation yourself, once a business is interested.
• You can't spare the hours to recruit and manage a salesperson.
• You want to keep your own email address out of it. Each client gets a sending domain registered close to their business name, so their own email is never put at risk, and the domain is theirs to keep.

Be clear on what it doesn't do. Curlew reaches out by email. It doesn't cold call, visit, quote, negotiate or close, and it doesn't promise replies, leads, meetings or work. It writes only to businesses, at the address each has published on its own website, and it stops writing to any business that asks. It isn't for health or law practices, franchises or chains. See how it works for the detail.

Using both

The two fit together. A BDM's hours are dearest when they go on finding businesses and writing first emails. If Curlew does that and passes interested businesses on with the thread, the BDM spends more of the week in meetings and on quotes, which is the part only a person can do.

Outreach can also come first. If you're not sure there's enough demand to justify a hire, a few months of writing to local businesses shows you how they respond to you before you commit to a salary. If the conversations come and you can't keep up with them, that is a fair sign it's time to hire. If you're weighing an agency instead, see lead generation agency alternatives.