Worst money I've spent on my business
Worst money I've spent on my business, full stop. I hired FractionalClients to build a client pipeline. The promise was a qualified client within 90 days, or they keep working until they land one. Eight months later I had zero qualified leads. Not one person worth taking a call with.
The bigger problem was how they operated. They'd tell me they were going to get back to me and then just wouldn't. They promised to adjust the strategy multiple times and nothing actually changed. Always new excuses: bugs in their systems, people leaving etc... The targeting was consistently off, they kept reaching people who were never a fit, and when I finally pushed on how the new approach would fix that, the answer was a different data tool, not a different plan. I raised these issues with their team 2 months in and repeatedly after, and was later told it was the first they'd heard of it.
They eventually refunded part of the fee once I escalated, which I'll acknowledge. But eight months, constant dropped communication, and zero qualified leads is about as poorly as this could have gone. If you're a fractional exec considering them, be very careful, and at minimum get in writing how they'll define and reach your actual target client and what happens when they don't deliver.