A fractional Sales Leader is an outsourced C-level executive that works part-time for your organization. They are typically very experienced in sales and would be responsible for setting and implementing your sales strategy, sales process, and plans.

Fractional Sales leadership costs much less than hiring your own VP of Sales because the leader is working part-time and not full-time. In some cases, your fractional leader may be semi-retired and simply not be interested in a full-time role, or the Fractional Leader is sharing his time between 3-4 different companies.

An experienced and qualified full-time VP of Sales will cost the business a minimum of 100,000. When you add taxes and benefits, the cost increases a minimum of 20%, and remember, this does not include commission or bonus payments which the top performers will expect.

In the same way that there are full-time positions for 60,000 and some for 600,000, there is a huge difference in the pricing between different leaders. You may be lucky and find a semi-retired Sales Director who will point you in the right direction and make some introductions to his/her network for 2000 per month.

It may seem counterintuitive that you should avoid hiring a Part-time Sales Manager on a Day rate. This is because you are paying them for their knowledge and experience, not their time.

In addition to time spent with you and your team, the best Fractional Leaders will give you “Shower Time.” Shower Time is the time spent on critical thinking, ideas, and strategies away from their desk, so to speak.

In the same way that many of your ideas come when you are away from your desk, so will your head of sales. Paying by the day simply doesn’t motivate someone who is at the top of their game.

The reality is that companies should hire the best people they can afford at their stage of business, which is why the part-time sales management model is gaining popularity.

In many cases, Startups have no one at the exec level responsible for sales, or the founder may be responsible. While this can work, most founders come from a technical background and have no experience in sales.

Often Startups will hire entry-level sales and marketing people because that is all they can afford, and again, while this can work, there is an enormous benefit to having a more experienced sales leader who can set the sales strategy, sales process, and plan.

Other companies that benefit from a Fractional Sales leader are those with a number of full-time salespeople but not enough to warrant a full-time sales manager. This tends to be companies with less than 10 full-time salespeople, but in reality, this can change depending on the complexity of the industry, company, and sales structure.

Hiring Fractional Sales Managers allows the business owner to focus on other areas of the business that affect growth. In most cases, business owners are only to keep offloading the typical sales challenges such as sales process development, sales cycle, and sales staff.

Every sales team and every leader should be measured on results, and your part-time head of sales will help you set relevant KPIs for the business, your sales team, and the fractional leader themselves.

Additional factors you should consider are the responsibilities for your Part Time Sales Management role. This is typically much more than how to accomplish the objectives you have set.

Typically, we ourselves have helped most small companies with many time-consuming and unglamorous such as one on one meetings, finding and hiring new salespeople, sales coaching, and all the tasks a full-time manager would be responsible for.