When a fractional head of sales makes sense for a founder-led company

You answer every serious enquiry yourself. You approve every quote. Deals you did not touch stall. Turnover has grown as far as your diary allows. When that is the pattern, a part-time head of sales is worth discussing. The missing piece is someone who runs the sales system while you sell where only you can. It is the wrong answer when the trouble is that you have nothing repeatable to sell.

Run a one-week log before you decide

Opinions about the bottleneck are cheap. For one working week, keep a note of every time a deal waited on you.

Day | Deal / customer | What waited | For how long | Could someone else have done it?
Mon | Hotel group, 40 rooms | Quote needed my sign-off | 2 days | Yes, under a set price band
Tue | Corporate event | Enquiry unanswered until I landed | 1 day | Yes
Wed | Wedding planner | Needed my judgement on a discount | half a day | No

Be strict about the last column: "yes" means a person with ordinary skill could have done it had they known the rule, and "no" means it truly needed you. Now read it. If most rows say "yes", the problem is structure: rules about who decides what do not exist. A head of sales can write them. If most say "no", your own judgement is the scarce resource, and a hire may not be able to take it over. Also look for gaps in the log itself. If you cannot say how many deals are open without checking, it is likely that nobody is running the pipeline.

What moves to the head, and what stays with you

A part-time head can own the machine around you. That means the stages deals pass through, how records are kept, the targets, the scripts and quote templates, and coaching for whoever sells besides you. You keep the deals only you can close, the final word on pricing principles and the annual number. Anyone you hire needs to know where that line is, in writing, before the first call they sit in on. Vague lines are how a head ends up asking permission for everything.

What a part-time head cannot do is stand beside a team of juniors every day. If your people need hand-holding on site across the week, a full-time sales manager is the better route. If the choice is between the two kinds of seniority, fractional or full-time sets out the comparison.

A case: an events and décor firm in Bikaner

Here is an invented case. A firm does weddings and corporate events around Bikaner, sold personally by its two founders. Enquiries from planners waited a day or two. Two coordinators handled logistics but never closed anything.

The founders brought in a part-time head. In the first weeks the head sat in on calls and read old quotes, then wrote one rule: events under a set budget belong to the coordinators, who quote from a template; larger ones, a founder joins. The head also built a single sheet of open deals.

Then the mistake. The founders kept approving every quote anyway, "just to be safe". The coordinators stopped sending quotes without a founder's nod, and the old delay returned. The head named the problem plainly. They fixed it by writing a price band within which the coordinators could decide alone, with a note on who to call above it. The change worked because it moved a decision, not just a document. Above the band a founder still joined every call, and one founder found that hard to give up for a month.

Questions to put to anyone you consider

A candidate worth considering will ask you as many questions as you ask them. Put these five on the table in the first conversation.

1. What will you own in writing, and what do I still own?
2. Which of my deals will you join, and which will you leave alone?
3. How will you show me the pipeline is real and not hopeful?
4. If a salesperson you coach leaves, what happens next?
5. What do you need from my calendar in the first stretch?

Listen for specifics about your business. A candidate who talks only of a general playbook may not have looked at your sales.

Handing over without losing the big deals

Founders who drop out of every deal overnight risk losing the ones that depend on a relationship. A safer path has three steps. The head listens in on live calls. Then the head takes the first call on new enquiries while you join the second. Finally the head runs the smaller deals alone. Keep yourself on the largest, most personal accounts until a replacement has earned trust.

Be ready for some habits to go. If you quote a favoured customer a special price by phone, that now goes through the head or stops. Decide before you start whether you can live with that.

When to leave it alone

Do not use the arrangement to create demand from nothing. Leads come first. If leads do not arrive regularly, start with marketing, as when a fractional CMO makes sense explains. Nor should you use it while you are still finding out what you sell and to whom. If you refuse to let go of any deal, you are paying for an adviser who cannot decide anything. A one-time review may suit you better; see when to hire a sales consultant.

A word on money. A fractional arrangement usually costs less per month than a full-time head, but it is not a small cheque, so compare it against what one lost large deal costs you. Ask for the fee in writing, split between time and anything else you will be charged for, and agree how and when either side can end it.

Count your touched deals

Take last quarter and count how many deals you handled from first reply to close. That number is your bottleneck. If it is nearly all of them, you are the sales system, and writing down the rules you use comes before any hire. When you are ready to scope the help, tell us what you need; how a sales system hangs together is covered under sales.