One senior leader owns your revenue number, without a full-time hire.
A Gully Sales fractional chief revenue officer runs marketing, sales and customer success as one revenue line: a thirty-day diagnosis, agreed priorities, a weekly operating cadence and reporting you could take to a board.
- Marketing, sales and customer success answer to one plan and one person.
- A weekly and monthly rhythm that runs whether or not you are in the room.
- Forecasts, pipeline and attainment reported in a form a board or lender can read.
Gully Sales Private Limited places senior commercial leaders inside owner-led Indian businesses, with marketing, sales and revenue operations behind them.
In one paragraph
What is Fractional Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)?
A fractional chief revenue officer is a senior revenue leader who joins your business part-time, with a written mandate and real decision authority, to run marketing, sales and customer success as one revenue line. Gully Sales provides that leader: a thirty-day diagnosis, agreed priorities, a weekly operating cadence, coaching for your managers and board-ready reporting, for Indian SMBs that need the leadership before they can justify the full-time hire.
The problem
You are the chief revenue officer, and you have another full-time job.
In most Indian SMBs the owner is the head of revenue by default. Marketing reports to you, sales reports to you, the large accounts call you, and the forecast is whatever you feel on the day. It worked while the business was small enough to hold in your head. Now there are more people, more channels and more decisions than one person with another full-time job can lead well, and a full-time chief revenue officer feels premature, expensive or simply impossible to find.
You will recognise it as
- Marketing and sales each report to you separately, and your office is the only place their plans meet.
- The monthly revenue review is a recap of what happened, not a decision about what changes.
- Your sales head is a strong closer who has never run a pipeline, a forecast or a team.
- The forecast moves with the mood of the person giving it, and you cannot tell a good month from a lucky one.
- You have tried a senior commercial hire before, and he or she left or was let go within the year.
- Investors, lenders or a board are asking for revenue reporting that nobody in the business knows how to produce.
What it costs the business
- Decisions on pricing, hiring and campaigns wait for you, so they take weeks and the team learns to wait.
- Marketing produces leads that sales does not work, sales asks for leads marketing cannot see, and both explain themselves to you separately.
- Growth is capped at the hours you can give it, so the business grows more slowly than its market.
- A full-time hire made in a hurry costs a year's salary and a year's momentum if the person turns out to be wrong.
Why it persists. A full-time chief revenue officer is a rare hire in Indian SMBs: the right person is expensive, the pool is small, and the role is hard to define before the business has ever had one. So the work stays with the owner, who is capable but stretched, and the business runs on judgement rather than on a system. The usual alternative, promoting the top salesperson, often loses a good seller and gains a reluctant manager. Neither builds the operating rhythm the business now needs.
If it stays unresolved. The business keeps growing at the pace of the owner's attention. Good people leave because nobody senior is coaching them, the number stays a hope rather than a forecast, and when a lender or investor asks how revenue is managed, the honest answer is that it is managed by you, in your head.
What changes
Revenue gets a leader, a plan and a rhythm before it gets a full-time hire.
In the first weeks
- A written leadership mandate: what the fractional CRO owns, decides, recommends and reports, signed by you.
- A thirty-day diagnosis of funnel, pipeline, team, channels, systems and forecast, with the gaps ranked by revenue impact.
- A short list of revenue priorities for the next two quarters, each with an owner, a measure and a date.
In how the work runs
- A weekly pipeline and marketing cadence and a monthly revenue review that run to a fixed agenda and produce decisions.
- Marketing, sales and customer success working to one plan, one set of definitions and one funnel.
- Managers and senior sellers coached in forecasting, pipeline reviews and deal strategy while doing the job.
In sales and marketing
- Revenue attainment tracked against a plan the CRO owns, with every gap traced to a cause and a decision.
- Pipeline coverage read weekly, so a shortfall is acted on a quarter before it reaches revenue.
In what management can see
- A monthly board-ready revenue report: attainment, coverage, forecast accuracy, marketing contribution and sales productivity.
Over the longer term
- A revenue function that can be handed to a full-time leader with its mandate, cadence and reporting already built.
Gully Sales controls the mandate, the diagnosis, the priorities, the cadence, the coaching and the reporting. Revenue itself depends on your market, your product and the decisions you take on the leader's advice. We do not promise a number; we make the revenue function led, measured and accountable.
Who it is for
Owners who need the leader now and the full-time hire later.
The businesses it suits
- Founder-led Indian SMBs where marketing, sales and customer success all report to the owner and to nobody else.
- Mid-market businesses that have outgrown a sales manager but cannot yet justify a full-time chief revenue officer.
- Companies with more than one route to revenue, such as direct, dealers, online and key accounts, that need one leader across all of them.
- Businesses where a senior commercial hire has failed before and the owner wants the role defined before trying again.
- Firms raising funds, taking a loan or forming a board that need revenue reporting a serious reader will accept.
- Companies with a capable sales head who needs a senior partner on strategy, forecasting and marketing, not a replacement.
What usually prompts the call
- Revenue has flattened or turned unpredictable, and every explanation ends with the owner being too stretched.
- A funding round, a loan or a board seat is coming, and the revenue function has to look managed within a quarter or two.
- Your sales head has resigned or been moved, and you need senior cover while you decide what the role should be.
- Marketing spend is rising, sales is not converting more, and nobody senior owns the two together.
- You intend to hire a full-time CRO within the year and want the role built before the person arrives.
What Gully Sales does
The work, component by component.
Leadership mandate
Before anything is diagnosed, we write the role: what the fractional CRO owns outright, what he or she decides alone, what needs your sign-off, who reports to the role, how many days a week it runs and how it is reviewed. You sign it and the team sees it, so the leader arrives with authority instead of earning it meeting by meeting.
- Why it matters:
- A fractional leader without a stated mandate becomes an expensive adviser whose recommendations wait for the owner.
- You receive:
- Signed leadership mandate with decision rights, reporting lines, time commitment and review dates.
- Business value:
- The team knows who decides what from the first week, and you know exactly what you have delegated.
First-thirty-day diagnosis
The first thirty days are spent inside the business: the CRM and the ledger, ride-alongs with sellers, marketing's campaigns and spend, the customer success queue, four quarters of forecast against actual, and interviews with the team, a few customers and a few lost deals. The output is a picture of where revenue is made, lost and left on the table.
- Why it matters:
- Priorities set from outside are guesses; thirty days inside turns them into evidence.
- You receive:
- Diagnosis report covering funnel, pipeline, team, channels, systems and forecast, with gaps ranked by revenue impact.
- Business value:
- You see the whole revenue line in one document, often for the first time.
Revenue priorities
From the diagnosis we choose the few things that will move revenue in the next two quarters and say no to the rest. Each priority gets an owner in your team, a measure, a date and the resources it needs. Priorities are set with you, not for you, and re-examined at every monthly review.
- Why it matters:
- A stretched team given twelve priorities delivers none of them; three with owners get done.
- You receive:
- Two-quarter priority plan with owners, measures, dates and resources.
- Business value:
- The team works on what matters and stops working on what does not.
Operating cadence
The CRO installs and runs the rhythm: a weekly pipeline review with sales, a weekly marketing and lead review, a fortnightly renewals and customer success check, a monthly revenue review with you and a quarterly re-plan. Each has a fixed agenda, a dashboard it reads from and decisions it must produce before it ends.
- Why it matters:
- Revenue is managed in the meetings that happen every week, not in the strategy set once a year.
- You receive:
- Cadence calendar, agendas, dashboards and decision logs for each meeting, run by the CRO.
- Business value:
- The business is managed the same way whether or not you are in the room.
Team coaching
Your sales head, marketing lead, managers and senior sellers are coached in the job rather than lectured: deal reviews, forecast calls, territory plans, campaign reviews and difficult account conversations, done alongside the CRO until they run them alone. Where a role is missing or wrongly filled, we say so and help you hire or restructure.
- Why it matters:
- The leader's job is to leave a stronger team, not to be the only person who can run it.
- You receive:
- Coaching plan per manager, monthly progress notes and a hiring or restructuring recommendation where needed.
- Business value:
- Your managers grow into the roles the business now needs.
Board-ready reporting
Each month the CRO produces one revenue report: attainment against plan, pipeline coverage, forecast accuracy, marketing contribution, sales productivity and the status of each priority, with the commentary a board, lender or investor expects. The same report is your monthly review pack, so there is one version of the truth.
- Why it matters:
- Owners who cannot show how revenue is managed pay for it in valuations, loan terms and trust.
- You receive:
- Monthly revenue report and dashboard, readable by a board or lender without a briefing.
- Business value:
- You answer the hard revenue questions with a document, not a story.
What you will have at the end.
- Signed leadership mandate: what the fractional CRO owns, decides, recommends and reports, with time commitment and review dates.
- Thirty-day diagnosis report covering funnel, pipeline, team, channels, systems and forecast, with gaps ranked by revenue impact.
- Two-quarter revenue priority plan with owners, measures, dates and resources.
- Operating cadence: calendar, agendas, dashboards and decision logs for the weekly, monthly and quarterly reviews.
- Revenue definitions and funnel stages agreed across marketing, sales and customer success, and set up in your CRM.
- Forecasting method and a weekly forecast, with accuracy tracked against what is actually booked.
- Coaching plan for each manager and senior seller, with monthly progress notes.
- Monthly board-ready revenue report and dashboard, with commentary.
- Hiring or restructuring recommendations where the diagnosis shows a role missing or wrongly filled.
- Handover pack for a full-time successor: mandate, cadence, reporting, priorities and open decisions.
How it runs
The engagement, step by step.
- 1
Agree the mandate
We meet you, and where relevant your partners or board, to define what the role must achieve, what it will own and decide, how many days a week it runs, who reports to it and how you and the CRO will review each other. The mandate is written, signed and introduced to the team by you.
- You provide:
- Your objectives for revenue, the current organisation chart, and a decision on the authority you are willing to delegate.
- We produce:
- The signed leadership mandate and an introduction note for the team.
- Done when:
- You and the CRO agree in writing on what the role owns and decides.
- 2
Diagnose in the first thirty days
The CRO works inside the business: CRM and ledger data, forecast history, campaign and spend records, ride-alongs, pipeline reviews as an observer, and interviews with the team, a few customers and a few lost deals. Nothing is changed yet except what is clearly broken and cheap to fix.
- You provide:
- Access to the CRM, sales ledger, marketing accounts and forecast history, and time with the sales, marketing and service teams.
- We produce:
- The diagnosis report, with the revenue line mapped and the gaps ranked by impact.
- Done when:
- You have read the diagnosis and agree with the picture it paints.
- 3
Set the priorities
We take the ranked gaps and choose the few that will move revenue in the next two quarters, each with an owner in your team, a measure, a date and the resources it needs. We also list what we are deliberately not doing yet, so the team is not pulled in twelve directions.
- You provide:
- A working session with you and your senior team, and decisions on budget and hiring the priorities need.
- We produce:
- The two-quarter priority plan and the list of deferred items.
- Done when:
- Every priority has an owner and a measure, and you have signed the plan.
- 4
Install the cadence
The CRO sets up and chairs the weekly, fortnightly, monthly and quarterly meetings, builds the dashboards they read from, agrees the funnel definitions across marketing, sales and customer success, and starts the weekly forecast. The first few cycles are run by the CRO; the agendas and decision logs make them repeatable.
- You provide:
- Attendance at the monthly review and access to whoever maintains your CRM and reporting.
- We produce:
- Cadence calendar, agendas, dashboards, decision logs and the first weekly forecast.
- Done when:
- Every meeting in the cadence has run at least twice to its agenda.
- 5
Lead and coach
This is the ongoing work of the role: running the cadence, making the decisions inside the mandate, escalating the ones outside it, coaching managers and senior sellers alongside real deals and campaigns, and recommending hires or changes where a role is missing or wrongly filled.
- You provide:
- Timely decisions on the matters escalated to you, and support for the changes the CRO recommends.
- We produce:
- Monthly progress notes per manager, decision logs and the priority plan kept current.
- Done when:
- Managers run their own reviews and forecasts with the CRO observing rather than chairing.
- 6
Report, review and hand over
Each month the CRO delivers the board-ready revenue report and reviews it with you. At each quarter the mandate, priorities and metrics are re-examined. When the business is ready for a full-time leader, the CRO helps define the role, sits in the interviews and hands over the mandate, cadence and reporting.
- You provide:
- The monthly review with you and, at the right time, a decision on the full-time hire.
- We produce:
- Monthly revenue reports, quarterly mandate reviews and the successor handover pack.
- Done when:
- A full-time leader, or your own team, runs the revenue function without the fractional CRO.
Ways to work with us
Engage the leader for the long run, for a transition, or to build the role.
Fractional CRO, ongoing
A senior Gully Sales revenue leader on a fixed number of days each week, under a signed mandate, running the cadence, the priorities and the reporting for as long as the business needs the role. Reviewed each quarter.
Interim CRO for a transition
Senior cover when a sales or revenue head has left or a full-time hire is some months away. The CRO keeps the pipeline, the team and the reporting steady while you decide what the permanent role should be.
Build the role, then hire
For owners who intend to hire a full-time CRO within the year. We define the role, run it, install the cadence and reporting, help you recruit the successor and hand over, so the new hire starts with a working function.
Diagnosis and priorities only
The thirty-day diagnosis and the two-quarter priority plan without ongoing leadership, for owners who want the picture and the plan and will run them with their own sales head.
Why Gully Sales
What you are actually choosing when you choose us.
One leader across the whole revenue line, not one part of it.
A fractional CMO runs marketing and a fractional head of sales runs the sales team. The CRO owns both, with customer success, so lead quality, conversion, renewals and pricing are decided by one person looking at one funnel.
The mandate is agreed before the first meeting.
We do not start until the role's decision rights, reporting lines and review dates are written and signed. That is what separates a leader who runs the function from a consultant whose slides wait for the owner.
We diagnose inside your business before we prescribe.
The first thirty days are spent in your CRM, your ledger, your sales calls and your campaigns, not in a workshop. The priorities come from what the business actually does, which is why your team recognises them.
The cadence is built to outlast the engagement.
Agendas, dashboards and decision logs are written so that your managers, or a full-time successor, can run every meeting without us. The point of the role is to leave a function, not a dependency.
We report to you the way a board expects to be reported to.
Attainment, coverage, forecast accuracy, marketing contribution and productivity, with plain commentary, in one monthly document. Owners use it with lenders, investors and boards without rewriting it.
Where it applies
The same service, in different businesses.
Industrial manufacturing with dealers
- The situation:
- A components manufacturer sells through regional dealers and a few direct OEM accounts. The owner manages the dealers, the OEM relationships and a small marketing spend personally, and the sales manager handles order follow-up.
- How it applies:
- A fractional CRO takes the dealer network, the OEM accounts and marketing under one mandate, installs a weekly pipeline review by region, sets dealer coverage priorities for two quarters and reports monthly on attainment by channel.
- Likely benefit:
- The owner steps out of daily dealer management and gets one monthly view of where the revenue is coming from.
B2B and IT services
- The situation:
- A services firm with inbound leads, a small outbound team and an account management group finds that renewals, expansions and new logos are all forecast differently and reported to the founder in three separate conversations.
- How it applies:
- The CRO agrees one funnel and one set of definitions across the three teams, runs a single weekly forecast, sets priorities on renewal defence and new-logo conversion, and coaches the account managers on expansion conversations.
- Likely benefit:
- The founder gets one forecast a week instead of three stories, and renewals are managed as revenue rather than admin.
Healthcare providers
- The situation:
- A hospital or multi-location clinic group has a marketing team generating enquiries, front-desk staff converting them and a business development manager courting corporate and referral accounts, with no one senior connecting the three.
- How it applies:
- A fractional CRO puts enquiry conversion, referral development and marketing spend under one plan, installs a weekly enquiry-to-appointment review and a monthly report by location and service line.
- Likely benefit:
- Marketing spend is judged by appointments booked, and the owners see the revenue engine of each location on one page.
Consumer brands and e-commerce
- The situation:
- A D2C brand sells on its own site, on marketplaces and through distributors. Advertising is run by an agency, marketplaces by one person and distributors by the founder, and the number moves with advertising spend.
- How it applies:
- The CRO takes all three channels under one mandate, sets contribution priorities per channel, brings the agency into the weekly marketing review with clear targets, and reports monthly on contribution and margin by channel.
- Likely benefit:
- The founder stops being the only person who sees all three channels, and advertising is spent to a plan.
Professional and financial services
- The situation:
- A firm of consultants, chartered accountants or advisers wins work through partners' relationships, with a marketing executive producing content nobody connects to fees, and no pipeline anyone can see.
- How it applies:
- A fractional CRO builds a pipeline the partners will actually maintain, sets partner-level priorities on referral sources and key accounts, connects marketing to enquiry generation and runs a monthly revenue review with the partners.
- Likely benefit:
- Partners see the firm's pipeline for the first time, and business development becomes a managed rhythm.
Questions buyers ask
Before you enquire, the answers you will want.
How much of my time and decision authority does a fractional CRO need?
Less time than you spend on revenue now, but more authority than you may be used to giving. The mandate sets out what the CRO decides alone, what he or she recommends for your sign-off and what stays with you, typically pricing beyond a threshold, senior hires and budget changes. Your time commitment is the monthly review, the quarterly re-plan and timely decisions on what is escalated. If you want to keep every decision, the role will not work, and we will say so at the audit.
How is this different from a fractional head of sales or a fractional CMO?
A fractional head of sales leads the sales team: pipeline, quotas, hiring, coaching sellers. A fractional CMO leads marketing: positioning, demand generation, spend. A fractional chief revenue officer owns both, and customer success, as one revenue line, and is accountable for the number that results. If your problem sits in one function, one of those roles is cheaper and sharper. If your problem is that nobody senior owns the whole funnel, this is the role.
How long does the engagement take?
It depends on why you need the role. An interim engagement lasts until the permanent hire is in place and handed over. A build-the-role engagement runs until your managers or a successor can run the cadence without us, which we test rather than assume. An ongoing engagement continues as long as the business needs senior revenue leadership on a part-time basis, reviewed each quarter. The mandate states the review dates, and either side can end it at a review.
What inputs do you need from us to start?
Access to your CRM or sales records, the sales ledger or management accounts, marketing accounts and spend, and whatever forecast history exists. Time with your sales, marketing and service teams in the first thirty days, and introductions to a few customers and a few lost deals. Most of all, a signed mandate. Where data is thin, the diagnosis says so and the first priorities usually include fixing it.
How is success measured?
Against the baseline recorded in the diagnosis: revenue attainment, pipeline coverage, forecast accuracy, marketing contribution, sales productivity and execution velocity, reported monthly and reviewed quarterly. We also measure whether the function is becoming yours: how many reviews your managers chair, how many decisions close inside the cadence. Revenue depends on your market and your decisions; the reporting makes the cause of every gap visible, which is what we are accountable for.
What is excluded from the scope?
The fractional CRO leads; he or she does not replace your team. Closing deals, running campaigns, writing content, building the website and administering the CRM are done by your people or by separate Gully Sales services, and the CRO directs them. Finance, legal, product and operations decisions are outside the mandate unless you add them. Recruiting is supported, with role definition and interviews, but the hiring decision and the offer are yours.
Will the fractional CRO sell and close deals?
The CRO will join important deals, coach the seller on strategy and sit in when a senior presence helps, but does not carry a personal quota. A leader who spends the days closing has no time to run the cadence, coach the managers or fix the funnel, which is what you are paying for. If what you need is senior people making calls and closing, outsourced sales and business development is the better fit, and we will point you there.
What happens to my existing sales head or marketing lead?
They report to the CRO under the mandate, and coaching them is part of the role. Most existing heads benefit: they get a senior partner on forecasting, strategy and the other function, and they stop competing for your attention. Where the diagnosis finds a role wrongly filled, the CRO tells you plainly and helps you decide, but the decision is yours. We introduce the role to the team with you, so nobody learns of it second-hand.
3 more questions
How is this different from a revenue growth audit?
A revenue growth audit is a diagnosis: it tells you why revenue is behind plan and what to fix first, and then hands the findings to you to act on. A fractional CRO includes a diagnosis in the first thirty days, but then stays to own the priorities, run the cadence and be accountable for the results. If you have a capable leader to act on findings, the audit is enough. If the missing piece is the leader, this is the role.
What happens when we are ready to hire a full-time CRO?
That is a good outcome, and the engagement is designed for it. The CRO helps you write the role from what the business now actually needs, sits in the interviews, and hands over the mandate, cadence, dashboards, priority plan and open decisions in a written pack. The new hire starts with a function that is already running, which is the difference between a first quarter spent leading and a first quarter spent discovering.
How many days a week is the leader with us, and are they on site?
The number of days is fixed in the mandate from what the role has to cover; a single-channel business needs fewer than one with dealers, direct sales, online and key accounts. The cadence meetings are run in person or on video depending on where your team sits, and the first thirty days include time on site with your sellers and customers. Gully Sales works with businesses across India, so the arrangement is built around your locations.
Talk to us
Decide who owns your revenue number, before you decide who to hire.
The free audit asks one question: who runs revenue in your business today. We look at who leads marketing, sales and customer success, how revenue is forecast and reviewed, and whether you need a fractional CRO, a narrower role or simply a sharper diagnosis.
- No obligation and no sales script
- A reply from someone who does the work
- Your details are never sold or shared