What is Fractional Sales Management?

Our firm began practicing fractional sales management in early 2006, and nearly twenty years later, in 2024, we have continued without much modification to its origins. We didn’t create the term, but we are part of the history of a once hard-to-find service that has emerged.

Fractional Sales Management is the practice of an experienced sales leader, “The Fractional Sales Manager,” sharing their leadership time with multiple small business sales teams. A fractional sales manager is an alternative to hiring a full-time sales manager, providing small businesses with a lower staffing cost while adding a highly skilled manager to lead the sales department. A fractional sales manager will take on full accountability, like a full-time manager, for hiring, performance management, compensation and process development, CRM strategy, reporting, goal setting and attainment, coaching, and team and individual growth. Adopting Fractional Sales Management has moved past the innovator stage and into early adopters.

Fractional Sales Management Solves a Common Small Business Sales Challenge

Fractional Sales Management solves a common challenge facing small business owners, impeding their ability to scale business growth. These companies have plateaued or hit a sales ceiling. The effort, strategies, and salespeople propelling them to the current sales volume are no longer enough to achieve higher sales. Hiring a quality sales manager is the obvious solution, but finding one can seem nearly impossible for most small businesses. Not just hiring any sales manager or promoting a top salesperson in hopes of magic, but finding a qualified sales management professional who will accept and embrace the role is the challenge fractional sales managers are now solving. Later in this article, you’ll learn why finding a quality sales manager is challenging. 

Without a professional sales manager providing “sales leadership,” sales teams are often left alone or managed by the business owner. Most owners do not possess the experience, time, or know-how to scale up a sales department. Some owners are skilled at selling, but hiring and developing other salespeople is not their strength. Underestimating the value of a sales leader who will bring out the best in salespeople and create a culture that will attract better talent will often prolong plateaued sales levels. 

What Is a Fractional Sales Manager?

A fractional sales manager provides high-level sales management and leadership to a small business at a monthly expense that is often less than half of what a full-time sales manager would cost. Fractional Sales Managers simultaneously share their time and talents with a handful of companies and sales teams. 

The term fractional is associated with two factors. The sales management professional provides a fraction of their time, and a small business pays a fraction of that manager’s overall compensation. When you hire a fractional sales manager, you should work with them as your sales manager. You hire a professional to lead and manage the salespeople and represent the sales team at the company leadership level. 

Before Fractional Sales Management became popular, our company referred to this approach as Shared Virtual Sales Management. We used the term virtual because that is our model. As a corporate sales manager, I managed teams in a vast geographic territory, so it made sense to work the same with smaller company sales teams. We worked virtually before the COVID-19 pandemic pushed many businesses to embrace the technology. Not all fractional sales managers work virtually—some work close to their homes to work face-to-face with their clients.

The focus is on small businesses because medium and large enterprises often reach a point where a full-time manager makes the best sense. 

I can’t speak for all fractional sales managers, but we take ownership and accountability of the sales goal assigned to the sales team at Sales Manager Now. We do because we are your Sales Manager. Our reputation and value are based on the team’s results, just as they would be for a full-time sales manager. We work on a month-to-month basis, like most employees do. 

Sales Manager Now’s fractional sales management approach includes the following job responsibilities:

• Attaining sales goals through the sales team
• Hiring new salespeople when needed
• Confronting poor performance
• Coaching up or letting people go
• Conducting weekly sales meetings
• Improve and document department processes
• Contribute to company strategic planning
• Conduct one-on-one coaching and monthly meetings
• Provide or coordinate necessary education and training for the sales team
• Develop salespeople and the sales team
• Collaborate with other department managers and ownership
• Be available for sales meeting prep and debrief calls
• Meet with owners as needed to stay in sync

Benefits of Hiring a Fractional Sales Manager

Just as anyone you hire can bring better or worse results, it is with Fractional Sales Management. You are not just hiring a system, app, or training program. You are hiring someone to lead your sales department and work with you and your staff. You’re hiring a senior team member with the expertise to develop salespeople and provide candid feedback on what is and is not working in current sales processes and strategies. You will have a leader who can guide and advise you on decisions related to the sales direction.

When you hire the right fractional sales manager that fits your company, you should realize the following benefits. This list comprises what our clients have received and expected when hiring us.

• Improved systems and processes with visibility into the sales team’s efforts and results
• Higher trust levels by all employees and owners toward the sales team 
• The owner and company’s goals are clear and understood by the salespeople
• A department with a culture of accountability (No more complaining sessions, excuses, or whining) 
• Salespeople growing and developing in their role
• An increase in the number of salespeople that are performing to goal
• Increased sales with consistent results. 
• More of the type of customers or clients you prefer
• A sales team that other departments can get along with rather than fear or complain about
• A sales team that deserves the respect they receive from other departments
• A hiring and onboarding process that allows you to bring your next salesperson on board consistently
• Someone to execute the hiring process
• A sales leader you can trust, speak frankly with, and who will solve core issues to help the business grow 
• The sales team has an advocate for their needs who will present them to ownership in a business-like manner. 
• Someone to manage the interpersonal challenges that can arise on the sales team with ease
• CEOs have more time to perform their roles, solve issues, and expand the company.

I realize this might sound like a fairy tale, but it’s possible and what you should expect when hiring a fractional sales manager. I would not settle for less, as fractional sales managers should be professionals who know sales and understand how to manage effectively and lead in a way others respect and follow. 

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Why Not Hire a Full-Time Sales Manager?

One reason not to hire a full-time sales manager is that it’s hard to find one. Two factors make it challenging to attract a full-time professional sales manager. First, the talent market is limited, as most experienced sales managers work at corporations. Second, managing a small-business sales team does not present enough challenges for the sales management talent needed. In most cases, the responsibilities don’t require a full-time manager, and this is often overlooked. When a driving personality like a sales leader is not challenged, they will get bored and frequently leave within a year. 

A common belief is that a professional sales manager’s compensation is a hurdle to overcome, but we have not found that to be the case. Compensation buys things but does not replace the challenges missing in most small business sales leadership roles. The fractional sales manager model solves the management void and does it cost-effectively. Paying less buys you more in this case. Depending on your long-term goals a fractional sales manager might be a bridge to a full-time sales manager or your long-term solution. We’ve had several clients keep us on board for over seven years. Here is a cost comparison between a full-time and fractional sales management approach.

 

Are you still wondering if fractional sales management is for you? As important as understanding what fractional sales management is, understanding what it’s not could also help your decision.

What Fractional Sales Management Is Not

Many sales consultants, coaches, and trainers serve the small business sales team community. They also share their time with multiple clients. Sales consultants generally focus on processes, systems, hiring, and coaching. They work to fix strategies to help the company better manage its team. Coaches often focus on sales techniques, messaging, and conversations, and trainers teach sales methodology. These are general descriptions; some will combine each discipline in their delivery. The big difference is in the following three areas. 

1. Consultants and coaches do not lead and manage the salespeople.
2. Consultants and coaches rarely hire or manage employee dismissals.
3. Consultants and coaches are not accountable for the assigned goals.
4. Consultants and coaches don’t become part of a company’s management team. 

Some fractional sales managers can perform some or all of the roles of coaches and consultants or contract them as needed. In addition, some fractional sales managers work with professional service providers who need a manager to keep them accountable and help them overcome the stigma of selling.

Is Fractional Sales Management a Good Fit For You and Your Culture?

We’ve had several clients who have kept us on board for over seven years, and other times, we have helped for three months. We often stay engaged with a client based on how well our approach will fit a company’s culture and current management approach. If you think you might want to go down the road of hiring a fractional sales manager, the following list could help you decide if this approach would be a fit for you and your company culture. The checklist below is what our company has experienced for clients with tremendous success in leveraging fractional sales management. 

• You want and are willing to change to grow the business. Growing sales is more than changing a sales team; it usually takes change from others, including owners.
• Owners with a more trusting leadership approach succeed more since a fractional sales manager is not in the office full-time. 
• Your company has proven success with a sales team and process. Maybe your processes have not been the best, but they have brought the business to the current level of success. It confirms the market is there, and improvements should result in more sales. Startups are riskier if your proof of business plan has not been proven. 
• A team of 2 or more salespeople so you can find some early gains and trust the process.
• Have or are willing to develop a current business plan to provide your fractional sales manager and the sales team with your clear vision and strategies. The plan fuels us to work toward your vision.
• Comfort with the fractional sales manager not being the product expert and committed to providing the sales team’s product or service knowledge to win business. Most fractional sales managers provide expertise in leading and managing salespeople, not product expertise. 
• Attend some sales meetings to support the overall process. 
• Willing to provide the technology tools the sales team will need to be successful and support the process and systems.
• They want this to work and hope for a long-term working relationship.

How Do You Hire a Fractional Sales Manager?

Once you’ve found a fractional sales manager, the hiring process is a blend of how you hire an employee and evaluate a service. When hiring an employee, you should determine if the candidate will fit your team and culture well and have the skills required to perform well. When evaluating a service, you should look at its proven process (how they approach Fractional Sales Management) because managing fractionally differs from working full-time. The last factor is to discern if the manager is asking questions to evaluate a good fit for their service or convincing you that you’d be lost without them. An experienced fractional sales manager understands that their approach will not work at all businesses and is confident that it will work with the right fit. Once you’ve made a selection, the manager should provide references. 

Ideally, you should contract with someone who you hope will be a long-term solution or help you reach the stage of needing a full-time sales manager.

If you’d like to interview us at Sales Manager Now, it’s as easy as choosing a time below. If you are not ready for that, consider spending five minutes completing our Sales Management Assessment to get a sense of your current sales management approach’s strengths and weaknesses.