The Ultimate Guide to Fractional Sales Management
Looking to boost your sales but not sure if you are ready to hire a full-time sales team?
Your company could be the perfect candidate for a fractional sales team makeover.
Fractional sales management is a strategic approach that involves leveraging the expertise of fractional sales professionals to drive sales growth and optimize resources. This strategic approach involves partnering with experienced sales professionals part-time, meaning you'll benefit from their expertise without committing to a full-time hire.
By leveraging the expertise of fractional sales professionals, you can drive sales growth, optimize resources, and achieve your sales goals more efficiently and effectively. So, if you're looking for a cost-effective way to increase your sales, fractional sales management consulting may be the solution you've been searching for.
What Is Fractional Sales?
Fractional sales is when you bring in experienced pros to help with different aspects of your sales process. Doing so saves money as you don’t need to hire in-house employees for critical strategic or “first time” sales tasks. Fractional sales also help you scale operations more efficiently and adjust support based on changing needs and budgets.
What Is Fractional Management?
Fractional management involves hiring an external executive to take on a leadership role, similar to a freelancer or contractor, but generally with higher levels of seniority and with more executive experience in your industry. Depending on your organization's needs and job responsibilities, this person may work anywhere from 5 to 20 hours a week.
Fractional sales managers often lend their expertise to multiple companies simultaneously, working alongside each business's sales team. This keeps them in tune with trends that competitors might miss, because fractionals have the benefit of multiple current perspectives. Additionally, you can employ a fractional VP of sales to collaborate with senior management and executives on sales strategy.
This approach to management has gained popularity due to the flexibility it offers. With remote work becoming more prevalent, fractional management allows for smart resource distribution and reduced costs.
Even though the manager may only work part-time hours, you'll still receive high-quality input without paying a full-time salary. That's why it's called "fractional" management—you get the management your business needs without breaking the bank.
Benefits of Fractional Sales Management
When managing sales teams, many businesses struggle to find the right balance between cost and quality. Fractional sales management helps businesses enhance their sales performance while saving costs as they don’t need to experiment with hiring a full-time sales manager until they are sure they have the right strategy. Here are some of the key benefits of hiring a fractional sales manager.
Increased Scalability and Cost-Effectiveness
When businesses hire a fractional sales manager, they save money and gain the flexibility needed to adapt to changing sales demands. With a fractional sales manager, you can access the expertise of a skilled sales professional without committing to a full-time hire.
This approach allows you to easily adjust the number of hours or projects assigned to the fractional sales manager based on current sales needs, making it a highly cost-effective and scalable solution. Ultimately, hiring a fractional sales manager can help you optimize your sales strategy by providing the right level of support precisely when needed.
Access to Specialized Sales Expertise
When looking to hire a fractional sales manager, having access to specialized sales expertise can make all the difference. It's important to find someone who has a deep understanding of sales strategy and tactics and has experience in your specific industry or market.
This level of expertise can help ensure that your sales efforts are targeted and effective, leading to increased revenue and growth for your business. With a fractional sales manager with specialized expertise, you can feel confident that you’re making the most of your sales efforts and maximizing your return on investment.
Flexibility In Resource Allocation
As a business owner, you want to make the most efficient use of your resources while still achieving your sales goals. By hiring a fractional sales manager, you can allocate your resources more effectively, as you only pay for the services you need when you need them. This means you can adjust your sales team's size and capabilities based on your current needs without worrying about long-term commitments or excessive costs.
How Fractional Sales Management Works
Fractional sales management involves outsourcing a professional sales manager to work part-time to help your company achieve its sales goals. They will help you create a sales strategy, train your sales team, and provide regular reports. The best part is, because they work part-time, this can be much more affordable than hiring a full-time manager. However, they can help your team achieve better results.
Understanding the Role of Fractional Sales Managers
Fractional sales managers play an important role in defining an organization's sales strategy. They set sales goals and internal standards, clarify paths for lead generation and conversions, and monitor sales performance. This includes providing insightful analysis of sales progress and processes and highlighting techniques to improve operations.
Collaborating With Fractional Sales Managers and Teams
Managing the sales team is also a core part of the fractional sales manager’s responsibilities. Their job is to create structures and provide the necessary training to support your sales team, allowing reps to optimize their output and increase sales.
In their work with the sales team, they:
Improve sales team capabilities and function
Train sales employees
Hold regular sales and feedback meetings with owners and team members
Hire and onboard new sales representatives
Address poor sales performance and drive growth
Develop and nurture team ethos and morale
Establish a sales playbook for the team to work by
Identify sales enablement technology that can increase sales
Analyze trends and company metrics to find hidden opportunities
Provide an experienced “hand on the tiller” to keep strategy on track
Get more out of existing CRM software for increased sales and better reporting
These elements (strategy, process and team building) are the basic tenets of fractional sales management. They form the fundamentals of your relationship with this part-time sales leader.
Leveraging Fractional Sales Management as a Strategic Advantage
Working with a fractional manager can bring fresh and transformative perspectives to your sales efforts. As an external member of your organization, they can introduce more efficient operating methods that change how your sales team achieves its goals. This can positively alter your sales strategy and give you options that improve your profits.
A fractional sales manager can also be a key way to introduce and learn about evolving technologies in sales. They can suggest and implement technological techniques and tools your business hasn’t used before. This can increase overall efficiency, take your strategy to the next level, and help you reach your sales goals faster.
One critical area fractional sales leaders can help with is getting better data and sales power out of a company’s CRM. The CRM is an expensive investment and core component of sales enablement, so squeezing every ounce of power out of it is an excellent investment. We recommend a Hubspot Health Check.
When Should Your Sales Team Consider a Fractional Sales Manager?
Sales teams need experienced leadership and a sales process that makes the most of their valuable time and skills.
A fractional sales manager can be a valuable asset for any business looking to improve their sales team's performance and retention rates. By identifying the root cause of any issues and providing resources and guidance, a fractional sales manager can help turn struggling sales teams around.
Moreover, if you want to expand your sales team but don't want to invest in a full-time manager, a fractional sales manager can be a cost-effective option. They can offer valuable insight and support to help your team reach its full potential.
How to Hire a Fractional Sales Manager
Before bringing a fractional sales leader on board, it's important to consider a few things to ensure you find the right fit for your organization. Here is how to hire the best fractional sales manager for your company.
Assessing Sales Needs and Goals
The first step in working with a fractional sales manager is understanding your business needs and goals. What do you want to get out of the relationship?
Knowing this will help you assess the best candidate for the job. It will also ensure that you can later define expectations and tasks for your manager to fulfill.
Finding the Right Fractional Sales Partner or Manager
Choosing the right candidate for your business will depend on your goals, company culture, budget, and the kind of support you can provide.
These factors will help you define the ideal person to meet your needs and narrow down the pool to people you can afford to pay and support.
Defining Expectations and Establishing Clear Objectives
You must clearly define your expectations during the selection and onboarding processes. In a part-time position like this one, job requirements can get blurry and scope creep is a real risk. You need to trust that the manager understands what you need from them and they can do it effectively.
Having clearly defined objectives also means you have a basis for evaluating their performance down the line.
Integrating Fractional Sales With Existing Sales Processes
Introducing a new element to your sales team will require you to actively acclimate them to change. Create a definitive strategy with the new manager to help your team adjust and integrate the management role into existing functions.
Ironically, most sales teams get excited to learn that the company they work for cares about sales enablement enough to bring in an expert. Fractional sales leaders can be just what is needed to take a good sales team to GREAT.
Maximize Your Sales Team's Success
Fractional sales management is a highly effective way to fill the gaps in your sales processes and maximize your sales team’s performance.
Not only are fractional sales managers cost-effective, but they deliver excellent ROI, as their expertise can help you optimize your sales strategy at a fraction of the cost of a full-time sales manager. They can also introduce exciting and innovative ways to improve your sales and drive success.
Reap the benefits of fractional sales management and take your business to the next level. Contact us today to get started!