Chief Sales Officer
A sales leader who owns the result.
For owner-led companies where deals wait for one person and the forecast lives in one head.
The result it owns
New recurring revenue, and a forecast the board can plan on.
Agreed before the work starts, reviewed regularly.
You probably need this seat if
Revenue still runs through one calendar.
- Prices, discounts and final yeses go through you.
- You need to scale, turn the business around or open a new market, and nobody owns the commercial plan for it.
- The pipeline is full and the forecast is still wrong.
- Your best customers belong to one salesperson, or to a distributor.
- You doubled the outreach and the meetings stayed where they were.
From practice
What this seat has delivered before.
- An industrial manufacturer with no B2B structure and no export experience: a price and rebate structure for each export market, a sales team built step by step, and growth of 10 to 15 percent a year in individual product lines.
- A consumer goods company whose own e-shop and distributors were undercutting each other: one set of prices and promotions for both channels, sales stable without price wars, and an owner who no longer has to be in every deal.
Anonymised cases from our partners’ practice.
What the seat decides
Decision rights, written down before day one.
- Prices and discounts, inside an agreed framework.
- The go-to-market plan, inside the direction you set.
- Hiring into the commercial team, and what happens when targets are missed.
- The sales forecast the board sees.
- Who owns each key account.
- Terms with partners and distributors.
- Entering a new market or segment.
What stays with you is written on the first page, before day one. A seat that decides nothing is advice with a bigger invoice.
The first 90 days (Example)
What happens in the first quarter.
| When | What happens | What you can show |
|---|---|---|
| Weeks 1 to 2: Listen | Conversations with you, the team, a few customers and someone who has left. We agree what we will not change in the first month. | A one-page read of how revenue really moves |
| Weeks 3 to 4: Map | The pipeline, deal by deal. Who signs, whether we have spoken to that person, whether the customer acted in the last 30 days, how often the close date moved. | A pipeline you can trust, and the first three decisions that move from you to the seat |
| Weeks 5 to 8: First result | A pricing framework, so that discounts stop going through you, and a weekly forecast rhythm. One visible result by week six. | The framework in use, and a forecast meeting the team runs |
| Weeks 9 to 13: Hand to rhythm | The team runs the rhythm with the leader out of the room. | The first quarterly review: the result against the plan |
The exact goals are agreed with you before the seat starts.
AI in this seat is reviewed.
Research, preparation and follow-up may go to agents if possible. The judgment stays here.
The leader in this seat usually uses AI for research, preparation and follow-up, and checks everything before it reaches a customer or a board. Prices, people decisions and anything the leader answers for personally stay with a person.
Questions companies ask
Before the first conversation.
- Why not a full-time Chief Sales Officer?
- Sometimes that is the right answer, and we will tell you. A full-time leader makes sense when the seat needs five days a week and the company can carry the cost. Many seats need one experienced leader for one or two days a week, especially when the need is tied to one task, such as a new market, a turnaround or a funding round. Often it is also the step before a full-time hire: the fractional leader builds the function, and when it needs five days, helps you hire the person who takes it over.
- Will someone with several clients care about ours?
- A fractional leader cannot hide a weak result behind an organisation chart. Their name, their reputation and the next seat are at stake with every client.
- What if the result does not move?
- We look at it together regularly. If it does not move, we help to change what needs changing, including the seat itself.
- What do we decide first?
- Which decisions move from you to the seat, in writing, before day one.
Talk to us
Tell us what is not moving, and what result the seat should own.
One of us replies within two working days.