The Fractional Chief Sales Officer (CSO) is responsible for guiding the sales strategy and plan to drive profitable revenue growth. The CSO also must collaborate with other leaders and define the markets and segments in which a company plays, which it will pursue, and how it will create a competitive advantage to win.
What does a Chief Sales Officer do?
The CSO must continuously refine the sales strategy in response to shifting external and internal factors. A high-performing CSO must take on the following tasks:
- Build a Sales Foundation, Model & Strategy - These are the day-to-day activities of world-class sales organizations. The CSO creates and executes against the overall corporate strategy, improves performance on every live client interaction through better planning and call strategy, enhances competitive differentiation and messaging, and drives better discovery by better questioning to make the most of limited buyer availability.
- Key Account Planning - A strategy and methodology for helping key account managers and teams build company-to-company partnerships in key, strategic, and global accounts. It provides proven strategies for transforming qualified accounts from one-time sales hits to long-term partnerships, leading to improved customer satisfaction, growth, expansion, and retention.
- Opportunity Management - Winning complex sales at every level is geared toward today’s environment of longer, complex sales cycles, fierce competition, organizational politics, knowledgeable and biased buying committees, and the digital buyer-led process.
- Pipeline & Forecast Management - The CSO's objectives are to gain transparency into the sales pipeline and eliminate exception reporting.This includes creating forecasting accuracy, and resource allocation through dramatically improved discussions between sales professionals and sales leaders. By changing how teams think and execute, CSOs can improve pipeline size, health, hygiene, and velocity.
Given the skills, complexity, sophistication and requisite experience to have an effective CSO, many organizations feel interim or fractional sales leadership in the form of a fractional sales manager or fractional CSO is a good option to consider.
Fractional CSO Services
A Fractional Chief Sales Officer (CSO) sidesteps many of the risks, costs, and time constraints of traditional sales leader searches or promoting internally. First, good internal successors are rare. Second, fractional CSOs are ready to stabilize revenue, investigate issues, implement changes, help recruit new leaders, and quickly ramp them.
A search for a Chief Sales Officer typically takes 4-5 months with another several weeks expected to get the new in-house CSO to full capacity. Â You may face a 1-2 quarter gap in finding your next CSO. TechCXO part-time and interim CSOs hit the ground running, usually with less than a two-week learning curve.
Finally, options for on-demand executives include defined project fees (e.g. assessments, project plans), hourly rates, day rates, or monthly retainer. A typical in-house CSO’s compensation, benefits, and bonus will typically exceed $200k and include significant equity from a startup. There are no contracts, equity or loaded salaries with a fractional CSO who works faster and more efficiently than in-house resources.
What to Expect from TechCXO Fractional Chief Sales Officer (CSO)
TechCXO sales leaders aren’t academics or trainers — they are practitioners and operating CROs and CSOs who currently field world-class sales teams.
Impact
Strategic & Economic Impact
Clarify your vision and drive results.
Efficient Processes
Improve sales operations and systems' efficiency.
Team Synergy
Review and align teams for optimal performance.
Swift Execution
Immediate, rapid impact to sales and marketing organizations.
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