Hi friends - Happy Sunday! I’m back 🙃 

In case you missed it…HubSpot made a pretty big announcement recently about their new native integration with ChatGPT.

Since many of you are HubSpot customers, I encourage you to check it out! And I also encourage you to remember…the answers are only as good as the questions you know how to ask. But it’s a major accelerator for an experienced GTM professional. 👏 

So far this month we’ve covered -

• What do fractional GTM execs actually do?

• The Fractional vs Full-time Decision (part 1)

• The Fractional vs Full-time Decision (part 2)

Next up - if you decide that fractional is the best route for your business and scenario…how do you find us and how should you evaluate us? 

I got you.

How to find and evaluate fractional execs

How to find us

Start with your personal network. This includes asking for recommendations from -

• Your investors

• Other founders

• Other fractionals or service providers (i.e. ask your Fractional CFO if they know any Fractional CRO’s) - we tend to know each other 🙂 

If you come up short there, here are some additional resources:

• For all GTM roles -

  • Pavilion - They have a sub-community with 1100+ fractional GTM folks. Neil Weitzman is the chair.

  • Catalant

• For marketers - MarketerHire - Bonus: mention my name/Amplify and get $1,500 off your first invoice.

• For RevOps - RevOps Co-op

How to evaluate us

Here are some questions I’d ask and some guidance on the answers (or red flags) I’d be looking for -

Q: How many clients do you work with at once?

If they are a solopreneur, I’d expect this answer to be 3-5. This is going to fluctuate slightly depending on how embedded they are with their clients (in general).

For example, if they are more advisory in nature (maybe 5-10 hrs/week/client) and less execution oriented, they may be able to handle 4-5.

However if they are more embedded with their clients, acting as a true extension of their client’s executive team (aka advisory, strategy, and tactical execution support), they are generally committing 0.25-0.5 of their total billable time to each client, so they won’t be able to support more than 2-3 at a time.

⚠️ Most of us cannot exceed 3-5 clients at a time and still deliver quality work. So if they say something higher than that, I’d be concerned that they are spreading themselves too thin and the quality of work product, or their general availability, will not meet your expectations or needs.

Q: What profile of clients do you typically work with?

The ideal answer should be a very clear and specific ICP that matches your company'‘s description. I’d look for consistency in -

• GTM motion (B2B or B2C)

• Maturity or stage of business (Pre-Revenue vs Seed vs Growth stage)

• Type of business (services or software)

⚠️ For example, if they say they work with B2B and* B2C…I’d be a little concerned. B2B and B2C require very different GTM motions, tactics, technology, etc.

Maturity experience matters a lot. If you are a seed stage company and they’ve primarily consulted Series B and later, they may not know how to meet you where you are in terms of realistic tactics for your budget and team size.

Type of business matters a lot, too. GTM for professional services is very different than software. For a whole host of reasons. I’d look for a professional who specializes in your world.

Industry may or may not be super important to your business, but I’d encourage you to consider this. If you are a fintech that sells to capital markets, it might be pretty important for the person to already have some familiarity with capital markets. For other products, industry might be less important (aka more mainstream or easier for the average person to learn).

Q: What does your process look like?

The ideal answer should outline their methodology for evaluating or reviewing your situation as step #1 in the engagement.

As I always say, “Just like I hope a doctor wouldn’t give you a prescription without an exam, I cannot prescribe GTM recommendations without first understanding your business, revenue goals, budget, etc.”

For me personally, I start all of my client engagements with a GTM Audit.

After I complete my audit, I present my customers with an executive summary outlining my observations and recommendations, prioritized according to impact, effort, and risk. After we align on priorities, then we start tactically executing the items identified.

⚠️ Every fractional may use their own terminology, scope, etc - but there should be some kind of methodical audit or assessment process BEFORE anyone starts giving you blanket recommendations or starts to implement changes.

Q: Help me understand what it will look like working together week to week, or month to month?

They should be able to describe how they interact with their existing clients. For example -

• Standing weekly calls? If so, who makes the agenda?

• Asynchronous support? If so, through email only? Slack? Teams?

• Reporting? How often, what does this look like?

• Systems? Do they expect you to use their systems or are they open to using your systems (ie. Asana vs JIRA vs Trello, etc)?

• Do they typically get a company email (an email for your company)?

• SLA? When can you expect deliverables? How fast can you expect responses?

• Internal only or external facing? Will they only face off with your team or will they also interact with your prospects and customers directly?

There aren’t necessarily right or wrong answers to the questions above, but it’s important to make sure their answers work for you. That their style will be a fit for your working style. AND that you are both clear on what to expect from one another.

Q: What GTM technology do you generally prefer or have the most experience with?

Again there are not really right or wrong answers here…but if you are heavily invested in Salesforce already and they don’t have a lot of Salesforce experience, there might be a longer time to value while they get up to speed.

I personally fall into this category and only take on clients who use Salesforce IF I am very clear about what I’ll be able to do and not do. I have much more familiarity and proficiency with HubSpot.

I can advise on business requirements for Salesforce CRM setup (sales stages, reporting needs, etc), but I am not an experienced Salesforce admin and cannot handle the tactical setup the same way I can with HubSpot. So I’ll only take on a client using Salesforce IF they have another resource who I can lean on for system admin.

This will be unique to your business and the person, but it’s an important factor to manage your expectations and perhaps your budget.

Q: Help me understand what you will do tactically in your role as our fractional executive. What will you advise on vs what will you personally own from an execution standpoint?

‼️ This is one of the most important questions to manage your expectations AND budget.

Let me break down what I mean here with an example…

Some Fractional CMOs will only handle strategy. For example, they will assess and recommend that you -

• Redo your brand or website

• Invest in SEO as a strategy

• Invest in paid ads

But then, they’ll expect you to hire another resource (or resources) to DO the work.

Perhaps they will project manage these things, but they won’t actually write any blogs, or tactically launch and manage the paid ads.

Or maybe they will do the copywriting but not the design.

Again, no answer is necessarily ‘bad’…but their answer may mean you’ll need to budget for the cost of the Fractional CMO AND….a brand agency, a website designer, a copywriter, etc, etc.

And you need to determine if you have the budget for all of it or not. If not, hiring the fractional alone may not move the needle for your business very much.

So just get very clear on what they will -

1. Advise on

2. Project manage

3. Personally ‘do’ (or not do)

Q: How does your pricing structure work? How much do your services cost?

Most* fractional executives I know will not work for an hourly rate or on an hourly billing model. Most work on a fixed monthly retainer.

They are setting aside a % of their weekly or monthly capacity for your business, and therefore you pre-pay for that dedicated allocation of their time.

The more junior roles you hire for (ie. SFDC admin, copywriter, etc), generally will support hourly billing. But the more senior you hire, the more likely it’s a fixed fee model without hourly reporting.

I provided some additional color on the average rates to expect in this article.

Q: How do you typically track and measure success? When (how fast) can we expect to see results?

Every GTM hire you make, fractional or full-time, should have a positive impact to your revenue or growth. Full stop. That’s the whole purpose and objective.

However, the speed and magnitude of impact varies based on -

• Your maturity

• The tactics and strategy

• Your product maturity or scalability

  ….etc

Here you’re just looking for a logical and well thought out answer.

For example, my answer would be something like…

“Our timeline will look something like this…

1. GTM audit/assessment - 2-4 weeks for us to get aligned on current state, future state goals, and a plan to achieve our goals

2. Build phase - almost always, we’re going to identify a few items from the audit that need to be addressed BEFORE we’ll be setup to scale growth (ie. we need to clean up your CRM, fix your positioning and website, etc). Expect 3-4 months of ‘build and fix’ time.

3. Growth phase - After we get through those phases, we’ll be well positioned to scale your growth and go-to-market successfully. We’ll have the infrastructure, tools, and reporting necessary to execute and measure our progress. Expect 3-4 months minimum here for tactical execution, measurement, iteration, and refinement.

Most of my clients feel a difference in the clarity, organization, and efficiency of their GTM within 30-60 days. But we won’t see a meaningful impact on your pipeline for 4-6 months at least due to the audit and build phases required for scalable growth.

Here is how we’ll know it’s working…these are some of the leading indicators or KPIs we’ll be measuring to know we’re on the right track…

On average, clients who work with me for 6 months or longer see a 150% or better increase in YoY revenue. Most of my clients work with me for 9-18 months.”

If they don’t have a logical, time based answer like that, or cannot articulate leading indicators of success…I’d be concerned.

But it’s understandable that no one, literally no one, can walk into your business, wave a magic wand, and increase your revenue by X% in a day, week, or even a month.

Sadly, there is no easy button. It just doesn’t work that way. But knowing generally what to expect, how long it will take etc, helps you manage your expectations and budget accordingly.

Q: Can I speak with some of your current or former clients who are similar to me/my business?

This one might be obvious…but definitely conduct reference checks/calls. Ideally with founders or companies who are similar to you or who have worked with the person to solve for similar challenges.

Hope this helps you find and interview fractional talent with more confidence and success! 💪 

Questions? Shoot them over.

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With love and gratitude,