Fractional Head of Sales: what the role is and when you need one

By Kerry Sullivan, fractional Head of Sales · Updated October 12, 2026

A fractional Head of Sales is an experienced sales leader who works inside your company part time, usually one to three days a week, and owns the job of turning sales into a system your team can run. This guide explains what that looks like in practice, who it fits, and how to tell whether you need one now or later.

What a fractional Head of Sales actually does

The title sounds like an executive role, and it is, but at an early stage company the work is very hands on. A good fractional Head of Sales spends most of their time on four things.

Writing down how you sell. Most founder led companies have a sales process that lives in one person’s head. The first job is to get it on paper: who you sell to, what problem they are trying to solve, how a first call runs, what the common objections are and how you answer them, and what has to be true before a deal moves forward.
Making the pipeline honest. That means clear deal stages with entry criteria, a CRM that reflects reality, and a weekly review where every open deal has a next step and a date. A fractional leader helps you optimize your CRM so the pipeline shows what is really happening.
Hiring and ramping reps. Writing the job description, building a scorecard, running a structured interview, and giving the new rep a ramp plan with weekly milestones instead of a login and a pat on the back.
Coaching every week. Call reviews, deal coaching and role play. This is where most of the improvement comes from, and it is the part that usually disappears when a founder is too busy.

The common thread is that the fractional leader is building something that keeps working after they leave or step back. If everything they touch still depends on them, the engagement has missed the point.

Fractional Head of Sales vs. consultant vs. full time VP

These three options get mixed up, so it helps to separate them by who does the work and who owns the outcome.

	Sales consultant	Fractional Head of Sales	Full time VP of Sales
Typical output	Recommendations, a deck, a workshop	Playbook, pipeline rules, hiring, weekly coaching	Everything, plus managing a larger team and the forecast
Time in the business	A few sessions	Part time, every week	Full time
Commitment	Project	Month to month or a fixed program	Salary, equity, benefits, long hiring process
Best stage	A specific narrow problem	Founder still selling, 0 to 10 reps	A proven motion that needs to scale

A full time VP of Sales is built to scale a motion that already works. Hiring one before the motion is written down is a classic and expensive mistake, because they spend their first months reverse engineering what the founder does. A fractional leader is a better fit for the stage before that, and when you are ready for a full time leader later, they inherit a system instead of a blank page.

Signs you are ready for one

You, the founder, are still on most sales calls, and that is now the bottleneck on growth.
You have paying customers and some idea of why they buy, but no written process.
You hired a rep and it is not working, and you cannot tell whether it is the person, the process or the coaching.
You are about to make your first sales hire and want them to ramp instead of guess.
Your CRM is either empty or full of deals nobody believes.

If two or three of those sound familiar, a part time sales leader is usually the fastest way to get unstuck.

Signs you are not ready yet

Being honest about this saves everyone money. If you have not found anyone willing to pay for the product, the problem is product and market, not sales management. A fractional leader can help you run better discovery calls, but nobody can write a repeatable playbook for a motion that has not produced any wins yet. In that case, keep selling yourself, keep notes on every call, and come back when you have a pattern.

What the first 90 days should look like

Here is how I run it in The Founder Handoff, my 90 day program for founders who want to hand off sales.

Weeks 1 to 2: audit. I sit in on calls, review the pipeline and CRM, and interview the founder and any reps. You get a written list of what is slowing deals down.
Weeks 3 to 6: build. We write the playbook, define deal stages, and optimize your CRM so it matches the process. If you need a rep, we write the scorecard and start hiring.
Weeks 7 to 12: hand off. The rep runs deals with the playbook while I coach weekly. The founder steps back from calls on a planned date instead of never.

At the end you should have a sales process on paper, a CRM you trust, and a rep who is ramping, with your own time on sales cut down to a coaching session a week.

What it costs

Pricing depends on days per week and scope. For market ranges with sources, see my guide to fractional VP of Sales cost. My own pricing is public: The Founder Handoff runs about 2 days a week for months 1 to 3 at $7,500 a month, then ongoing fractional leadership at about 1 day a week is $4,500 a month, or Rep Coaching on its own is $1,500 a month.

About me

I’m Kerry Sullivan, a fractional Head of Sales based in Miami Beach and working with founders remotely. I have built sales processes and coached reps at Empower and LeadEvo, and I was Sales Director at SuperAgent AI. Before sales I raced as a professional triathlete, which is where I learned that steady weekly coaching beats heroic effort every time.

Want help handing off sales?

Book a free 30 minute Sales Teardown. You walk me through how you sell today, and I email you the top 3 things slowing your sales down.

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Frequently asked questions

Is a fractional Head of Sales the same as a fractional VP of Sales?

Mostly, yes. The titles are used interchangeably. What matters is the scope: how many days a week, whether they hire and coach reps, and whether they build the process or only advise.

How many hours a week does a fractional Head of Sales work?

Usually one to three days a week. Building the system takes more time up front, then it drops to about a day a week for ongoing coaching and pipeline reviews.

Will a fractional Head of Sales close deals for me?

That is not the goal. The goal is a process and a team that close deals without depending on any one person, including the founder or the fractional leader.

Can a fractional leader help me hire my first rep?

Yes. Hiring and ramping the first rep is one of the most common reasons to bring one in. See the guide to your first sales hire.