What is a GTM Advisor and Fractional CRO?
What makes most sense for growing your business?
What is a _____?
Let’s start out with getting a foundation of what CROs (Chief Revenue Officer) are and what they do. Then I’ll talk about how Fractional CROs and GTM Advisors and how they differ.
What is a CRO or VP of Sales?
At early stage companies, CROs are often (thought not always) synonymous with VP of Sales in that they are both responsible for revenue generation. In reality, CROs are slightly more senior as they include not only the sales team but also Customer Success and the Pre Sales Team.
CROs are responsible for everything related to revenue generation at a company and these are just some of those activities:
Runs weekly forecast calls with the sales team to review pipeline and sales projections.
Develops and manages sales quotas and targets for sales teams and individuals.
Conducts regular one-on-one coaching sessions with sales managers and representatives.
Reviews and optimizes the sales funnel and lead conversion rates.
Oversees the CRM system and ensuring data accuracy and utilization.
Implements sales enablement tools and resources to improve team performance.
Coordinates with marketing to ensure alignment on lead generation and qualification processes.
Analyzes sales metrics and reports to identify trends and areas for improvement.
Leads strategic account planning sessions to identify growth opportunities within key accounts.
Developing and executes territory and account management strategies.
Monitors competitor activities and adjusting sales tactics accordingly.
Drives the adoption of best practices in sales processes and methodologies.
Ensures effective onboarding and training programs for new sales hires.
Manages the sales budget and allocating resources effectively.
Reporting on sales performance to the executive team and providing actionable insights.
What is a Fractional CRO?
A Fractional CRO will do most of these activities but on a part-time basis - typically one or two days per week.
They do most of the things that a CRO/VP of Sales would do except those which are personnel related. They aren’t hiring (or firing) people and they don’t manage people directly.
Overall, they are doing all the other activities like having 1:1 sessions with the AEs or running pipeline calls like a CRO would.
Some Fractional CROs work on a specific day of the week while others might spread one day of work over several different days of the week.
What is a GTM Advisor?
A GTM Advisor can be involved in any of these activities but they are rarely doing the work themselves - instead, they are advising, or coaching.
The CEO or current Head of Sales is talking to them, going through some of the challenges that they have and the GTM Advisor is providing guidance, templates, examples, best practice - whatever that person needs to help them find GTM Fit.
What do GTM Advisors Typically Help With?
Since the structure is a bit different than the other two roles, I’m often asked what GTM advisors work on. Here are some of the things I’ve seen:
Put the KPIs in place to track GTM effectiveness
Use those KPIs to understand what’s working, what’s not working, and where you should focus
Doing a full assessment of how well the team is performing. This is typically done through call reviews
Reviewing GTM assets
Defining and refining ICPs and Key Personas
Improving outbound prospecting motions through better targeting techniques
Identifying key customer pain points that should be a focus of your product, messaging, and sales motions
Creating a GTM roadmap on what you should be focusing on and in what order.
What are the positives and negatives of each one?
CRO / VP of Sales
Positives
It’s pretty simple - if you hire a great one, your company will get much more in return than what it costs. You will achieve and exceed your revenue targets for years to come and the company’s fortunes will grow as well.
Negatives
If you hire a great one, there are no negatives. You will have a great leader who will help your company achieve and exceed your revenue targets
If you hire someone who isn’t the right fit it will probably set you back several years. This could be do to their strengths not aligning to what your company needs or them just not being up to the level of what your company needs.
Fractional CRO
Positives
Much less expensive than a full-time CRO/VP of Sales. If you only have 1 or 2 people on the Sales team, you are adding a lot of oveheard costs to your GTM with someone like this. A Fractional CRO might be 20% of the cost and not get any equity
You get the experience and expertise of a CRO without the costs of what you would pay for a CRO/VP of Sales
You might be able to get a higher performing person than you would be able to get on a full-time basis. Essentially, they become your bridge to the next level when your company can attain a next level CRO
In some cases, you can “try it before you buy it”. Maybe you’re not ready to commit to someone just yet just as they aren’t ready for your company either (too many unknowns) so this allows you see if there is a good match without making a permanent move.
Negatives
You’re still going to be ultimately responsible for Revenue activities that the Fractional CRO doesn’t cover or during times when they aren’t available.
They’re working on a temporary basis. There is usually some minimum contract length but if that engagement ends, you may be back to being with a CRO
Your (eventual) full-time CRO may have very different ideas on how to do things so some of the things that the Fractional CRO puts in place might change later.
They usually don’t have skin in the game like someone who has equity or is based on a commission plan.
GTM Advisor
Positives
They are the lowest cost option. If you get value, the returns will be huge. If you don’t get the value, there’s very little lost - probably 1/2 a month of what a CRO would cost.
You get the experience and expertise of a CRO without the costs of what you would pay for a CRO/VP of Sales
You might be able to get a higher performing person than you would be able to get on a full-time basis. Essentially, they become your bridge to the next level when your company can attain a next level CRO
In some cases, you can “try it before you buy it”. Maybe you’re not ready to commit to someone just yet just as they aren’t ready for your company either (too many unknowns) so this allows you see if there is a good match without making a permanent move.
Negatives
You still need someone to “do the work”. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing since you often have to go through the exercise (like defining your ICP) to really understand the essence of what’s being done.
They’re working on a temporary basis. There is usually some minimum contract length but if that engagement ends, you may be back to being with a CRO
Your (eventual) full-time CRO may have very different ideas on how to do things so some of the things that the Fractional CRO puts in place might change later.
They usually don’t have skin in the game like someone who has equity or is based on a commission plan.
When does each one make sense?
None of these are hard rules but good guidelines. In short, a GTM Advisor or Fractional CRO can help you bridge the time period from when you were doing founder-led sales to when you’re ready to really scale your GTM team.
GTM Advisor
When you’re starting to scale GTM - maybe you’ve hired an AE or are thinking about it. You’ve made some sales yourself but now you need to build and measure processes and hire and manage someone to execute those process.
Revenue/ARR: $500K - $5M
AEs/SDRs: 0 - 4
Fractional CRO
You need a bit more of a hands-on approach. Maybe the team is large enough that it’s taking a higher percentage of your time than you can commit. You also need to start building out more best practices to help the team scale. But ultimately, your still not ready to hire a VP of Sales.
Revenue/ARR: $1M - $5M
AEs/SDRs: 4 - 8
VP of Sales
You’re ready to truly scale up the GTM team and you need a full-time leader. This is the person who can scale you to $20M and hopefully $50M. They will build an organization with first line leaders (as you continue to grow) and put the processes into place for a scaling organization. You’re probably starting to achieve GTM Fit and just need that extra push.
Revenue/ARR: $5M+
AEs/SDRs: 6+
Costs of Each
These are the typical monthly cost of a VP of Sales, Fractional CRO, and GTM advisor.
VP of Sales: $400K - $500K OTE per year
Fractional CRO: $10K - $15K per month
GTM Advisor: $3500 - $5000 per month
Which one do you need?
You can email me jim@scalinggtm.com and I’m happy to give you my thoughts. You can also fill out this GTM assessment which will help us get started on understanding where you’re at and where you need to go.