What to Expect When You Have Fractional Sales Management

Small and medium enterprises may not have enough scale to hire team leaders to manage a large or growing sales force due to a small size or lack of substantial capital. In these extreme cases, outsourcing a fractional sales leader is necessary to offload those responsibilities from the CEO or President to focus on their core duties, and salespeople can report to a more direct senior.

This setup is known as fractional sales management, as they work part-time for your business. Here’s what you should expect when applying this in your company.

They Must Pass on Their Expertise

Though fractional sales managers do not teach the basics, they must impart their experience to the team.

The fractional sales management should identify and coach individual salespeople to hone their skills. This is especially important for fractional sales team managers because the environment is different from the non-fractional sales environment. It's harder to develop relationships and provide coaching in the fractional environment because the salespeople are not always on the floor.

You expect individual training from your fractional sales manager, but you also expect occasional training sessions for the entire team.

They Must Develop Your Sales Process

Outside of people management, your fractional sales leader should also develop and perfect your sales process, which includes the following:

• Admin support of sales.
• Marketing collaterals.
• Sales meeting schedules.
• Customer lifecycle.

They should invest time to document a sales process map and analyze sales performance to identify ways to streamline the process and avoid costly errors. This will help them make informed decisions about improving their sales performance.

Remember: a well-documented process that provides insights is better than trial-and-error testing.

They Must Nurture Individual Team Members Accordingly

Fractional sales management must know how to lead corporately and individually as well. This means knowing each individual to understand their personalities better and enact the proper measures. Some may take direct feedback well, while others prefer a long-winded, explanatory approach.

They must achieve these by doing the following:

• Regular corporate meetings with individual input.
• Regular one-on-one meetings for on-site and personal performance.
• One-on-one coaching (when needed).
• Private correction when needed.
• Public recognition when called for.

They can also accomplish this by employing these evaluation techniques:

• Partnering: In this method, the fractional sales leader goes on the field with the sales agent when prospecting, interacting with, or closing deals with clients. This first-hand experience enables them to accurately assess the agent’s skills and provide additional coaching down the line.

• Assessment Tools: These can range from character or personality tests to determine whether they are a fit for sales or not. Some great examples of this are the Craft Personality Questionnaire or CliftonStrengths.

What’s great about this technique is that, while it may result in a person moving to another department, they are much more likely to align their new work with their innate talents while guiding your sales manager to hire the right individuals for the role.

They Must Interpret Analytics Correctly

Data is today’s oil; information makes it easier for businesses to predict trends in their favor and adjust their tactics accordingly for maximum profit. Your fractional sales leader must critically evaluate performance on behaviors and metrics, pipelines, prospective reports, and performance to determine how the company is doing and can be better.

Accurate analytics interpretation can help you streamline your processes, cut costs, and ensure higher ROI in the next fiscal year.

Manage These Great Expectations

When hiring a fractional sales leader, be forthright with them. Tell them upfront that you need them to handle these responsibilities to focus on your tasks as owner and provide specific assistance to your sales department. Who knows, this new change may just be worth it and could even provide you with a full-time sales lead on your side?

Sales outsourcing is just one of the services we at The Sales Group provide our customers. We’re a professional consultancy firm that helps North American organizations streamline their efforts for better management, sales, and ROI. Talk to us about your concerns on our website. We’ll be happy to help you with fractional sales and more.