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This week’s newsletter is brought to you by Pocus – turn your data into revenue. 

Covered today:

• What it actually means to be a fractional CxO.

• How to get fractional clients.

• Customer-centricity and an 18 month exit.

• LinkedIn’s new short-form video feed being tested.

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It need not be said as it is well known, but there is incredible talent on the market right now.

We even recently hired a VP of Talent at GTMfund to support the network of incredible go-to-market executives looking for their next company to help grow.

With this influx of available talent, fractional work now feels like all the rage. Looking at titles on LinkedIn, sometimes it seems like everyone is a Fractional Leader, considering becoming one or hiring one. Every other post on LinkedIn is about someone starting their fractional business and becoming a Fractional CMO, CRO or CTO.

Yet, ourselves and our network constantly receive questions around how to actually break into the fractional arena.

To help detail the process of becoming a fractional professional and landing fractional work, I teamed up with expert Neil Weitzman, Fractional CRO and Founder of revenue•x and Co-Founder and Executive Coach of #befractional. Below, Neil breaks down what it means to be a fractional executive and how to acquire clients.

If you’ve been curious about starting fractional work or landing more fractional opportunities – this is for you.

Let’s get into it.

How to Become a Fractional Professional and Land Fractional Work

A breakdown of fractional work by Neil

What does it actually mean to be a Fractional CxO?

It’s important to align on what Fractional CxOs really are. This can be understood through the visual below, which shows the difference between different roles that are often confused with being a Fractional Leader. There are blurred lines and people are free to call themselves what they like, but this serves as a helpful guideline.

Factors to consider before you go fractional

Well, it is not all chocolate and rainbows. As is the reality of most things, it’s way harder than it looks (most businesses are).

Like any business there are ups and downs, but these downs might be a little bit more stressful. A few examples:

• You are not one of many employees. For this, it’s all on you. If you can’t make it work, if you don’t get clients the whole company fails and you don’t pay your bills.

• You are the product. It is very different to sell a piece of technology vs to sell yourself.

• Sales as skill – not all Fractional CxOs have sales skills and if this isn’t your forte or you don’t enjoy it, being fractional is 10x harder.

That said, there are also incredible benefits to being fractional and the goodness can far outweigh the ‘watch-outs’. A few examples:

• Continuous learning through a variety of interesting clients.

• New and wonderful relationships.

• The choice of who to work with. 

• Control of your own schedule.

• Control of your own destiny.

• Fair compensation.

• Potential advantages of compensation through your corporation vs personally and other tax advantages.

Welcome to fractional life: After weighing the pros and cons you decided to take the leap

Regardless of motivation for going fractional, the next step is learning to build and grow your business. Here are factors to deeply consider around launching your business.

Most importantly: Don’t take shortcuts. To build thoughtfully:

• Be clear and honest about your own superpowers. 

• Nail your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and Buyer Personas.

• Build your strategy for branding and marketing yourself.

• Determine your sales strategy and remember that this now entails selling yourself. 

How to get clients

The first decision point is whether you should do this yourself or sign up for some help. If you are confident in your ability to generate your own business, it is strongly recommended that you go your own way on this. If not, you may need some assistance. There are many firms out there that you can partner with. These companies that are happy to do some of the back office work for you and pass you leads for a percentage of revenue or an upfront membership fee. 

If you decide to go hard on business development and pipeline generation yourself, here is where to start:

#1 – start with warmth 

So many people start cold emailing people because it’s easy. What is far more effective, however, is leveraging your network to generate warm introductions and referrals. A few examples of how to do so:

• Think of past clients and people you have worked with and directly reach out to let them know what you are now doing.

• Let the world know about your new journey with a well crafted LinkedIn post.

• Use tools like Bronto (from Commsor) to take advantage of your go-to-network.

#2 – consistency and process

Growth through network will decline at some point and you will need a process in place for when it does. It’s important to build a process that you are comfortable with and works for you because not enjoying it will become a pain point. Think of your ICOP and buyer persona and determine the right combination of:

• Cold emailing and calling. 

• LinkedOn or other social platform posting and messaging.

• VCs/Investors.

#3 – delight your early (and all) customers

Once you have a few clients, be sure to nail the engagement. You will need those as customer references and hopefully referrals. This is one of the best sources of future pipeline if done right. You can even think about building this into your contracts up front. This is a crucial step. It is better to take less clients than to scale too quickly and risk compromising quality of the engagement.

Help and support goes a long way, especially if you are new to fractional work. Learning from people who have been there, done that through communities, courses, and online resources is great way to get support in starting or scaling your fractional work.

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More for your eardrums:

Subscribe to The GTM Podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

The latest episode features James Kaikis who currently serves as the Head of Go-To-Market and Chief Solutions Officer at TestBox, an innovative company revolutionizing the way buyers interact with product demos. Before his tenure at TestBox, James co-founded the PreSales Collective with Yuji Higashi. Under their leadership, the community became a pivotal resource in the presales domain until its successful acquisition in November 2021. James also has a rich history in solution-oriented leadership roles at prominent companies including Salesforce and Showpad.

You’ll learn about operationalizing customer centricity, lessons learned from a successful startup exit in just 18 months, the role demos play in strategic go-to-market, and more. Listen wherever you get your podcasts by searching “The GTM Podcast.”

More for your eyeballs:

LinkedIn is testing a new TikTok-like short-form video feed. The new addition is similar to the vertical short-form video feeds you see in other apps, but while those feeds include a variety of content ranging from comedy to cooking videos, LinkedIn’s feed is obviously focused on careers and professionalism. While you have always been able to post videos on LinkedIn, the new dedicated feed is  designed to boost engagement and discovery on the platform by presenting bite-sized videos that people can quickly scroll through. We’ll see if it’s here to stay!

Common Room launched a Signal Partner Program, which highlights the breadth of signals companies surface that can be pulled into one place. We found this interesting because while there is great data at our disposal, the siloes between systems often prevent the holistic visibility of the modern customer journey.

 Start-ups to watch: 

CloseFactor – CloseFactor launched free Account Plans to help you engage buyers more effectively. Account Plans use AI to automate research and deliver insights like company initiatives, financial performance, and recent news instantly to sales reps. Read more about

AudiencePlus – hosted their first conference, Goldenhour. The event brought together executives, practitioners, and industry outsiders who are influencing the new marketing playbook. The event production was impressive and the amount of content produced at the event itself might be a new record for a B2B conference. Content from the conference will be available on the AudiencePlus website.

Hottest GTM jobs of the week:

1. Enterprise Account Executive at Atlan (Remote – US)

2. Director of Growth Marketing at Census (San Francisco)

3. Renewal Specialist at Cube (NYC)

4. Customer Success Manager at Closinglock (Austin, TX)

5. Senior Product Marketing Manager at Mutiny (Remote – US/CAN)

See more top GTM jobs on the GTMfund Job Board.

GTM industry events

Upcoming go-to-market events you won’t want to miss:

• May 15-16: ELG Conference (Austin, TX)

That’s it, that’s all. 

Many of the executive operator lending partners who make up the GTMfund community engage in fractional work.

We hear from them often that it can be a challenging path to navigate, so I hope that this serves as a helpful guide for doing so.

If you have any questions feel free to drop a comment or email.

Have a great weekend!

Barker

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