Have you ever considered being a fractional sales leader?
Let’s learn what it takes to get into this type of role and why you might like it.
On this episode of Closing Time.
Thanks for tuning in to Closing Time, the show for go-to-market Leaders.
I’m Val Riley, VP of marketing for Unbounce and Insightly.
Today I’m joined by Louie Bernstein.
Fractional sales leader and a top voice on LinkedIn.
Welcome to the show, Louie.. Thanks for having me, Val.
Louie, folks might know you from LinkedIn, but you’re also the author of the viral
I turned 72 today Reddit post.
Tell me what it takes to be qualified as a fractional sales leader.
Experience.
It takes success and failures.
You have to.
You have to have done what you’re being brought onsite to do for someone else.
So it’s not something you could just jump
right into as a younger sales executive or a sales manager.
You have to have experience, in my opinion.
Different environments, different companies, different,
experiences with sales teams and sales people
and have a culmination of experiences that you can bring,
to another company in a fractional condensed role.
Yeah. I find as I.
As I move on.
In my career, over time,. I have kind of like playbooks.
Things that I’ve done that have worked in the past.
Is that the kind of stuff you’re talking about?
Absolutely.
And I’ve written sales playbooks, because they guide sales teams
to success through consistency and repetition
and everyone being, you know, on the same page.
And writing about your experience is key.
As a matter of fact.
I think it was about ten years ago.
I had so much, things built up
inside me of what. I had accomplished and done and mistakes
made, successes had in sales that I wrote a sales training course, and it took me,
I think it was only 100 days to write
a, 589 page book.
And so if you’ve got something inside you, all these experiences
put it out on paper, because it can be really valuable. Wow.
So tell me, as a fractional sales leader.
How long are your typical engagements?
And, like, maybe what’s been the longest and what’s been maybe a quick and dirty
one that you did?
Well, first,. I won’t do anything for less than 12 weeks
because it’s just not enough time to see results.
Everybody says, alright,. I’m going to spend the money.
I want to see some results.
You know, it’s it doesn’t work that way.
So they typically last between six and on the longest, 18 months.
And your roles, it’s funny, you may start out,
in kind of one role or position within the company, and it can change.
And I’ll give you, a quick example.
I hope it’s quick.
But it was really one of the most fun ones that I’ve, I’ve done recently.
I got a call from a company here in Atlanta
that, needed someone to put some processes
together and, you know, kind of get their sales team put together.
And when I went there, it was,
it was in a part of town that you don’t see too many office buildings.
And when I got there, it turned out it was a Chinese company
that sells point of sale systems to, restaurants.
I had never done anything like that.
And 90% of the people there were Chinese,
and their English was pretty good, but some didn’t even speak English at all.
But they wanted me to put the sales team together.
Well, I had a meeting with them and I said, let me think about it.
And I drove home and half way home,. I thought,
you know what I’m always preaching about, get out of your comfort zone.
Do something new.
And I turned back around and said, yeah, let me let’s give this a go.
And I was so glad I did.
I ended up staying there 18 months.
They made me the vice president of sales.
I got put on the leadership team, I met.
I learned a ton about the Chinese culture.
Which is funny, because I was afraid that a lot of, you know, strategies
and ideas that work in American sales, teams might not translate so well.
Pardon the pun, but it just, you know, it might have some issues.
But, what I learned, you know, people are people.
They all have the same goals, desires, fears.
And so it was just a great experience.
It sounds like it.
So, as a fractional sales leader, about how many contracts
do you typically have going on at once?
And where are you sourcing clients?
You know, this is where I well, one of the places
I differ from many fractional sales executives.
I typically only take on one, maybe two, clients at a time.
A lot of fractional sales executives will do 1
or 2 days a week and have multiple clients.
It’s too confusing to me.
And it it dilutes the effort.
If you ask me.
And so I’ll typically take on 1 or 2 clients and work
maybe anywhere from 10 to 25 hours a week.
Per client. Because I feel like
sales teams and
salespeople need constant reinforcement
training coaching on a daily basis so they don’t fall.
You know, they don’t fall behind.
So I differ a little bit from most fractional sales executives on that.
And where are you typically sourcing clients?
I don’t source them. They source me.
All of my business in the last 4 or 5 years have come from inbound,
request leads, from LinkedIn.
Nice. That’s great.
There are some, companies out there
that manage fractional sales leaders, and they manage
actually fractional go to market leaders, including, you know, other disciplines.
But you chose to not work with one of those firms and kind of be independent.
Why was that?
I think it kind of goes back to my personality.
I’ve never,
you know, I ran a business here
in Atlanta for 22 years that I founded and bootstrapped.
I’ve never been great at working for people.
And, so it’s just kind of a natural extension, and they all have.
And it’s great.
You know, they have their own methodology, their own playbook and their own ways
of doing things.
And, typically it’s not exactly what I would do.
And so if I was to go in that mold,. I was I’d be too afraid.
I’d go to the client, go.
Don’t don’t pay attention to this.
Here’s what I think.
And so, you know, I avoided that.
And that just wouldn’t work for me.
And, you know, each to their own
that may work for other people, but it wasn’t for me.
Yeah.
I suppose if you have your own playbooks
and you’re able to generate your own client base,
that wouldn’t be as much value as maybe someone starting out
in fractional, roles and maybe looking to have someone behind them to help.
Yeah, absolutely.
No, I don’t I don’t, put it down at all.
You know, whatever works.
Good way to get experience as a fractional, sales executive.
And there’s companies, good companies that, you know, manage the process
and you can go work for.
And it seems to work with, and they seem to be doing very well.
I think the biggest challenge folks have when they go out on their own
and in general,
but particularly as a fractional leader, is structuring compensation.
I imagine there are a lot of methods out there.
And it seems to be the one thing that people struggle to get right.
Yeah.
I think, and you’re right, there are there are different ways
to be compensated.
I mean, it runs the gamut from people say,
well, just charge a fee for, you know, and that’s the end of it.
Some people say we want to pay you on a results, which I think is not good.
Some people charge monthly, weekly.
I’m kind of in the minority here, but I still charge by the hour.
I, for two reasons.
I never know how many hours. I’m going to put in
and to tie it to results,. I mean, if you don’t think I can do
what I say I can do, don’t hire me because it’s not it’s not going to work.
You’ve got to you’ve got to let go of the baby.
Hand it over.
Let me babysit for a while and everything will be okay.
And so, So I don’t know how many
hours necessarily I’m going to put in, and.
Human nature.
I can’t guarantee results.
You know, you just you just can’t guarantee how it’s going to go.
You do your best.
You put a plan together.
You see what worked, what didn’t work.
And you put a plan and you just move forward.
So far, so good, though. Sounds like it.
Do you recommend specializing
in a certain vertical or business size as a fractional sales leader?
Are there certain criteria that you look for with the businesses
that you work with?. I guess my guess is that this question.
Yeah.
Well, actually, to the first part of your question,
I think business size is probably more important than vertical.
So, I’ve always been involved in small business.
I mean, I, the beginning of my career.
I worked for a large company of 50,000 people, and that didn’t go well.
And so, you know,. I always worked with small companies.
And so that’s my comfort zone.
No more than 100 people in the company.
And, and verticals doesn’t matter quite as much.
I’ve worked for manufacturing companies, work obviously for technology companies.
I’ve been in technology my entire career.
I started as a as a PL/1 COBOL programmer many years ago.
And so, I’m comfortable with technology.
I love technology, but,
you know, I’ve worked for companies that manufacture mailboxes
and all sorts of things.
But I think finding your comfort zone more in the size of the company,
where you could do the most good.
To the other part of your question, the criteria
that I use when I accept an engagement from a client,
it’s typically 3 or 4 things one.
I want to make sure I can help
if if it’s a situation after we have our initial discussion,
I don’t think I can help or I’m not a good fit.
I won’t accept it.
I also want to make sure that, they’ll listen,
you know, a lot of founders I meet who, you know, there’s they’re still
in the middle of the sales department, and they they don’t want to let go.
These are what we call founder led sales departments.
And so, I need to get a good feeling that they’ll let go a little bit
and listen and let me implement some of the things that I might suggest.
And the last thing is,
I like to take assignments that I find interesting and challenging.
You know,. I don’t know how much longer to do this.
And so I want to do some things
that are fun and interesting where I can make a difference.
And, and some salespeople in companies lives and, and,
and so those are the things that I look for where I could be the most effective
and be the most happy.
I think some people might use fractional sales
leadership as a way to maybe sample a few companies
before looking to get into maybe a full time role.
Is that a strategy that you have employed, or are you strictly
just wanting to be a fractional leader who comes in and then exits?
You’re right in that it’s a strategy that’s going around.
I mean, since since the beginning, you know,
companies will hire their consultants away from the consulting firm.
Yeah. Right.
And then that works.
I once again, that’s not.
That’s not me.
I’m not doing it to see who I want to go work for.
It may work out.
You know, some people say, oh, gosh, you know,
I could just stay here, and this, this will be great.
And I’ll do that later,
and they’ll get more experience, and that’s great, you know?
So, I don’t say don’t do it,
but, it’s not at this point, not for me.
Well, I guess the big question is, at the end of our discussion
here, would you recommend fractional sales leadership to others?
I’ve had a great experience with it.
I can tell you that the one couple
of great things about it is you meet so many different people,
and you learn so much from the different environments
and the different people that you meet.
So if you really want to expand your horizons,
you know, if you’re early in your career, get your experience, get your successes,
you know, fail.
We all fail.
You know, get some failure in there.
Learn from it.
That failure is no good unless you learn from it.
And so get that under your belt and then, yeah, give it a try.
You know, if that’s something that
excites you, but I can tell you,
once you get into the field, you’ll meet a ton of people.
There’s lots of people there to help you, and there’s lots of people who need help.
So you can have a big impact on a small company
or a large company, if you prefer working with large ones.
So, yeah, given the right time and set of circumstances.
I strongly recommend it. Great.
So, Louie, you publish, the Sunday starter each week.
Can you tell folks what that is and where they can find it?
Yeah.
I started that back in April of ‘22,
and every Sunday I put it out.
It’s a LinkedIn newsletter.
It’s a has video and text.
And actually last week I think I put out my 135th consecutive Sunday starter.
And what it is when you’re in business, sales or any particular role in business.
It takes
more than just your skill at the job you’re working on.
It takes resilience, grit, a good attitude, determination,
persistence, all the things that keep in physical condition.
You know, you got to be in good shape to grind it out every day.
And so, that’s what I write about.
I write about my experiences and, you know, places
where I have been on the edge.
You know, it’s not been a, you know, a smooth sail all the way through.
But I try to impart what what what happened,
what I learned from it, what you can take away from it.
So you can be resilient and kind of be your best self at business.
And it’s really one of the most fun things
that I do is write that weekly and video that, Sunday starter.
All right, so everybody out there should catch the Sunday
starter every week on Louie’s linked in.
Louie.
Thank you so much for joining us today on Closing Time.
Val, I really enjoyed it.. Thanks for having me.
Thanks to all of you for tuning in as well.
If you’d like to stay up on all episodes of Closing Time,
subscribe to our newsletter.
Just click the link in the show
notes below and you can get Closing Time delivered to your inbox.
Thanks so much for joining us. We’ll see you next week.
