Most manufacturers ask the wrong question. They ask whether a fractional commercial director is cheaper than a full time hire. Cheaper is the least interesting part. The real question is whether your business has the right problem for one.
I will tell you plainly when it works and when it does not. I would rather lose a conversation than take a retainer I cannot earn.
You have a good product and a thin international pipeline. Engineering is strong. Quality is strong. But nobody owns the commercial picture across markets, so deals drift between the MD, a salesperson and a distributor who answers email on Thursdays.
That is the gap a fractional commercial director fills. One senior person owns the pipeline, the CRM, the bids and the board reporting. Every week something moves, or we find out why it did not.
It also fits when you are entering a new region and need relationships you cannot build in a year. Thirty years across fifteen industries means I am not starting from zero on the introductions. A full time hire who joins in month one is starting from zero, and the ramp is long.
A distributor, a CRM and a hopeful MD is not a commercial function. It is three people hoping the fourth does the work.
First, you have a sales target but no one accountable for the route to it. Second, you are already in a handful of markets and the results are uneven, with no clear reason why. Third, you are about to commit real money to a new region and want it run by someone who has done it before, not learned on your budget.
This is the part most consultants skip. Here is mine.
If your product is not ready, wait. If the specification changes every month, or you cannot yet quote a firm lead time, a commercial director will spend the retainer chasing a moving target. Fix the product and the delivery promise first.
If you want a volume cold caller, do not hire me. A fractional director owns pipeline and relationships on six and seven figure deals. If what you need is two hundred outbound touches a week, hire a business development rep and give them a good script.
If the MD will not hand over decisions, it will not work. Full pipeline ownership means pricing calls, bid or no bid calls and distributor calls get made. If every one goes back to the founder for a second opinion, you have paid for a senior person and used them as an admin.
If nothing sits behind the work, be honest about it. I can run the commercial side. I cannot conjure tender bonds, a technical team or a delivery schedule that is not there.
If you want results in a quarter, look elsewhere. Industrial sales cycles are long. Forrester's State of Business Buying found that 86% of B2B purchases stall during the buying process. A good director shortens them. Nobody erases them.
A direct hire gives you someone who is yours every day. That has real value, particularly once the pipeline is big enough to keep a full time person busy and there is a team for them to lead. At that point a full time director is probably right, and a good fractional engagement should be building towards that decision, not avoiding it.
The fractional route wins early. Before you know which markets pay back. Before you can justify a full package and a long search. It wins on speed to a working pipeline, and it wins on the cost of being wrong. A retainer ends with notice. A bad hire costs you the search, the package and the months it takes to admit it. The full comparison is in fractional vs full time, and if the real choice is a regional hire, I have compared those two separately.
I have done the in house version too. At Brannan I joined as UK Sales Manager and ended up Global Business Development Director. The merchants were bringing in decent business, but we did not understand what they did at the back end with their customers, so I went and found out how they specified our products on projects. That is where the wins started: owning the route from product to specification to site. That ownership is the job. Whether it sits in a full time seat or a fractional one depends on where your business is today.
Write down the three deals that matter most this year. Next to each, write the name of the person who owns getting it closed. If any name is "me", "the distributor" or "we", you have a gap.
Then write down what you would do with a senior commercial lead in week one. If you can fill a page, you are ready. If you cannot, the first job is clarity, not a retainer.
That is exactly what Ground Truth is for. It is a paid go or no go call, direct with me, with a $250 refundable deposit. It is credited in full against Commercial Launchpad or the Fractional retainer if you proceed, and refunded if I decide it is not the right fit. Book it here. Or take a 20 minute call and we will work out which of these you actually need.
Sources: Forrester: The State Of Business Buying, 2024, Forrester, 4 December 2024. Checked 9 November 2026.
Ground Truth is a paid call that gives you an honest go or no-go on your market, direct with Scott. The $250 deposit is credited if you go ahead, and refunded if we are not the right fit.