Find out what model of scaling expertise is best-suited to your needs and growth challenges: scale coaching or interim & fractional leadership.
Scale-ups don’t need to hire full-time commercial leaders. Whether you want to train up the existing sales team or create a new marketing strategy, scale coaching and interim & fractional leadership can achieve the same results for a fraction of the cost and the hassle.
But how do you know if you need a scale coach or a fractional leader?
Scale Coaching
Think of it like selling a film. The Series A investment is like a start-up loan, which enables the founder to develop the initial film idea and attract the producers (the VCs). The VCs come on board and finance the film with additional capital – allowing you to hire your dream cast and expand to incredible set locations etc – with the hope of selling the film to studios/distributors (Series B investors) for a profit. All the while, the filmmaker/director (the founder) must wisely use the budget and information on what specific studios want in order to create a compelling film.
How it works
- Become a ScaleWise member – Access over 100 world-class Scale Coaches with flexible, one-off or subscription packages starting from £295 per session.
- Choose your coach – Browse the range of scale coaches by role (i.e. CMO, CRO), expertise (i.e. customer success, sales), location (i.e. UK, US) or experience (i.e. industry, funding stage) and choose the Scale Coach best suited to your needs.
- Shift your focus – Extend the coaching sessions to others in the team, work with multiple coaches at the same time or move to new Scale Coaches to align with your strategic need (i.e. marketing after sales).
Benefits
- Impactful expertise – A Scale Coach is a commercial leader with the exact skills and experience that you need at the time, be it sales leadership one quarter and marketing coaching the next.
- External advice – A Scale Coach is an external sounding board for advice, enabling you to learn from a leader that’s been through the same situation, avoid scaling pitfalls and take advantage of growth opportunities.
- Versatile sessions – A Scale Coach can focus on the problems at hand, using each session to address what is happening that week or month.
Check out how scale coaching helped The Scale Factory improve its sales and marketing effectiveness here.
Interim & fractional leadership
Interim & fractional leaders are experienced commercial experts that work on a short-term basis, but sit on the management team as if they’re employed. Working either full-time for a set period of time (interim) or part-time on a rolling basis (fractional), an interim or fractional leader is a hands-on doer that can carry out all the same tasks as a full-time commercial leader. Interim leaders work exclusively for your company during the engagement, while fractional leaders will have other clients, but both models are paid on a monthly or bi-weekly basis according to an agreed day rate, typically ranging from £900-1500 ($1,100-$1,900) per day.
How it works
- Define your need – Work out the key commercial challenges that your company faces, refine this need into achievable targets and design a detailed brief (ScaleWise will hold a brief writing session to help with this).
- Match with the right leader – Find a leader with the right skills and experience for the job at hand, considering working preferences and cultural chemistry (ScaleWise will filter applicants from our onboarded leaders and unrivalled networks to create a shortlist of suitable candidates for you to interview).
- Agree outcomes – Create a set of achievable objectives, timelines and KPIs with the selected interim or fractional leader and then support them during the engagement (ScaleWise will provide market benchmarking data for all roles and provide rationale for choosing the leader and objectives).
Benefits
- Only pay for what you need – Interim & fractional leaders give you more bang for your buck as scale-ups only pay for the time they require and can therefore afford exceptional talent that might have been too expensive full-time.
- Impact in weeks not months – Interim & fractional leaders are typically placed within 3-4 weeks, matched to your needs, focused on pre-agreed tasks, suffer none of the distractions of a full-time role and are used to having an impact in a short space of time.
- Try before you buy – Interim & fractional leaders are parachuted in quickly, putting out fires immediately and taking the reins of a department while you look for a hire full-time. You can also leverage their experience to help with the search.
Find out how an interim CRO trained-up the existing sales team, recruited news sales reps and remapped sales territories at Re-Leased here.
Scale expertise on demand
Whether through scale coaching or interim & fractional leadership, scale-ups can now access top-level commercial expertise on demand, helping you navigate through choppy waters and make the most of clear conditions.
Get in touch with ScaleWise to find out which model is best-suited to your needs.
