Fractional CMO and CSO: a complete guide for B2B companies

Marketing sits on one marketer, capable but buried in execution. Sales is done by the owner alone or by salespeople without proper leadership. Agencies change every year, leads are expensive and the sales team does not know what to do with them.

This situation is common in Czech B2B companies.

Between "I have a small marketing team" and "I have a full-time CMO" there is a big hole. And the fractional model fits precisely into that gap, external strategic leadership for a few days a week, a flat fee, a handover plan. In the Czech market it is being talked about more. In the wider world it has worked for years.

This article is a complete guide. We explain what a fractional CMO and CSO means, what these people do (and do not do), when to hire them and how they differ from an interim manager, an agency or a consultant. We write it from the position of people who do the fractional model every day, Honza Nuc leads the marketing side, Richard Vodolan the sales one.

What "fractional" means in practice

The word fractional literally means "a fraction", you buy a fraction of a senior manager, not the whole one. In practice it looks like this:

A fractional manager works for your company an agreed number of hours a week. Not an employee, an external partner. They invoice a monthly flat fee, do not come into the office in the morning, but are available, on Slack, on calls, in meetings, in strategic decisions.

In parallel they usually work for 2 to 4 clients. Not for fifteen, not for one. It is deliberate, it gives them enough room to go deep, while carrying experience across companies from which they bring what works.

The engagement typically lasts 3 to 6 months with a clear plan of what should happen in that time. Then it either ends with a handover to an internal successor, or moves into a longer-term form, fewer days a week, but a continuing strategic partnership.

A fractional manager comes to build or kick-start something. They are not a consultant who delivers a nice guide and an audit and leaves. They are not a contractor who clocks hours. They are not an advisor who advises but is accountable for nothing. A fractional manager is accountable for making what they propose actually happen. They sit in the company’s leadership, lead the team, coordinate agencies, report results.

This role does not yet have an extensive vocabulary in the Czech market. In English the same thing is called a fractional executive, fractional leader, part-time CMO/CSO. In the Czech market you most often meet the terms fractional CMO, fractional CSO, external marketing director, external sales director or a marketing director on a reduced schedule. In this article we stick with "fractional", because it is an internationally clear and precise term.

Fractional CMO: what they do and what they do not

CMO stands for Chief Marketing Officer, the marketing director. A fractional CMO is therefore senior marketing leadership that the company gets for a few days a week.

What a fractional CMO does in the company:

• Sets the marketing strategy, who your ideal customer is, how to reach them, through which channels, with what offer and in what order.
• Leads the internal marketing team, if there is one. Mentors juniors, develops people, gives direction. When there is no team, helps assemble one.
• Manages agencies and external suppliers. Watches the brief, the quality of outputs, the return on investment.
• Measures marketing and connects it with sales. Sets KPIs, reporting, an attribution model. So it is clear what marketing brought in and what it did not.
• Sits on calls with the CEO as a strategic partner for the business. Not as a supplier coming with an offer. As someone who thinks about the whole business.

What a fractional CMO does not do, and this matters so you are clear on what to expect from the role:

• Does not execute campaigns with their own hands. Does not write blogs, does not do graphics, does not set up Google Ads, does not send newsletters. That is the work of specialists and agencies. A fractional CMO leads them, does not do it instead of them.
• Does not sit in the office every day. Not an employee, no access card and keys in hand. They are where decisions are made, in leadership meetings, on calls with the team, in strategic meetings with key clients.
• Does not guarantee specific revenue. Guarantees a fair analysis, a concrete strategy and oversight of delivery. The rest depends on whether the company follows the plan and has someone to execute it.

From this comes one important consequence: a fractional CMO does not make sense in a company where there is nobody to lead. If you do not have at least a junior marketer doing marketing, or an external agency, a fractional CMO will be like a captain without a crew. There will be a strategy, but nobody to carry it out.

Fractional CSO: what they do and what they do not

CSO stands for Chief Sales Officer, the sales director. A fractional CSO is therefore senior sales leadership that the company gets for a few days a week.

In the Czech market "fractional CSO" is a less familiar term than "fractional CMO". Most Czech companies picture external sales as an agency for cold outreach or lead generation. That is not a fractional CSO. Lead generation is execution. A fractional CSO is leadership.

What a fractional CSO does in the company:

• Sets the sales strategy, the go-to-market plan, the definition of what and to whom you sell, at what price, through which routes.
• Builds the sales process, from qualifying a lead through the offer to closing and handover to customer success. In the CRM, not in the founder’s head.
• Leads the sales team. Mentors salespeople, sits on selected calls with clients, coaches them in negotiation, reviews the pipeline.
• Aligns sales with marketing, shared KPIs, a shared funnel, one report.
• Sits on calls with the CEO just like the CMO, as a strategic partner, not a supplier.

What a fractional CSO does not do:

• Does not call leads. Not a salesperson on the phone. If you need someone to call every day and book meetings, you are looking for a salesperson or an SDR.
• Does not close deals for you. Helps close the big and strategic ones, but the daily selling is the sales team’s job.
• Does not sit in the CRM instead of the salespeople. Reports, coaches, but does not write records for the sellers.

Just like with the CMO: a fractional CSO makes sense when you have someone to lead. If you have a sales team of 2 to 8 people that works but lacks strategy, process and leadership, a fractional CSO is exactly that model. If you have only yourself as the founder and want to stop handling everything alone, a fractional CSO will help you build sales from the ground up.

Why in B2B it makes sense to have both at once

This scene repeats over and over in Czech B2B companies:

Marketing chases leads. Sends them to the CRM. Sales complains the leads are bad. Marketing replies that sales does not know how to work with what it is given. The founder switches between them. At the end of the quarter the pipeline does not add up, nobody knows where it fell apart, and another agency is hired, because this one does not work either.

This problem is not in the people. Marketers and salespeople are typically capable people who want to do their job well. The problem is that each has different KPIs, different reports, a different definition of success and a different boss. Marketing measures MQLs, sales measures closed deals. Marketing wants quantity, sales wants quality. And nobody has a view of the whole funnel from the first website visit to the signed order.

When a company has one shared leadership over both marketing and sales, this problem naturally goes away. There is nobody to argue with whom, there is one team, one strategy, one report, one accountability for growth. Marketing and sales stop being two departments and become one function: how the company acquires customers.

We call that model fractional sales & marketing, a combination of a fractional CMO and a fractional CSO under one roof. It is led by a pair of people (in our case Honza and Richard) who work together, share context and pull in the same direction. For the company it looks like this:

• One initial analysis of both marketing and sales.
• One strategy that covers both functions.
• One monthly report that shows the whole funnel.
• One flat fee for the entire leadership.

Neither in the Czech market nor globally is this a standard format, most fractional managers do either just marketing or just sales. The combo is still rare. But from our experience it makes the most sense in B2B, because the B2B buying journey is long and connected. The customer learns about the company through marketing, moves through content and campaigns, somewhere in between a salesperson enters the picture, it closes in a sales call. If a wall between marketing and sales hangs somewhere in the middle of the funnel, people fall through.

When it is time to hire fractional: two questions everything rests on

This is the most common question we get over lunch: "Are we already the company that needs fractional?"

Most articles about fractional managers frame the answer with revenue or headcount, "from X million ARR" or "from 50 employees up". But in practice it does not work that way. We have met companies of 30 people where the fractional model brought a huge shift. We have equally met companies of 150 people where it did not make sense.

The real answer rests on two questions. If you answer yes to both, fractional makes sense. If no to even one, it does not.

Question one: Do you want to move marketing or sales to a new level?

This is about ambition. A fractional CMO or CSO is not a patch for something that slightly grates. It is senior leadership that moves the company forward, to a level it would not reach on its own. That means somewhere inside there has to be a genuine appetite to change something.

Concrete signals of this ambition from our practice:

• You want to enter a new segment or a new market and you know you cannot manage it with what you have today.
• Marketing has done some variant of the same thing for years and you know it needs a strategic frame, not another tactic.
• Sales sits on you, you can no longer keep up, and you want to get it to a point where sales runs even without you.
• Sales and marketing do not understand each other and you know it is time to do something about it, not just swap people.
• You are preparing the company for the next stage of growth, an acquisition or a sale and you need marketing and sales to look professional.

What, on the other hand, is not the ambition that calls for a fractional manager:

• "We need a few new leads." (That is a job for an agency or a salesperson.)
• "Our website looks old, we need a new one." (That is a project, not strategic leadership.)
• "The boss does not want me to do sales, so let someone else do it." (Without your ambition, no shift will come, whatever the fractional director does.)

If you feel you want to take the company somewhere and know it will not come by itself from middle management, the first condition is met.

Question two: Do you have someone to lead?

This is a hard filter and in practice the most common reason fractional engagements fail in the Czech market. Neither a fractional CMO nor a CSO does execution. They do not write copy, do not do graphics, do not set up ads, do not call leads, do not write proposals. They are leaders, not specialists.

That means the fractional model works only when you have someone to lead. Specifically:

• An internal team, even just one junior marketer, an assistant who does marketing, one or two salespeople.
• An external agency or suppliers, a PPC agency, an SEO specialist, a copywriter on invoice.
• A combination of both, a junior marketer plus an agency, a salesperson plus external lead generation.

If you have at least one of these, the fractional model makes sense. A fractional manager comes in, assesses what you have, builds a strategy and starts leading the people and agencies in the direction they should go.

If you have nothing at all, no team, no agency, no suppliers, a fractional director will have nobody to brief. A strategy will be created, but nobody will carry it out. In this situation you first need to hire someone (a junior marketer or a salesperson) or get an agency, and only then fractional leadership to lead that person or agency.

A fractional CMO with nobody to lead is an expensive voice on Slack. From our experience it costs companies 3 months of disappointment before they admit it.

When both answers fit

If you have the ambition to move marketing or sales forward and someone to lead, the fractional model is for you. In practice these are most often companies somewhere between 20 and 250 people, but that number is only a guide. More important is whether you have:

• A working product or service that has customers.
• At least basic marketing or sales activities running today (even if chaotically).
• People or suppliers who do something today and can be led.
• You, as the CEO or owner, willing to let go of leading marketing or sales and instead judge the results.

If these four things hold, let us meet over lunch and discuss specifically how the engagement could look.

When fractional is not enough

There are situations where the fractional model is too little and the company needs a different path:

• The company already has working leadership of marketing and sales and only wants to replace or reinforce it. If you want someone to come in and lead the existing team daily, you are looking more for a full-time CMO/CSO or an interim manager.
• The company has more than around 250 people and a large team. The complexity requires daily presence. Fractional capacity is not enough for it.
• The company is going through a crisis where survival is at stake. That is a job for a crisis manager, not for a fractional director who builds long-term strategies.

In these cases we will point you elsewhere.

Fractional vs. the other models (full-time, interim, agency, consultant)

The category of "someone who will help us with marketing or sales" is muddled in the Czech market. Here is a quick guide to when each one fits:

Full-time CMO or CSO

Full time, an employee of the company. Expensive, a managerial salary, benefits, recruiting, possible severance. Slow to find (3 to 6 months) and changes a lot (the average CMO tenure at a company is around two years).

Suitable when: you have a large marketing team, a complex offer and need someone to sit at the leadership table daily and run a larger organization.

Interim CMO or CSO

Careful, this is a frequent mix-up with fractional, but it is a different model. An interim manager comes into the company most of the week, long term (6 to 18 months), essentially standing in for a permanent director. They are in the office, in meetings, handling daily operations. They work for only one company, not split across parallel clients.

The key difference in purpose: interim holds and bridges. Fractional comes to build new. An interim manager typically steps into a working structure that someone has to cover, a permanent CMO/CSO left, the company is going through an M&A, restructuring or expansion and needs a full-time person to pilot it. Fractional, on the other hand, comes into a company where marketing or sales is still being built or needs a strategic kick-start.

A simple decider: "If you need someone who will be in the company daily, you are looking for interim. If you need someone to set direction, lead the team and hand it over, you are looking for fractional."

In the Czech market the word interim is searched more than fractional, so people often ask for it even when they actually want fractional. The result is that they get full-time offers, the price scares them off, and marketing keeps standing still. All it would take is to ask for the fractional model.

We do fractional. Not interim, that requires full commitment to one company, which is not our model. If you need interim, we will point you elsewhere.

Marketing agency

Execution in one or more channels, PPC, SEO, content, social. An agency is not strategic leadership. It works from a brief someone has to write. And if the agency writes the brief itself, you get a plan that is good for the agency, not necessarily for your company.

Suitable when: you know what you want to do and need someone to execute it well.

The best combination in B2B: a fractional CMO above the agency. The fractional CMO builds the strategy, picks the channels, writes the brief and watches the outputs. The agency does what it does, execution. It works.

Consultant or advisor

Recommendations and a slide deck. Then they leave. No accountability for making what they proposed actually happen.

Suitable when: you need a concrete answer to a concrete question (for example entering a new market, choosing a CRM, an audit). It is not leadership.

The key difference between a consultant and a fractional manager: a consultant recommends, a fractional one is accountable. A consultant leaves with an invoice, a fractional one stays and makes sure the plan is delivered.

What to do so that working with a fractional manager works

Hiring a good fractional manager is half the success. The other half is how the company works with that leadership. From our practice we know there are four things that decide whether the engagement leads to a result or to an expensive disappointment.

1. Access to data and decision-making authority. A fractional CMO or CSO without access to the CRM, the ad accounts, the financial data and the sales pipeline is an expensive voice on Slack. If the company watches the fractional manager "from above" so tightly that they need approval for every small proposal, the result is paralysis, not strategy. Agree clear boundaries at the start, what they can approve themselves, where they need you. And then let them decide.

2. Patience in the first 90 days. Measurable results come in months 4 to 6. Those who do not know this get frustrated in the third month, cancel the engagement and start over elsewhere. And then again. Marketing and sales are compounding functions, what you start in the first month shows results in the fourth. The investment in trust pays off.

3. Do not override strategic decisions. You hired a fractional manager because they know more about marketing or sales than you do. Ask, challenge, demand reasoning, but do not rewrite their strategy based on an article you read on LinkedIn yesterday. The best CEO to fractional manager relationship looks like this: the CEO says where the company should go. The fractional manager builds the plan for how to get there. Both agree on the metrics of success. The CEO judges the results, not the tactics.

4. Do not push the fractional manager into execution. After a few weeks of working together, an urge appears in the company: "Since we have them here, let them also write that blog article / do that graphic / set up that campaign. They do it better than us anyway." Here is the answer: no. If you pull a fractional manager into execution, they lose the capacity for what you hired them for, strategy, leadership and coordination. When you need more hands for execution, hire more hands. A fractional manager is a leader, not a substitute for an employee. This is the most common way in the Czech market that an engagement slides from a result into a disappointment.

FAQ: the most common questions about a fractional CMO and CSO

Conclusion: when to meet us over lunch

A fractional CMO and CSO is the answer for B2B companies that want to move marketing or sales to a new level, but for whom a full-time director is either out of reach or does not make sense. A consultant solves the problem only on paper. An agency executes but does not lead. Fractional comes in, builds a strategy, leads the people and hands over a working machine.

The fractional model brings senior leadership, strategy, the connection of marketing and sales and oversight of delivery, without the cost and complications of a full-time role. In B2B it makes the most sense when both marketing and sales are under one leadership.

If you recognize yourself in something from this article, that sales sits on you, marketing sits on a junior, sales and marketing do not understand each other, or you simply know that what you do today is not enough for where you want to go, let us meet.