Fractional head of GTM jobs · hire a fractional head of GTM, or hire a head of GTM for good

What does a fractional head of GTM do? the days, the team, the first 90 days

A fractional head of GTM leads a company’s go-to-market function on a fixed number of days a week: the heads of sales, marketing and customer success report in, the fractional head of GTM runs one plan and one pipeline review across them, and in the first 90 days they diagnose, set the plan and hand the weekly running to the team. The seat is the same one described on head of GTM jobs; what changes is the week.

How many days a week

Size the days by the fixed calls, not by a habit. A head of GTM needs a one-to-one with each leader who reports in, a pipeline or forecast review, time with the CEO and time to fix something by hand. Add those up for your team and you have the minimum. The days are agreed before the start and written into the engagement; we set them out on each shortlisted candidate’s profile. If the sum comes to most of a week, the seat is not fractional: look at interim head of GTM jobs or a permanent hire.

Who reports in

The leaders of each team, not every seller and marketer. A fractional head of GTM cannot manage every seller and marketer on part of a week; they lead the few people who do. If nobody leads sales, marketing or customer success yet, the seat underneath is empty, and the first seat to fill is a GTM lead or, at an early company, a founding GTM lead. Where RevOps exists, it reports in too, because the pipeline review runs on its numbers.

The first 90 days

Days 1 to 30: read the pipeline, the lost deals and the churned accounts, sit with each leader, and name the one join between teams that costs most. Days 31 to 60: set the shared plan, the targets each team owns and the weekly review that tests them. Days 61 to 90: hand the running of that review to the team, so it happens on the days the fractional head of GTM is out. Stage 2 Capital advises writing down what a first GTM leader must do, and what success would look like, before meeting candidates; for a fractional seat, write the first 90 days as well.

Fractional head of GTM jobs: who buys the seat part-time

Fractional head of GTM jobs come from companies with teams in sales, marketing and customer success that are each too small to justify a full-time leader above them. Scale-ups between their founding GTM lead and a permanent head of GTM buy the seat this way, and so do established companies that want one plan across teams without adding a permanent executive.

Read the advert for the days and the reports. A fractional head of GTM job that lists no team is a fractional GTM lead doing the work by hand. One that asks for five days is an interim or permanent job with the word fractional added. The real seat names the leaders who report in and the days it expects.

Candidates who take these roles usually hold one or two other seats at the same time, and have led at least two of sales, marketing and customer success before. If what you need is the plan rather than the person, our sister site gtm.quest covers go-to-market strategy in depth. Every GTM seat, from specialist to CRO, is on our GTM jobs hub.

IR35 and the fractional head of GTM status, contracts and outbound rules

A fractional head of GTM is either employed part-time or works through their own limited company. Where they work through their own company, the off-payroll working rules (IR35) may apply. A medium or large client makes the status determination and gives a status determination statement; for a small client outside the public sector, the worker’s own company decides. The rules apply contract by contract, so one person can hold seats on either side.

Status turns on how the engagement runs in practice, not on its label. HMRC’s Check Employment Status for Tax tool asks who decides what work is done and when, where and how it is done, which matters for a seat that leads a team and sits in the weekly review. We set out each candidate’s IR35 position on the shortlist and do not promise an outcome. Our IR35 guide sets out the tests.

If you employ the fractional head of GTM directly instead, part-time workers’ rights apply: they must not be treated less favourably than a comparable full-time employee, with some benefits given pro rata. And because the seat sets how the team contacts prospects, ask how they have kept outbound within the ICO’s business-to-business marketing rules, which apply UK GDPR to a named business contact’s data.