MARK ZIDES
MARK ZIDES
Home / Services / Fractional CRO
Consulting hands you a plan and leaves. This is the seat itself. As your fractional CRO, Mark owns the revenue number across marketing, sales and partnerships, builds the team underneath it, then hands it to the full-time leader he helps you hire.
The seat
A fractional chief revenue officer holds the revenue seat part time. Mark owns the number across marketing, sales and partnerships, runs the forecast and the leadership meeting, builds the team underneath the role, and hands it to a full-time hire. The accountability is real, the schedule is not full time.
Marketing, sales, partnerships and renewals stop reporting four versions of the truth and start reporting one, to the person who answers for it in the board meeting.
Nothing is rebuilt before the diagnosis is written down with evidence behind it, because a seat filled without a diagnosis is just a more expensive version of last quarter.
Stages, qualification bar, forecast and playbook get rebuilt inside the systems you already own, with the quarter still being sold.
A hiring plan, a compensation model and a scorecard, so the seat can be handed to somebody full time rather than renewed forever.
The difference
A consultant designs the motion and leaves. A VP of sales runs a process somebody else built. A full-time chief revenue officer costs a full package before the revenue exists to carry it. The fractional seat sits between them: full accountability for the number, on the days the business can actually carry.
| Sales consultant | Fractional revenue seat | VP of sales | Full-time CRO | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who owns the number | Nobody. Advice, then a handover. | Mark does, in your leadership meeting. | Sales only. Not marketing, not partners. | The whole number, all of the time. |
| What it takes to start | A diagnostic and a scope. | A first call and a start date. | A search, an offer and a notice period. | A search, a package and a board conversation. |
| When it starts paying | After your team executes the plan. | The first pipeline review. | Two quarters of ramp, if the motion exists. | Two to three quarters of ramp. |
| If the hire is wrong | You own a plan nobody runs. | The engagement ends on its written criterion. | A rehire and a lost year. | A rehire, a lost year and a severance line. |
| What you keep afterwards | A document. | A motion, a playbook and a hired successor. | Whatever they wrote down. | Whatever they wrote down. |
Scroll the table sideways to compare all four.
The signal
One question decides this, and it is not about revenue stage or headcount. Ask who in the business is personally accountable for the whole number this quarter, and whether that answer would survive being read out to the board.
Is one person accountable for the whole revenue number today?
If the answer is no
The seat is what is missing, and filling it part time buys the rebuild without the full-time package.
If the answer is yes
Putting a second owner in front of the number confuses accountability instead of creating it.
The engagement
Fractional leadership fails on authority far more often than on capability. This is the division of labour from week one, written into the scope rather than assumed, because a seat with no forecast and no pipeline review is advice wearing a title.
Mark owns the revenue forecast and answers for it in the leadership meeting and the board pack.
Process, qualification bar, playbook, comp and reporting rebuilt with the people who will run them after he goes.
The scorecard, the search and the onboarding for the full-time leader who takes the seat back.
The first ninety days
The first ninety days are fixed: two weeks to name the constraint, four to rebuild the process and the forecast, six more to hire against it. Day ninety produces a board pack that reports one number one way, and an honest answer on whether the seat should go permanent.
CRM, the last four quarters of closed and lost, live calls, and a conversation with everyone who touches revenue. The constraint is named in writing, with the evidence, before anything is rebuilt.
DiagnoseStages, entry and exit criteria and the forecast rebuilt inside the systems you already own. The weekly pipeline review starts, with Mark in the chair and the quarter still being sold.
RebuildHiring plan, compensation model and the scorecard for the permanent hire. The deals that decide the quarter get joined in person while the team ramps into the new motion.
BuildA board pack that reports one number one way, a playbook a new rep can work from, and a written recommendation on whether the seat stays fractional or goes full time.
DecideThe remit
This is what separates the revenue seat from a sales leadership seat. Five functions touch the number, and the expensive leaks are almost always in the joins between them rather than inside any one of them. Mark holds all five under one forecast.
Positioning, the qualification bar, and what a lead has to be before sales is allowed to see it.
Ends the argument about lead qualityStages a rep cannot fake, a playbook a new hire can run in week two, and coaching in live deals.
Ends the forecast being a feelingThe co-sell motion, who owns it, and what it is allowed to promise on your behalf.
Turns borrowed trust into pipelineRetention and expansion counted inside the number rather than reported beside it.
Stops new logos hiding churnOne definition per field, one report per question, and a board pack that stops being rebuilt by hand.
Makes all four measurable at onceThe risk
These are the questions every founder asks before handing the number to somebody who is not on the payroll full time. Three of them are fair. The answers below are the ones Mark gives on the first call, before any scope is written.
Part time will mean part attention.
The days are fewer, the ownership is not divided. Mark carries the forecast and answers for it, and a seat held that way is measured on the number rather than on hours logged. If it is failing, it is visible in the pipeline review within a month.
A part-time leader will not have authority over full-time staff.
True unless it is granted explicitly, which is why it goes into the scope in week one rather than being assumed. Owning the forecast, chairing the pipeline review and writing the revenue section of the board pack are the three that make the seat real.
We will end up dependent on one outsider.
The exit criterion is written before the work starts, and it is someone other than Mark or the founder closing your largest deals. The playbook, the comp model and the hiring scorecard are yours from the day each is finished, not at the end.
What happens if we decide we want somebody permanent?
That is the intended ending. Mark writes the scorecard, sits in the interviews, and onboards the hire into the motion he built, which is a considerably better first ninety days than the one most revenue leaders are given.
The handover
Every one of these is written down as it is built and belongs to the company immediately, not on the last day. That is the difference between renting a leader and renting one who is building their own replacement the whole time.
The scope
There is no number on this page because the scope is not knowable until the constraint is named, and you should be wary of anyone who quotes one before they have looked at your pipeline. Three things set it, and all three are settled on the first call.
A forecast nobody trusts is a short engagement. A revenue function with no team, no process and no reporting is a year of work. Naming the constraint is what makes a scope possible at all.
Advising the person who owns the number is a smaller commitment than owning it himself. That choice is yours, it is written into the scope, and it can change part way through.
Compressing the work holds less, because hiring and coaching move at the pace people actually learn. A seat filled quickly and handed over badly leaves you where you started.
What the first call produces is the shape of the engagement, its likely length, the exit criterion it will be judged on, and an honest answer if the timing is wrong. The same three variables set the scope of a sales consulting engagement, which is the advisory version of this one.
The check
Worth asking Mark, and worth asking everyone else you are considering. Most firms selling this seat answer the selection question with a description of themselves, which is not an answer. His are on this page, so you can hold him to them.
The seat is only real if it carries the forecast, the weekly pipeline review and the revenue section of the board pack. Without those three it is advice with a better title. Red flag: a title agreed in week one and no named owner for the number.
Two or three is normal and workable. The more useful question is what happens in a quarter where two of them are in trouble at once, and a straight answer to that tells you most of what you need. Red flag: vagueness about the count, or not knowing who will actually turn up until after you have signed.
Anyone who can scope this work before they have read your pipeline, your lost deals and your last three forecasts is selling a package rather than solving a problem. Red flag: a proposal that arrives faster than the diagnosis.
A good answer is a condition you can check: somebody other than you closing the largest deals, a forecast the board argues with rather than about. Red flag: no ending, or an ending that is only the end of the contract.
Carrying the number and consulting on it are different jobs, and the second is much the easier of the two. Ask which quarters they personally owned and what happened in the ones that went badly. Red flag: a career spent entirely next to the number rather than on it.
Everything built should become yours as it is built: the process, the playbook, the compensation model, the hiring scorecard. Red flag: a method that lives in their template, their software or their head.
The record
This is a seat Mark has held on his own payroll six times. The full history is on the about page.
FAQ ( Here to Help )
It is the revenue seat held part time. One person owns the whole number, marketing, sales, partnerships and renewals, runs the forecast and the leadership meeting, and is accountable to the board for it. The schedule is part time. The accountability is not.
A VP of sales owns sales. The revenue seat owns everything that touches the number, which is where most of the leaks actually are. A VP also runs the process rather than building it, so hiring one before the motion exists is how good people fail inside a system nobody designed.
It is set on the first call against what the business needs rather than a fixed retainer of days. Enough to run the forecast, chair the pipeline review, sit in the leadership meeting and join the deals that decide the quarter. It usually reduces as the team takes the work back.
Only if it is granted explicitly, which is why it is written into the scope in week one rather than assumed. Mark holds the forecast, chairs the pipeline review and answers for the number in the board pack. Without those three, the seat is advice wearing a title.
Ask what they will own in writing, how many other numbers they carry at the same time, whether they have ever held one themselves rather than advised on it, and what the exit criterion is. Anyone who can quote you before they have named your constraint is selling a package. Six questions worth asking, and the answer that should worry you in each case, are set out above.
Three to twelve months for most companies. Long enough to name the constraint, rebuild the motion, hire into it and coach whoever takes the number afterwards. Shorter than that and nothing survives the handover, which makes the whole thing an expensive pause.
Scope follows the constraint rather than the hour, so the number is set on the first call once the constraint is named. What moves it is what is actually broken, how much of the number Mark carries himself, and how fast you need the team built underneath it.
The seat is handed to a full-time leader Mark helps you scope, interview and onboard, or back to the founder with a motion that no longer depends on either of them. The exit criterion is written before the work starts, and it is someone else closing your largest deals.
The first call
Thirty minutes on what the number has done for three quarters, who owns it today, and whether the seat is really what is missing. If it is not, he will say so on the call.