Why Your Next Commercial Hire Shouldn't Be Full-Time

There's a point in a business's growth where commercial momentum stalls. The product is ready. The market is real. But the pipeline isn't moving the way it should, the right partnerships aren't closing, and the founding team is stretched across things they were never hired to do. The instinct is to hire. A VP of Sales. A Chief Revenue Officer. Someone senior who owns it. That instinct isn't wrong. The timing and structure usually are. Here's what most businesses don't account for when they make that hire: A senior commercial leader at the level you actually need — someone who can open the right rooms, structure the right deals, and build a pipeline that holds — costs £150,000 to £300,000 a year before bonus, equity, and the six months it takes to find them. Then another three to six months before they're operating at full capacity. You've spent the better part of a year and a significant amount of capital before a single deal closes differently. And if it doesn't work out — if the fit is wrong, the market shifts, or the mandate changes — you're unwinding something that's expensive and slow to unwind. The businesses that navigate this best usually make a different decision. They bring in fractional commercial leadership — embedded, operational, and focused on outcomes rather than headcount. Someone who arrives with a network already built, a track record in their specific market, and no ramp time. The engagement is scoped around what actually needs to happen: a market entry, a distribution partnership, a specific set of deals. When that's done, the structure changes. You're not carrying a fixed cost through every phase of the business. This isn't a compromise. For most businesses at the inflection point between early traction and scaled commercial operation, it's the sharper move. The full-time hire makes sense eventually. Just not always yet — and rarely at the moment it feels most urgent. If you're at that point and weighing the decision, it's worth a 30-minute conversation before you commit.

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