Fractional CRO: strategy without execution isn’t enough.
Some companies need more than an agency. They need experienced growth leadership without adding another full-time executive. Our fractional growth leadership model combines senior-level strategy with hands-on execution.
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● What a fractional CRO does
A fractional CRO is a senior revenue leader working part time, who owns growth strategy and the pipeline number across sales and marketing without joining as a full-time executive.
The version worth buying comes with an execution team attached, because a strategy handed to a company with no capacity to run it changes nothing.
Nobody owns the number.
Growth usually sits with the founder or the CEO, on top of the job they were actually hired to do. Decisions get made late or not at all, and sales and marketing each run their own plan.
The obvious fix is a full-time CRO. At the wrong stage that is a large, slow bet on a hiring decision, made before anyone knows exactly what the role needs to do.
The other common fix is a consultant, who produces a strategy that is often right and rarely executed, because the constraint was never the thinking.
A fractional CRO works when it carries both: someone senior enough to make the calls, and a team behind them who does the work.
We can help establish.
You get the strategic perspective of a growth executive combined with an execution team capable of making it happen.
Growth strategy
Where growth will come from over the next year, what it will take, and what the company will stop doing to pay for it.
Go-to-market strategy
Which markets, segments and buyers to go after first, with which offer, and through which channels.
Sales and marketing alignment
One definition of a qualified opportunity, one pipeline number and one plan that both teams work from.
Pipeline targets
A number agreed early and reported against every week, either hit or explained.
Demand generation strategy
The channel mix and budget needed to create the pipeline the target calls for, decided on evidence rather than habit.
Partner and alliance strategy
Which partners can open doors to the accounts you want, and how each relationship turns into pipeline.
Weekly growth cadence
The same meeting every week with the same numbers, where the pipeline is either moving or being explained.
KPI and pipeline management
The handful of numbers that matter, tracked from first meeting to revenue, with the forecast held to account.
How the work runs.
Diagnose first
Funnel, channels, data, team and pipeline history. It ends with a written view of where growth actually is, which is often not where the dashboard says, and you keep it.
Decide and write it down
Strategy, targets, budget and what the company is going to stop doing. Signed off by the founder or CEO rather than left implied.
Install the cadence
A weekly meeting with the same agenda and the same numbers, across sales and marketing. Unglamorous, and the most reliable sign of whether anything will change.
Execute and adjust
The team ships against the plan, the plan changes each quarter when the evidence does, and the target is either hit or explained.
What gets owned.
A CRO is judged on revenue, so these are the numbers the role answers for, every week.
Pipeline target
A number agreed early, reported against weekly, and either hit or explained. Never moved quietly at quarter end.
Forecast accuracy
How close the prediction was. It matters more to a board than the raw number, and it is far harder to fake.
Cost per opportunity
Tracked across every channel, because the job is putting budget where it works, not spending it enthusiastically.
Who this suits.
- Growth sits with a founder or CEO who already has another job
- You need senior decisions faster than you can hire for them
- Sales and marketing are working to different plans
- The board is asking for a plan with numbers attached
- You want a full-time executive in the room every day
- The founder will not hand over the growth decisions
- You need one specific channel run, not leadership over all of them
- There is no budget for execution behind the strategy
Fair questions.
What is the difference between a fractional CRO and a fractional CMO?
A fractional CMO usually owns marketing. A fractional CRO owns the revenue number across sales and marketing together: the targets, the alignment between the two teams and the cadence that holds both of them to pipeline. That is the gap most growing companies actually have.
How much time do we actually get?
It depends on the engagement, and we agree it in writing before we start, along with what is in scope. Fractional arrangements fail when the expectation is quietly full time, so we make it explicit. The execution team works alongside it from the start.
Is this a route to a full-time hire?
Often, and that is a good outcome. Part of the job is defining the role, building the function and, when the time comes, helping you hire the person who takes it over. A fractional leader who blocks their own succession is not doing the job.
What if we already have a sales and marketing team?
Then the job is leadership rather than replacement. Most in-house teams are capable and under-directed, and the first month usually finds capacity that was already there, pointed at the wrong work.
Works well with.
● Measure
Marketing automation & revenue operations
A growth leader without trustworthy numbers is guessing. This is usually the first project.
Read● Target
ICP & target account strategy
Deciding who to sell to is the first strategic call, and it shapes everything that follows.
Read● Engage
Outbound lead generation
The execution engine most engagements stand up first, because it puts conversations on the calendar.
Read