Sales Strategy Consulting: What It Costs, Who Does the Work, and Who Runs It in Month Four

You can close. Your team can't, unless you're in the meeting.

That's what the CEOs who call me say first. The next thing they say: we worked harder this year and made less than last year.

So you start looking at sales strategy consulting. In my experience, the instinct is right: a team that can't close without you can't rebuild how it sells from the inside. What's left to decide is who does the rebuild, and who's still running it in month four.

You can hire a sales consulting firm to do it: a typical 90-day plan in this market runs $15,000 to $35,000, then a monthly retainer.

Or you can do it the modern way and hire a fractional VP of sales: a sales executive you engage instead of hiring full-time, who leads your sales team instead of handing it a plan, so the person running it in month four isn't you.

This guide covers both: what each one costs, who actually does the work, and how to tell which one fits your sales organization.

What a Sales Consulting Firm Does, and What It Leaves Your Team to Run

A sales consulting firm is hired to restart revenue growth: it diagnoses where your sales performance breaks down, then designs a sales strategy that fits your business goals. That covers the sales process, the playbook, how leads are qualified and how reps are paid, who you hire next, and how your CRM tracks it.

Then it hands the plan to your team to run.

You'll see sales consulting services sold under different names: sales process consulting, sales management consulting, sales transformation, sales effectiveness. The services overlap. The label won't tell you who shows up to do the work.

Whether it's a large firm's team of sales consultants or one consultant, a typical engagement in this market is a 90-day sprint in three steps:

1. The audit. About the first month: interviews with your reps and managers, a read of your CRM data, and the deals you've won and lost, to identify gaps.
2. The design. The process, the playbook, the qualification rules, and a CRM rebuild.
3. The handoff. The plan and the documents, handed back to the same team that was selling before the firm arrived.

Signs Your Sales Organization Needs Sales Consulting

When revenue growth depends on you closing the deals yourself, and nobody on the team can change how it sells, your sales organization needs outside help. These are the signs CEOs describe when they call me, and the ones I look for:

• You're still the best closer you have. Deals close when you're on the call and stall when you're not.
• The reps keep working the same deals. Nobody, marketing or sales, is bringing new deals into the pipeline, so lead generation has become your job.
• The forecast is a guess. Every deal is closing next month, the same ones as last month.
• You missed your sales targets two quarters running. Whatever the milestone, it's a miss, never growth.
• Win rates are slipping, or nobody is measuring them.
• You can't say what your sales team does all day.

In my experience, when three of those are true, the sales functions you have were built for a smaller company than the one you run now, and the reps aren't the ones to blame.

If the first sign is the one you live with, start here: Founder-Led Sales: How to Stop Being Your Company's Best Closer →

The Eight Decisions Every Sales Strategy Engagement Has to Settle

Every sales strategy engagement, whoever runs it, has to settle eight decisions: which kinds of sales you make, which channels sell for you, how the team is structured, which methodology your reps use, how leads get qualified, how deals move through the pipeline, what runs in your sales stack, and which numbers you manage by.

Together, they're your sales strategy. In my experience, if your team can't close without you, some of them were decided by default, or never decided at all.

Which Kinds of Sales You're Making

Winning new business, expanding existing customers, renewals and account management are four different jobs. They need different people, different comp and different reviews. In my experience, treat them as one job and the comp plan ends up paying reps for the wrong one.

If that's the comp plan you have, here's how to pay each job, and who gets paid when you close the deal: Sales Comp Plan: Pay Reps for the Deals You Want Them Chasing →

Which Channels Sell for You

Direct sales means your own reps. Indirect means partners, resellers or agents selling on commission. The decision is whether a channel is worth building yet, and who owns it.

I'd fix the direct team first. If your own reps can't close without you, I wouldn't hand the same pitch to partners.

How Your Team Is Structured, and Who Carries Quota

Team structure decides who prospects, who closes, who manages accounts and who manages the people, and whether you cover the market by territory or by named accounts. It also decides which roles carry a quota, and which support the ones that do.

Then there's whether your best rep should run the team. Every great rep doesn't make a great leader, and every great leader isn't always your best rep.

Who to hire first, and what has to be true before each hire: How to build a sales team →

Which Sales Methodology Your Reps Use

A sales methodology is the one way every rep runs a deal: Challenger, Sandler, SPIN, solution selling or value selling. I care a lot less which one you pick than whether anyone uses it. If every rep sells their own way and your managers can't coach any of it, you haven't picked one yet.

The training and coaching are what make every rep run it the same way.

How Leads Get Qualified, and Where New Deals Come From

BANT, CHAMP and MEDDIC are ways to decide whether a lead is worth a rep's time. If your reps are talking to the wrong people and pitching the wrong product, this is the decision that covers it.

The harder question is who brings new business in. Marketing is supposed to deliver leads, and sales is supposed to find its own. In my experience, the two most disconnected groups in an organization are marketing and sales, so the plan has to say who does what.

How a Deal Moves Through Your Pipeline

Your pipeline decision sets the stages a deal passes through and what has to be true before it moves to the next one. It also sets how each deal gets reviewed, the coaching that happens in the review, and who approves a discount.

Good pipeline management means stage rules written so you can read the pipeline yourself, instead of asking every rep where their deals stand.

What Runs in Your Sales Stack

Your sales stack is the CRM first, then whatever handles forecasting, outbound, account management and the repetitive work worth automating, and whoever runs sales operations to keep the data clean. Add tools only after the process works.

In my experience, a common fix is a new CRM, to see what's happening without being on every call. Too often it gets botched, and you end up running two: the old one and the new one.

The Numbers You Manage By

The numbers you manage by are pipeline coverage, win rates, sales cycle length, the forecast, and what the reps do all day. Track these five key performance indicators and read them the same way every week, so improvements and dips in sales performance show up in the weekly numbers before they show up in revenue growth at quarter end.

If the forecast is the one you don't trust, here's how to build one you can run the company on: Sales Forecasting: How to Build a Forecast You Can Run the Company On →

All eight sit on two earlier decisions: who you sell to, and what you say to them. If those aren't settled, no sales plan holds, whoever writes it. Check them before you pay anyone to write one. The order the work goes in →

Who you sell to is the first of those decisions, and it has its own guide: Market positioning →

If you're writing the plan yourself, here's how to work your number back to the deals and put a name on every line: Sales Plan: How to Write One Your Team Can Run Without You →

What Sales Consulting Costs: The Sprint, Then the Retainer

In this market, sales consulting costs $3,000 to $10,000 for a fixed-scope diagnostic, and $15,000 to $35,000 for a typical 90-day sprint: the audit, the playbook, the CRM rebuild. The large strategy firms price their sales consulting services above that, for enterprise budgets.

Then comes the second purchase: an advisory retainer, $5,000 to $12,000 a month, to keep the plan running after the handoff. A sprint plus three months of retainer is $30,000 to $71,000 for six months, and nobody on it runs your team.

If what you need after the plan is someone to run your sales team, the comparison is a hire. Hired full-time at a company under $15M, a VP of sales costs $30,000 to $43,000 a month fully loaded, plus equity, after a search of three to six months. Six months of that is $180,000 to $260,000.

My fractional VP of sales role is $5,000 to $7,000 a month, remote, month to month, and published on my pricing page. Your sales team reports to me from the first month, and I report to you. Six months is $30,000 to $42,000.

Against the hire, it's about a sixth at both ends ($30,000 against $180,000; $42,000 against $260,000). Against the sprint and the retainer, it's the same at the bottom ($30,000 against $30,000) and about two-fifths less at the top ($42,000 against $71,000).

For the same money or less, you get the one thing the sprint and the retainer don't include: someone who runs your sales team and answers for the new revenue it closes.

When the number misses, you hear it from me first, with the reason and what changes next month. What moves my price →

The Partner Who Sells You the Project Isn't the One Who Does It

Many sales consulting firms make their money on leverage: senior people sell the work, and a team of sales consultants delivers it.

The pitch is led by experienced sales consultants, and the person who diagnosed your problem on the first call may not be the person in your CRM in week six. At the large firms, the people doing the work are often earlier in their careers than the people who sold it.

Firms and networks built on a roster of consultants assign you someone from the bench, and you don't choose who shows up.

If you're asking about the Big 4 (Deloitte, PwC, EY and KPMG) or the strategy firms like McKinsey, BCG and Bain: they all sell sales consulting services through their own sales practices, built for enterprise budgets and timelines. Under $15M, your sales organization isn't the client they're built for.

Here, the person you talk to before you sign is the person in your deal reviews in week six: me. I don't have associates or a bench to assign you from.

Why Your Team Still Can't Run the Plan When the Firm Leaves

In my experience, a firm's plan stalls at the handoff, because it goes back to the team that couldn't fix how it sells in the first place. If your team could do that on its own, you wouldn't be calling a firm.

The retainer doesn't change who runs it. An advisor checks in and advises, and nothing reports to the advisor, so between check-ins the plan runs only if someone on your team owns it.

CEOs ask me the same question: they thought they hired reps who could close, so why is nobody closing a deal unless the CEO does it for them?

In my experience, a playbook written somewhere else didn't match how the company needed to sell, so nobody used it. When nobody uses the playbook, the reps sell the way they did before, sales performance stays where it was, and you're back in the deals.

If that's the playbook you have, here's how to build one from your own won deals: Sales Playbook: How to Build One Your Reps Will Actually Use →

I'm rarely the first fix a CEO has tried. Usually it's been one train wreck after another.

The Modern Way to Get the Same Job Done: A Fractional VP of Sales

A fractional VP of sales is a sales executive you engage instead of hiring full-time. Done my way, it's the job a sales consulting firm sells, run from inside your sales organization and aimed from month one at the day deals close without you in the meeting.

Your sales team reports to me, the new revenue it closes is my number, and I build the process and run it with your reps on live deals. I've had a quota on me for 27 years and never missed, most of it in leadership.

You'll also see it called fractional sales consulting. Done my way, what separates it from sales consultants is that the plan has an owner after it's written.

If "fractional" makes you wince, I get it. Most fractional VPs of sales are sold by the hours a week, at $4,000 to $15,000 a month, often placed through a network. So ask two things: who does your sales team report to, and whose number is the new revenue? Here, both answers are me.

Mine is the same work as a firm's, done three ways differently:

• The person who sells it does it. You talk to me before you sign, and I'm the one in your deal reviews after, running your team.
• It runs before it's handed over. Every change goes into your CRM and gets tested on live deals. I fix one thing at a time, and the next one doesn't start until you've seen whether the last one worked.
• The exit is planned from month one. It ends one of two ways: someone on your team grows into leading sales, or you hire a full-time VP of sales into a process that already works. If it's the hire, I help write the job description and sit in on the interviews.

I've built or rebuilt the sales organization at every company that's employed me, and I've run marketing and sales in every revenue role I've held since 1999.

Since 2020, averaged across my fractional clients: three times as many leads turning into opportunities, and two to six times the pipeline.

How the role works, and what it costs: Fractional VP of Sales →

Sales Consulting Firm or Fractional VP of Sales: Which One Fits

Pick by who will run the plan once it exists. If someone on your team can, a firm or an advisor is enough. If nobody can, you need a leader.

You need a sales consulting firm if you already have a sales leader who can run a new plan, the project is well defined (a comp redesign, a CRM rebuild) with an owner waiting for it, and you want a fixed price and a fixed end date.

You need a fractional VP of sales if deals still close only when you're on the call, nobody on your team can run a new plan yet, and you can't carry a full-time VP of sales, or the process needs building before one walks in.

You need advice, not a leader, if your team can build what you tell them and what you want is someone to say what to fix, in what order and why: Advisory →

You need a full-time VP of sales if the process already works, the company can carry $30,000 or more a month plus equity, and you want someone in the building every day: Fractional vs. Full-Time →

And if marketing and sales are blaming each other, neither a firm nor a VP of sales fixes it from one side. That's the CRO role, with marketing and sales reporting to me and me reporting to you: Fractional CRO →

"Isn't month to month just a retainer that never ends?" That's what the exit plan is for. From month one, the aim is the month your team runs it without me: someone on your team takes over, or you hire a full-time VP into a process that works. You can stop at the end of any month, no notice.

How to Tell Whether Sales Consulting Is Working

Judge any sales consulting engagement, firm or fractional, by what changes in your sales performance. Before the work starts, write down the measurable results you expect, then check them at 90 days and again at six months:

• Win rates and conversion rates. More qualified opportunities turning into closed deals, and more leads turning into opportunities.
• Deals you didn't bring in yourself. How much of the new pipeline came from your reps and your marketing, and how much still came from you.
• Accurate forecasting. Deals close when your reps said they would.
• Sales cycle and sales productivity. How long a deal takes, and how much of a rep's week goes to selling.
• Revenue growth against your sales targets. Read it last.

Sales teams don't improve overnight, so read the early measures first, and read them the same way every week.

Questions to Ask Any Sales Consulting Firm Before You Sign

Whoever you hire for sales consulting services, a firm, independent sales consultants or a fractional VP of sales, ask these before you sign. The answers tell you whether the plan will get run.

1. Who, by name, will be in our deal reviews in month two?
2. What happens in month four? If the answer is a retainer, you're buying two things. Price both.
3. Who owns the number? If they own a recommendation and not the revenue growth, you're still the one carrying the number.
4. Will the playbook be built in our CRM and tested on live deals, or delivered as a document?
5. Is your price published? If it isn't, ask what sets it, so you can compare the two purchases on the same terms.
6. Have you run a sales team yourself, with a quota on you? Your plan will be run by reps carrying quotas. Ask whether the person writing it has carried one.
7. How does this end? A good answer names who runs it after you leave.

A firm that answers all seven well is worth hiring.

If it can't say who's in your deal reviews, who owns the number, or who runs it after it leaves, the answer to all three is someone on your team, or you.

If the honest answer is you, you need someone who runs it until your team can, month to month, and you can stop at the end of any month: Fractional VP of Sales →