Fractional sales director
Senior commercial leadership inside your business — strategy, pipeline, people and performance — for one or two days a week.
From £2,950 + VAT
In short
A fractional Sales Director suits a business that needs senior sales leadership — strategy, pipeline, management of the people who sell, accountability for the numbers — but cannot yet justify a six-figure full-time salary, or wants that capability in place within weeks rather than months. A full-time hire becomes the better option once the workload genuinely fills five days a week and the business can carry the cost and recruitment risk.
Recommended starting point
£799 + VAT
Start with a 30-Day Pilot. One month. Defined commercial focus. No automatic longer-term commitment. Evans investigates the problem, identifies the strongest opportunity and starts turning it into action — so you decide what happens next with real evidence, not a speculative proposal.
Not sure what leadership you need?
Build a short, personalised UK sales growth plan first. It sets out where growth is constrained today and the sales leadership structure that genuinely fits the business.
Takes a few minutes. Your personalised plan is ready immediately, on screen and as a PDF you can keep.
Most growing businesses need senior sales leadership long before they can justify employing it full time.
A Fractional Sales Director gives you that capability part time and on an ongoing basis. We become part of your leadership team, set the commercial direction, lead the people who sell, build the pipeline and hold the business to the numbers it has agreed.
This is not advice from the outside. It is responsibility taken on the inside — in your meetings, in your CRM, with your team, against your targets.
Prefer to speak directly?
Diagnostic
The Managing Director is still effectively running sales
The business has salespeople but no senior sales leadership
Revenue has plateaued
Sales performance is inconsistent
There is little visibility of pipeline or forecasting
Salespeople aren't being properly managed
There is no clear sales strategy
The business wants to grow into new territories or markets
Sales processes have developed organically rather than deliberately
The business is recruiting or rebuilding a sales team
Marketing generates leads but conversion is weak
There are ambitious growth targets but no commercial plan to reach them
Senior commercial expertise is needed, but not another permanent director
The business is between Sales Directors and needs experienced interim support
If several of these are true, the constraint is rarely effort. It is that nobody senior owns sales.
Manufacturers & technical B2B
Manufacturers, engineering firms, building-product businesses and technical suppliers are usually excellent at the product and the customers they already have. The commercial structure around it is often the part that never got built.
A technically strong product with weak penetration outside a handful of accounts
Too much revenue concentrated in a small number of long-standing customers
Sales still led by the owner or managing director alongside everything else
Distributors that were appointed years ago and have never been managed
Export enquiries handled reactively instead of as a deliberate international strategy
No repeatable process behind quoting, following up, specification or forecasting
These are commercial-leadership problems rather than effort problems. They are also the problems a fractional arrangement is well suited to, because fixing them takes senior judgement applied consistently over months — not a report.
Consultancy and fractional leadership are both legitimate. They are simply not the same purchase.
A consultant examines the business, recommends a course of action and hands it over. That is valuable when the business already has the leadership capacity to carry the recommendations out.
Fractional commercial leadership takes on the implementation: the meetings, the targets, the people, the forecast and the accountability for whether commercial progress actually happens. The engagement is judged on movement, not on the quality of the document.
Responsibility
How it works
Get underneath the numbers, people, pipeline, proposition, market and existing sales operation.
Identify the biggest commercial constraints and the opportunities worth acting on first.
Create the strategy, processes, targets and structure the business actually requires.
Work directly with management and the sales team to execute the plan.
Track pipeline, conversion, activity, revenue and the commercial KPIs that matter.
Continually adjust based on what actual performance shows.
A full-time Sales Director is one of the most expensive hires a mid-sized business makes — and one of the riskiest.
Salary, bonus, car, pension, NI and recruitment fees rarely land under six figures. Get the hire wrong and the cost is a year of lost growth on top.
Doing nothing is not free either. Unmanaged salespeople, unqualified pipeline, weak conversion and no forecast all cost revenue every month — they just never appear on an invoice.
A fractional engagement puts experienced leadership in place quickly, at a fraction of the cost, and can be scaled or ended without employment risk.
Turnover between £1m and £30m
Manufacturers, distributors and building-products businesses
Construction, engineering and installation businesses
Solar, renewables and energy businesses
B2B service businesses with a technical or considered sale
Owner-managed businesses where the MD still runs sales
Businesses with a small sales team and no senior leadership above it
Businesses between Sales Directors needing interim commercial leadership
Based in Cumbria, working with businesses across the UK — on site and remotely. See the work.
Full-time or fractional?
Put your own salary, bonus, pension, recruitment and overhead assumptions in, and see the estimated annual employer cost alongside a fractional arrangement at an agreed number of days a week.
Takes a minute. Nothing is gated — your comparison appears on screen as you change the figures.
Evidence
International Market Entry · Ontario, Canada → United Kingdom, Germany & France
A Canadian architectural-components business wanted to establish a route into the UK and wider Europe. We rejected a conventional distributor model, built a project-partner network across the UK, Germany and France, and helped generate approximately £2.2m of new-market turnover within 12 months.
£0 → £2.2m New-market turnover in 12 months
UK Market Entry · Scandinavia → United Kingdom
A Scandinavian glass manufacturer wanted to sell into the UK for the first time. There was no presence, no customers and no distribution to build on.
0 → UK Market entered from no prior presence
Distributor Development · Germany → United Kingdom
A German balustrade manufacturer needed a route into the UK. Distribution alone was not the answer — the distributors had to be found, onboarded, trained and then supported in selling.
5 UK distributors established
Business Development · United Kingdom → Scotland and the North of England
A major UK balustrade supplier was well established elsewhere in the UK but thin on the ground across the northern territories. Growth there needed direct commercial activity.
Sales Growth · Bradford, West Yorkshire → United Kingdom — national
Crucial Engineering wanted to expand beyond Bradford and build a genuine national sales operation. We helped develop larger Tier 1 and Tier 2 opportunities, strengthen business development and establish a profitable new automation revenue stream.
£1.5m → £3.2m Turnover in approximately 18 months
Sales Growth · Barnsley, South Yorkshire → United Kingdom
D&I wanted to accelerate growth beyond its existing model. We helped strengthen the sales strategy while establishing a dedicated installation arm and new aluminium fabrication capability, supporting turnover growth from approximately £2.2m to £4.6m.
£2.2m → £4.6m Turnover in 18 months
UK Market Entry · Lithuania & Slovenia → United Kingdom
A European architectural-glazing manufacturer wanted to establish a genuine UK operation. We helped set up the office and showroom, build the sales strategy and pipeline, support staffing and launch the business commercially.
£0 → £1.4m UK turnover in 9 months
Sales Growth · Sheffield, South Yorkshire → United Kingdom
BM Architectural wanted to expand its balustrade sales and create its next stage of growth. We helped win new customers, establish a dedicated architectural division and develop additional product opportunities including glass canopies.
£6.8m → £11.5m Turnover in 24 months
Sales Growth · Commercial Development · Glazing · High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire → United Kingdom — South East
Kingsmead Glass & Glazing is an established Buckinghamshire glazing business. Over approximately two years of consultancy support, Evans Sales Consultancy helped refine its commercial offering, develop the business beyond straightforward local glazing work and pursue and win more substantial commercial opportunities.
2 years Commercial consultancy
Sales Growth · New Services · London Expansion · Putney & Deal → London & the South East
Over approximately three years, Evans Sales Consultancy worked with Beautiful Homes UK on geographic expansion into London, winning commercial and residential work, and broadening what the business could sell — including helping introduce extensions as an additional commercial offering alongside glazing and kitchens.
3 years Commercial growth support
Sales Growth · Trade Customer Development · UK · Yorkshire → United Kingdom — national trade
Trade Sliders is a Yorkshire sliding-door and wardrobe business supplying the trade. Over approximately nine months, Evans Sales Consultancy helped the business win wardrobe work with regular-buying trade customers across the UK, rather than depending on isolated one-off orders.
9 months Trade sales development
Fractional engagements often include practical improvements to CRM, sales administration, pipeline visibility and management reporting — using AI and automation where they save real time.
Playbooks & frameworks
The International Market Entry Playbook sets out how fractional leadership bridges the gap between deciding to enter a market and committing to permanent local headcount — alongside nineteen other stages of the entry process. Free to read.
Explore the International Expansion PlaybookEvans Opportunity Engine
The Opportunity Engine identifies and researches live commercial opportunities — the event, the buyer, the contact route and the approach. If you need Evans to own wider commercial strategy, sales leadership, pipeline and conversion, Fractional Commercial Leadership is the stronger fit.
From £695 + VAT / month
Start here
Start with the Commercial Growth Sprint. A fixed-fee commercial review that establishes whether the constraint is leadership at all — and what should happen first.
Market expansion insights
When senior commercial leadership is justified, how it differs from technical sales management, and how fractional compares with a permanent appointment.
Fractional leadership insights
How fractional leadership works, how it differs from consultancy, and how the costs compare with interim and permanent appointments.
Prefer to talk it through first?
Fractional commercial leadership is delivered with senior founder involvement. Talk through whether it fits your stage.
Yes. Fractional Sales Director, part-time Sales Director and outsourced Sales Director all describe the same arrangement: senior sales leadership retained for an agreed number of days a month instead of employed full time. We use fractional because the commitment is ongoing and accountable, not ad hoc cover.
An experienced Sales Director working with your business part time, on an ongoing basis. Same responsibilities as a full-time director — strategy, leadership, pipeline, forecasting, performance — delivered in one or two days a week rather than five.
A consultant advises. A Fractional Sales Director leads. We sit in your leadership team, manage your salespeople, own the sales numbers and stay accountable for what happens next.
Typically one to two days a week, adjusted as the business needs. Some engagements start heavier during the build phase and settle into a steady rhythm of leadership, reviews and pipeline work.
Most run for six to twelve months as a minimum, because sales leadership is not a short project. Some continue indefinitely; others hand over to a permanent hire we help recruit and onboard.
From £2,950 + VAT. Engagements are scoped to the leadership required, with no recruitment fee, bonus, car, pension or long-term employment risk.
Yes, where that is what the business needs. One-to-ones, sales meetings, targets, coaching, performance reviews and accountability are all part of the role.
Yes. We are based in Cumbria and work with businesses across the UK, on site and remotely. Travel is planned around the days committed.
Choosing correctly
Nothing here is compulsory and no stage has to be bought before another. Find the sentence that matches your situation and go straight to the engagement that answers it.
We know growth needs attention but we are not sure what is actually wrong.
Commercial Growth SprintWe need researched live commercial opportunities to approach.
Opportunity EngineWe want more revenue from the customers we already have.
Customer Expansion EngineWe need Evans to actively develop target accounts and opportunities over time.
Project Generation & Business DevelopmentWe need broader commercial growth execution across more than prospecting alone.
Growth PartnerWe need senior ownership of the wider commercial function.
Fractional Commercial Leadership — you are here
We need a one-off independent diagnosis of our website.
Commercial Website AuditWe need regular, serious authority content.
Authority Content EngineOur website is good; it needs properly adapting to one new market.
International SEO & LocalisationWe need a substantial country-specific commercial digital estate.
Market-Entry Landing EstateOur digital platform needs major structural work or a rebuild.
Digital InfrastructureWe need partner intelligence only — we will handle the approaches ourselves.
Distributor & Partner SearchWe need Evans to help execute the commercial entry into a market.
International Market EntryWe need a Country Manager, Sales Director or technical commercial hire.
International & Commercial RecruitmentWe are entering several countries and need one repeatable system.
International Expansion PlaybookA focused service solves one defined component. A flagship engagement is where Evans Sales Consultancy owns, or materially supports, a broader commercial outcome. Where a focused service would not honestly be enough, we say so before anything is invoiced.
Start with the problem
Not sure whether you need leadership, a hire or a better process? Start from the problem rather than the engagement.
If the team needs more opportunities to manage rather than more management, consider managed prospecting through the Opportunity Engine.
Start with a sales growth assessment. We look at your pipeline, people, conversion and strategy together, then agree what senior leadership would need to change first.
Prefer to speak directly?
