Questions worth answering properly.

A fractional CRO (Chief Revenue Officer) is a senior commercial leader who works with a business on a part-time or fractional basis — typically two to three days per week — rather than as a full-time hire. They take on the same responsibilities as a full-time CRO: owning the revenue function, managing the sales team, setting go-to-market strategy, and building the processes and infrastructure that drive consistent revenue. The difference is the engagement structure, not the level of involvement or accountability. Fractional CROs are typically used by businesses that need senior commercial leadership but aren't at the stage where a full-time hire at £150k+ is commercially justified.

Revenue Operations, or RevOps, is the function that aligns and optimises the systems, processes, and data that sit across marketing, sales, and customer success. In practice, this means CRM architecture, pipeline design, revenue reporting and forecasting, tech stack decisions, and how different go-to-market teams hand off to each other. Good RevOps means your CRM tells the truth, your pipeline reflects reality, and your revenue data supports good decisions. Poor RevOps means every forecast is a guess and every board meeting involves rebuilding a spreadsheet from scratch. For most founder-led businesses, RevOps and sales leadership are inseparable — you can't run one without the other.

The key distinction is embedded versus advisory. A sales consultant typically comes in from the outside, observes, and makes recommendations — then leaves the execution to you. A fractional CRO is embedded: they're in the pipeline reviews, managing the team, accountable for outcomes, and building something that outlasts their involvement. At UNFYS, the model is explicitly embedded. The work isn't a report or a set of slides. It's the revenue function itself: processes documented, CRM built, team managed, reporting running. The test is simple: when the engagement ends, does the business have something that works without them?

Discovery Week is a fixed-fee engagement. The exact fee depends slightly on the size and complexity of the business, but it's in the range of £3,000–£5,000. You get a structured week of diagnostic work and a clear revenue roadmap.

No. I work on fixed fees and retainers. Commission-based arrangements create the wrong incentives: they're good for closing deals fast, not for building something that works long-term. Equity occasionally makes sense for very early-stage businesses but I'd only consider it alongside, not instead of, proper compensation.

Yes. I know that's a firm answer, but it's the right one. I've seen enough situations where the stated problem and the actual problem were different things. Going straight to building without a proper diagnostic is how you end up with a well-built solution to the wrong problem. Discovery Week is how I make sure the Project is actually scoped around what needs fixing.

Most Fractional engagements run between 6 and 18 months. The sweet spot is usually 9–12 months, long enough to build something real, short enough to have a clear handover plan from day one. That said, some businesses keep an ongoing Advisory relationship after the embedded work is done, which is fine. I'll always be honest when I think the engagement has run its course.

It varies by engagement, but typically 6–10 days per month. That includes working sessions, team time, pipeline reviews, async work, and availability for time-sensitive decisions. The point isn't to fill a fixed number of days; it's to do what the business actually needs. That number tends to be higher in the early months and lighter as systems bed in.

It means I work with your business on a part-time basis as your commercial leader — typically equivalent to two to three days per week. I'm not an external consultant who comes in to observe and recommend. I'm embedded: in the pipeline reviews, managing the team, making the hiring calls, on the board reports. The difference from a full-time hire is the days, not the level of involvement.

Both, and in practice the line between them is mostly theoretical. You can't build a revenue function that works without building the infrastructure that runs it. That means CRM architecture, pipeline design, revenue reporting and forecasting, tech stack decisions, and how marketing, sales, and CS hand off to each other. I've been doing all of that alongside the leadership work for a decade. If someone tells you they do sales leadership but not RevOps, ask them how they manage a pipeline without a CRM that tells the truth, or how they forecast without data. The answer is: badly.

Depends what you mean by early-stage. I work best with businesses that have proven the product works — there's real revenue, real customers, and a founder who's done enough selling to know what works, but hasn't had time to turn it into a system. Pre-revenue or pre-product-market-fit businesses are usually not the right fit, because the problem at that stage is different to what I solve. If you're not sure, tell me what's going on and we'll figure it out.

Yes, this is actually a common situation. A mid-level sales leader who's capable of executing but doesn't have the experience or authority to make the bigger structural calls is a good setup for Fractional or Advisory. We'd work out together what the right model is: whether it's me operating alongside them as a senior resource, or an Advisory relationship where I'm coaching and challenging them.

Primarily B2B, primarily services and software. I've worked with SaaS businesses, professional services firms, B2B marketplaces, and consultancies. The common thread is complex B2B sales: longer cycles, relationship-dependent, multiple stakeholders. I don't have a background in transactional or B2C, and I won't pretend to.

Discovery Week can usually start within two to three weeks of an initial conversation, depending on my current capacity and your scheduling. If there's urgency, say so and we'll see what's possible. I'd rather be honest about availability than overcommit.

Both. I'm based in the UK and work with businesses across Europe. Remote-first is usually fine for ongoing Fractional and Advisory work. For Discovery Week and the early stage of a Project or Fractional, some face-to-face time tends to produce better work. I'll be upfront about what I think is needed.

Everything shared with me is treated as confidential. I'm happy to sign an NDA before any detailed conversations. I anonymise all client work in any public case studies or writing; the situations and outcomes are real, the names aren't. I don't talk about client businesses with other clients.

Yes, almost always. A broken CRM is one of the most common things I find in Discovery Week: not just poorly configured, but set up around a process that no longer matches how the business actually sells. Fixing it is usually one of the first things we do. Not because the tool matters most, but because everything else (forecasting, pipeline review, revenue reporting, handoffs) depends on it being honest. A CRM that lies to you isn't a database, it's a liability.

It's one of the first things we'd sort. You can't run a revenue function without knowing what's actually happening in it. If I can't tell you what your conversion rate is at each pipeline stage, or what your average deal cycle looks like, or where deals are consistently dying, I'm guessing. And guessing is expensive. Building the reporting isn't complicated — it's usually a few hours of CRM work once the pipeline architecture is right. But it needs to happen early, because everything else — forecasting, team management, board reporting — depends on it.