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Fractional CRO, Agency or First Sales Hire? What an Early-Stage SaaS Business Needs

Comparing a full-time head of sales, a fractional CRO, a RevOps agency and doing it yourself, with UK costs, for SaaS businesses between first customers and €2M ARR.

By Sachin Shah · 19 October 2026 · 6 min read

Quick answer: Below about €2M ARR, most SaaS businesses are better off without a full-time sales leader or an advice-only fractional CRO. What works is someone hands-on who sells with the founder, writes down what works, builds the tools to run it and helps hire the first seller.

The short answer

If your SaaS business has paying customers but less than about €2M in annual recurring revenue (ARR), you probably don’t need a full-time sales director yet, and you don’t need more advice. You need someone who will sell with you, write down what works, build the tools to run it, and help you hire your first seller when the time comes.

Here is how the usual options compare.

The four options most founders weigh

Option	Typical UK cost	Good at	Where it falls short below €2M ARR
Full-time head of sales	£160k to £260k base, plus 28 to 35% employer costs	Full commitment, building a team	Expensive, slow to hire, and often too early
Well-known fractional CRO	About £6k to £15k a month	Senior experience, board credibility	Often advice heavy, with little hands-on selling
RevOps or CRM agency	About £1,300 to set up, then around £2,500 a month on a minimum term	Building the CRM, automations and reports	They build the tools but don’t sell or coach
Keep selling yourself	Your time	You know the product best	No process, no forecast, and sales stop when you’re busy

Sources: Fractional Quest and Fractionus for salaries and fractional rates (2026), and published UK agency price lists.

Why fractional sales leadership gets a bad name

SaaStr founder Jason Lemkin has argued that a fractional VP of sales rarely works at an early-stage start-up. His main worries are fair:

• Founders get advice, but nobody does the selling.
• A process person can’t create demand for a product nobody knows yet.
• The first salesperson never gets hired.
• Meetings and decks feel like progress, but revenue doesn’t move.

He also says it can work when the person is genuinely hands-on and helps hire the full-time leader. That is the test to use.

What to look for instead

Whoever you bring in before €2M ARR should be able to say yes to all of these:

1. Will you sell with me? On calls, in follow-ups and in outbound, not just in a weekly review.
2. Will you keep the customers we have? Churn quietly eats growth at this stage. Fixing customer success often comes before chasing new deals.
3. Will you build the tools? A CRM people use, a website that turns visitors into demos, and automations that save time.
4. Will you write it down? A playbook that stays with you when they step back.
5. Will you help me hire? The right first seller, with a process they can pick up on day one.

How we do it

This is the gap SS Consultancy Group was set up for. We sell alongside the founder, and our studio builds the websites, CRMs and automations the plan needs.

At Certainly, an AI customer service platform, we came in during a turnaround, steadied customer success so existing customers stayed, then added more than €1.5M in net new business. We rebuilt their website in 7 days along the way. Read the Certainly story.

If that sounds like what your business needs, book a free revenue review or read more about revenue consulting.

Sachin Shah, founder of SS Consultancy Group. Sachin started his career cold-calling Fortune 500 companies, went on to run the revenue function at an AI software company, and has generated €60M of qualified pipeline and closed more than €2M in ARR. He now runs revenue consulting for brands up to €2M ARR, and his studio builds websites and automations.