What a Fractional VP of Sales Actually Does in the First 90 Days

One of the most common questions I get from home services business owners is some version of: "I understand what a fractional VP of sales is in theory, but what would you actually do if I hired you?" It's a fair question. The title sounds impressive but vague, and you deserve to know exactly what you're getting before you write a check.

This article answers that question specifically. It covers what happens in each phase of the first 90 days, what gets built, what gets changed, and what you should reasonably expect to see by the end of the engagement. I'm writing this from experience, not from a template. This is what I actually do.

The first 90 days are not about quick wins. They're about building something that will still be working in three years.

A fractional VP of sales is an experienced sales leader who works with your company on a part-time or project basis. You get the strategic and operational capability of a senior sales executive without the full-time salary, benefits, and long-term commitment that comes with a permanent hire.

For home services companies in the $1 million to $10 million revenue range, this model makes a lot of sense. You probably don't need a full-time VP of sales yet. But you do need someone with real sales leadership experience to build your process, develop your team, and put the infrastructure in place that will let you scale.

The key word is "leadership." A fractional VP is not a sales trainer who runs a workshop and leaves. They're not a consultant who writes a report and hands it to you. They're an operator who gets into the business, builds things, trains people, and stays accountable to results.

The first 30 days are entirely about understanding the business. I don't build anything in the first month. I observe, listen, and document.

This means listening to recorded CSR calls and, where possible, sitting in on live calls. It means riding along on estimates and service calls. It means reviewing your current metrics, if you have them, and building a baseline if you don't. It means talking to your field reps and CSRs about what they find difficult, what they feel unsupported on, and where they think the process breaks down.

It also means having a direct conversation with you, the owner, about what you're trying to build. What does success look like in 12 months? What are the constraints? What has been tried before and why didn't it work?

By the end of day 30, I have a clear picture of where the gaps are, which ones are causing the most revenue loss, and what needs to be built first. I document this in a findings summary that we review together before moving into the build phase.

The second month is where the work gets built. Based on the findings from the first 30 days, I design and document the sales process, the playbooks for each stage, and the metrics framework that will be used to track performance going forward.

For most home services companies, this includes a CSR call guide with qualification questions and objection responses, a field rep visit structure with a price presentation framework, a follow-up protocol for unclosed estimates, and a weekly metrics review template that the owner or manager can run independently.

I also work on the tools during this phase. If you don't have a CRM, we decide whether you need one and, if so, which one makes sense for your size and budget. If you have a CRM that isn't being used effectively, we set it up to actually support the process rather than just sitting there.

Everything that gets built in this phase is built with your team's input. I don't hand down a process from above. I build it with the people who will be using it, so they have ownership of it from day one.

The third month is about putting the new process into practice. This means training sessions with your CSRs and field reps, role-playing the new call guides and visit structures, and running the first few weeks of the new metrics review cadence.

It also means being available when things don't go as planned. A new process always has rough edges. Reps will have questions. Situations will come up that the playbook doesn't cover. Part of my job in this phase is to be present enough to handle those moments in real time, so the team doesn't revert to old habits when the first obstacle appears.

By the end of day 90, the process is live, the team is trained, and the metrics are being tracked. The owner has a clear picture of what's working, what still needs refinement, and what the path forward looks like.

I'm careful about making specific revenue promises, because the results depend heavily on where you're starting from and how quickly your team adopts the new process. But there are specific things you should be able to see by day 90 regardless of your starting point.

You should have a documented sales process that your whole team knows and uses. You should have metrics that tell you, at any given moment, how your CSRs and field reps are performing. You should have a weekly review cadence that keeps the process improving. And you should have a clear sense of where your biggest remaining opportunities are.

In most engagements, you also start to see measurable movement in the numbers by day 90. Booking rates from inbound calls improve. Close rates on estimates tick up. Follow-up conversion starts to show results. These are not dramatic overnight transformations. They're the early signs of a system that is starting to work.

A fractional VP of sales is not a magic solution. If your core service is poor, no sales process will save you. If your pricing is fundamentally wrong for your market, better selling won't fix it. If you're not willing to hold your team accountable to a new process, the playbook will sit in a drawer.

The engagement works when the owner is committed to the process, the team is willing to learn, and the business has a real product worth selling. Those conditions are present in most of the companies I work with. When they're not, I say so before we start.

If you're running a home services company between $1 million and $10 million in revenue, you have a sales team of any size, and your close rates or booking rates are lower than they should be, a fractional engagement is probably worth a conversation.

The free scorecard on this site is a good starting point. It will show you where your biggest gaps are and give you a sense of whether the issues are process problems, people problems, or both. From there, we can talk about whether a fractional engagement makes sense for your specific situation.