Choosing an approach
Fractional leader, agency or full-time hire?
All three are the right answer sometimes. The mistake is choosing before you know which capability is actually blocking growth, because each option fixes a different problem.
Fractional GTM leader
Agency
Full-time hire
What you get first
A diagnosis first, so you do not fund the wrong fix. Where the go-to-market sits and what is holding it there, before any spend.
Activity. Sequences, campaigns or meetings booked against a monthly retainer.
A person, once they are found, hired and onboarded, then a 90-day learning curve.
Time to a defined plan
One business day to a four-page brief; weeks to a verified, costed plan.
Rarely produced. The plan is usually the agency's own scope of work.
Three to six months, including search, notice period and ramp.
Cost of finding out
Nothing to see the brief and walk through it. Verification is AUD 5,000, excl. GST, invoiced when the Verified Plan is released.
A retainer, typically committed for three to twelve months before you know if it works.
Salary, on-costs, recruitment fee and the cost of the quarter if the hire is wrong.
Who owns the knowledge
You do. The diagnostic and plan are yours to keep and execute, with or without further help.
The agency. The playbook, data and learning leave when the retainer ends.
The individual. It leaves with them if they leave.
Depth of seniority
Leadership-level judgement, applied to what's blocking growth.
Execution-level delivery, with senior involvement usually limited to the pitch.
Whatever level the budget reaches, often a first-time leader in a first-time role.
How it ends
By design. A 90-day review to continue, change or stop, with no lock-in.
By contract term, often with a notice period and a scramble to replace capability.
Permanently, or expensively.
Best when
Results are inconsistent, or you are about to hire your first seat, and you need evidence before committing a quarter.
The motion is already defined and measured, and you need extra volume through it.
The motion is defined and repeatable, and the job now is to run and scale it day to day.
The honest version
When each one is genuinely the better choice.
Choose an agency
When your motion is already defined, measured and converting, and the only missing ingredient is volume through it. An agency added to an undefined motion multiplies the inconsistency rather than the pipeline.
Choose a full-time hire
When the motion is repeatable and the job is to run and scale it every day. Hiring a leader to work out what the motion should be is expensive discovery with a person's career attached to the answer.
Choose a fractional leader
When results are inconsistent and nobody can point to the reason with evidence. The diagnostic names the weakest capability, and the plan tells you which of these three options to buy next, including neither.
Where this starts
The diagnostic tells you which one to buy.
The free RepAgentic Outside-In Read reads your go-to-market from public evidence and places it on the four-band maturity scale. Verification tests that against your internal evidence. Outside evidence meets inside evidence. Only what holds up drives the plan. A Rebuild or Repair band usually rules out both an agency and a hire until the motion is defined. Optimise or Scale often makes one of them the right next investment.