Why More B2B Companies Are Turning to Fractional Services (And What It Means for Your GTM Strategy)

If you have an operations gap and you know a full-time hire is not the right answer right now, you are in good company. The traditional hiring process for a senior GTM operations role takes 8-16 weeks, costs anywhere from $150,000 to $400,000 in total first-year expenses, and still carries the risk that the person is not the right fit once they are in the seat.

That calculation is why the fractional model has moved from a niche workaround to a mainstream strategy. According to the Frak Conference State of Fractional Industry Report 2024, the number of fractional professionals in the United States doubled from 60,000 in 2022 to 120,000 in 2024. The global fractional executive market now exceeds $5.7 billion and is growing at 14% annually. These numbers reflect a genuine shift in how companies think about talent, moving away from a binary choice between full-time and nothing toward a flexible, scalable resource you adjust based on what you actually need.

We built InTandem’s fractional support model around this reality. We match B2B companies with pre-vetted, execution-focused experts across Sales Ops, Marketing Ops, CS Ops, and GTM AI Enablement, and we do it in under 72 hours. This post covers why fractional is growing, what is driving that demand, and how we think about delivering it across each of those four functions.

Why Fractional Is Growing, and Why It Is Not a Trend

The numbers above tell part of the story. What is more telling is who is going fractional. According to the same Frak Conference report, 72.8% of fractional professionals have 15 or more years of experience. Companies are not accessing part-time junior talent. They are engaging battle-tested practitioners on flexible terms.

That distinction matters because the fractional model used to carry a stigma, the assumption that you were getting a B-player who could not land a full-time role. That perception has not aged well. LinkedIn data shows that professionals self-identifying as fractional leaders grew from 2,000 in 2022 to more than 110,000 by late 2024. The talent is real, and the demand is accelerating.

The Economics Are Hard to Argue With

The cost comparison is stark. A full-time VP-level hire in a GTM operations function can cost $300,000 to $550,000 or more in year one when you factor in salary, benefits, bonuses, recruiting fees, and the 3–6 month ramp before they are fully productive. Fractional support at a comparable seniority level typically runs 20–40% of that cost, depending on scope and hours.

That is not a small delta. That is the difference between a six-figure operations problem and a manageable monthly line item. And the output difference? Often negligible. Organizations using fractional sales leaders see average revenue increases of 24–32% within the first year of engagement, according to industry benchmarks.

Three Situations Where Fractional Consistently Wins

There are specific moments when fractional support outperforms a full-time hire almost every time:

→ You have a capability gap. Your team is solid but missing a specific skill set, such as Salesforce CPQ expertise, Gainsight administration, or AI-driven lead scoring. A fractional expert fills that gap without adding permanent overhead.

→ You are in a transition. Parental leave, a departing team member, a post-acquisition integration. You need coverage now, not in four months after a hiring process.

→ You want to test before committing. Fractional engagements let you validate the function, define the scope, and understand what a full-time hire would actually need to do before you write a job description.

Where InTandem Focuses: Four GTM Functions That Benefit Most from Fractional

Not all fractional engagements are created equal. The functions where fractional support creates the most leverage tend to be highly specialized, deeply cross-functional, and genuinely difficult to hire for on a full-time basis. That is why we have concentrated our network and delivery model around four specific areas. Here is how we approach each one.

Sales Operations: Build the Systems That Let Your Team Sell

Sales teams rarely lose deals because they lack talent. More often, they lose because the systems around them create friction: messy CRM data, unreliable forecasts, comp plans that confuse reps, and manual processes that eat time that should go toward closing.

Our Sales Ops experts embed directly into your team to design and run the operational layer that makes selling faster and more predictable. That means CRM cleanup and workflow standardization, scalable compensation plan design, reporting and dashboards built on clean data, and process automation that removes the repetitive work slowing your reps down. They also handle territory design, removing overlaps, evaluating segments and capacity, and giving reps clear ownership from day one.

The fractional model fits Sales Ops well because the work is often project-shaped. You need someone who can build a territory model, fix your forecasting process, or migrate your CRM, and then maintain it. That scope does not always justify a full-time hire, especially when you need someone with 10-plus years of Salesforce or HubSpot experience who has done this exact work before.

Marketing Operations: Connect Your Data, Prove Your Pipeline Impact

Marketing teams face a version of the same problem: they are generating activity, but they cannot clearly show how that activity translates to pipeline. Attribution is broken, lead management has gaps, reporting lives in three different spreadsheets, and the sales team does not trust the MQLs they are receiving.

Our Marketing Ops experts build the systems that make marketing performance visible and credible. That includes MAP setup and administration across platforms like HubSpot, Marketo, and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, MQL scoring models aligned to your actual buyer journey, lead routing automation that gets qualified leads to the right rep fast, and dashboards that show leadership exactly what is driving pipeline.

The fractional value here is especially clear when you consider the tool-specificity involved. A Marketo expert and a HubSpot expert are not interchangeable. Finding someone full-time who deeply knows your specific MAP, understands your GTM motion, and can work across the marketing-to-sales handoff is genuinely difficult. Fractional gives you access to that specialist expertise without the four-month search.

“When I joined Milliken, I identified the need to standardize our marketing platform and CRM practices. Due to my team’s limited capacity, I found InTandem to partner with us on this large and complex project. They are my most trusted agency partner and instantly integrated themselves as a part of our team.”
April Whittington, Head of Digital Marketing, Milliken

Customer Success Operations: Turn Retention Into a Growth Engine

CS Ops is often the last function to get dedicated operational support, which is ironic, because it is one of the highest-leverage areas for revenue. Expansion and retention are cheaper to drive than new logo acquisition, and yet most CS teams are still managing health scores in spreadsheets, reacting to churn signals after the fact, and operating without a clear playbook for expansion.

Our CS Ops experts build the post-sale systems that change that dynamic. They design customer health models that surface risk early, create structured onboarding workflows that reduce early churn, build expansion motions that give CS and sales teams clear triggers and ownership, and administer the CS tooling (whether that is Gainsight, Salesforce, HubSpot, or something else) that supports all of it.

The fractional fit is strong here for a specific reason: CS Ops maturity often lags behind Sales and Marketing Ops maturity at growing companies. You may not be ready for a full-time CS Ops hire, but you are absolutely ready to stop managing customer health in a shared Google Sheet. A fractional expert gets you to operational maturity faster than any other path.

→ Expansion enablement: Identify and act on growth opportunities earlier in the customer lifecycle

→ Health scoring: Move from reactive churn response to proactive risk management

→ Onboarding design: Set the foundation for long-term retention from day one

GTM AI Enablement: Operationalize AI Before Your Competitors Do

Every GTM team is being asked to do more with AI right now. The challenge is that most companies approach it in one of two ways: they are either not doing it at all because they do not know where to start, or they are adding AI tools on top of inconsistent data and broken processes, which makes the AI outputs unreliable.

Our GTM AI Enablement experts fix the foundation first, then apply AI where it creates real leverage. That means cleaning and structuring your GTM data so AI runs on accurate inputs, implementing intelligent lead routing and scoring that uses intent signals and ICP fit, embedding deal intelligence that surfaces risk and priority opportunities across your funnel, and consolidating your AI tool stack to reduce overlap and cost.

The fractional model is well-suited to AI enablement work. The expertise required is narrow and specialized; you need someone who knows Clay, n8n, Relevance AI, or Zapier and understands how to connect those tools to your existing CRM and MAP. That skill set is rare, and it is rarely needed at 40 hours a week. A fractional AI enablement expert can evaluate your current state, implement the right automations, and hand off a system your team can actually use.

The risk of waiting: AI adoption in GTM is moving fast. Companies that build the operational foundation now will have a compounding advantage over the next 12–24 months. Fractional gives you a way to start building that foundation without betting on a full-time hire in a role that is still evolving.

How InTandem Delivers Fractional Support Differently

The fractional market is growing, which means there are more options than ever. Most of them send you whoever is available. We do not work that way.

InTandem curates every match based on your specific tech stack, industry, and use case, drawing from a network with a sub-5% acceptance rate. That vetting process is what allows us to guarantee a match in under 72 hours, because we already know who is in the network and what they have done. When we introduce you to an expert, they have already solved your exact problem before.

What an Engagement Looks Like

→ Discovery and audit call: You tell us your goals, challenges, and roadblocks

→ AI-powered expert screening: We use AI and human review to identify the best match for your specific needs

→ Match introduction: You meet the expert within 72 hours and confirm the fit

→ Expert joins your team: They are ready to execute on day one with no ramp or training required

Engagements start at 20 hours per month with a 3-month minimum. You can scale hours up or down as your priorities shift. If the match is not right, we will find you another expert within 72 hours at no charge.

“I have leveraged InTandem across 3 different companies: Acquia, HubSpot, and Built In. In each case, we were short on experienced analytics resources so I reached out to Michael Ingram for help. We were able to quickly tap into the InTandem expert network to find resources with the depth of analytics expertise I was targeting.”
Channing Ferrer, Former Chief Revenue Officer, Built In

The fractional model works when the match is right. That is the part most providers get wrong, and the part we have built our entire process around.

Ready to Find Your Expert?

If you have a gap in Sales Ops, Marketing Ops, CS Ops, or GTM AI Enablement and you need it filled faster than a traditional hire allows, fractional is worth a serious look. The market has validated the model. The economics are clear. The only question is whether the match is right for your specific situation.

That is what we help you figure out. Explore our fractional support model or go directly to the service area where you need the most help:

Sales Operations

Marketing Operations

Customer Success Operations

GTM AI Enablement

Tell us what is not working. We will find the expert who has already solved it.

Frequently Asked Questions