Why Hiring a VP of Sales Won't Fix Your Growth with Matt Lauro
Is a fractional CRO scrappy or sophisticated? In this episode of Scrappy But Successful, host Jack Tompkins sits down with Matt Lauro, founder of Fractional CRO in Charlotte, NC, to find out. With more than a decade and a half in workforce solutions and recruitment, Matt helps founder-led companies build a sales and marketing engine that scales beyond the founder's own relationships. The conversation runs from lemonade stands, stamp collections, and Pogs to retainer pricing, referral partnerships, and the bow tie model for revenue growth.
Why hiring a VP of Sales usually is not the fix
When sales go flat at a founder-led company, the knee-jerk reaction is to hire a VP of Sales or another salesperson. Matt says that is typically the wrong move. Throwing people or technology at a problem rarely solves it, and if the sales process is missing or broken, even a strong hire cannot deliver the scalable growth a founder is expecting.
His alternative is to build the sales process first, enabled by technology, and then hand it to a sales leader or even a more junior team that can follow the steps. A VP of Sales can run well into six figures all in, while a fractional leader can build the engine and let someone else run it down the road.
He also explains why a stalled hire often gets blamed on the person, when the real issue sits a level below: the sales approach and the go-to-market approach.
Leaving corporate and pricing fractional work
Matt did not jump straight from a corporate job into a new business. With a family relying on him, he started with a one-page business plan, feedback from friends in EO, and small client engagements on the side while running global marketing in the corporate world. His father-in-law advised him to build his network for a couple more years first. He made the full leap about a year and a half before we recorded, and he now sees corporate security as a false sense of security.
On pricing, he admits he lowballed at the start. Today he offers tiers (fully embedded, an extension of your team, and advisory) on a flat monthly retainer tied to a range of hours rather than hourly billing, backed by a simple one-page agreement. His first client is the one who pushed him from project work toward the retainer model.
Where clients come from and why fractionals team up
Matt's early clients were all referrals. Looking at his pipeline today, he says about a third comes from referrals, a third from LinkedIn, and a third from his website. He chose Fractional CRO as his business name on purpose: people search for the term and, increasingly, find him through ChatGPT and other AI tools.
He is also building partnerships. He has worked deals with a fractional CHRO colleague and a marketing agency entering the US market, and he passes leads to 1099 fractional CROs on his team. His rule is to take the 30-minute coffee, because relationships are what build referral networks. Jack agrees that the fractional community is more collaborative than competitive.
KPIs, the bow tie model, and the scrappy verdict
Beyond leading indicators like meetings booked, Matt tracks the full funnel from marketing qualified lead through sales qualified lead, opportunity, proposal, and win. The part he says gets overlooked is the other half of what he calls the bow tie model: the client experience after the sale, including lifetime value, retention, and referrals. Without it, he says, you end up with a leaky bucket.
The lightning round covers timing credit card charges, early clients who did not pay, an ideal client profile that started out as everybody, and the Charlotte FC bobbleheads on his desk. Matt is also writing a book called From Hustle to Engine, which he hopes to launch in November, and he runs a Substack of the same name. Jack's final verdict: 80 percent scrappy, 20 percent sophisticated.
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