Fractional leadership
Senior sales, operations or L&D leadership on a monthly retainer. In the seat in weeks, not quarters.
Mike Levine
Twenty years inside Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley building and running the programs that trained their advisors, and the same work since then at wirehouses, banks, and independent and hybrid firms.
You aren’t handed off to a junior team after the sale, because there isn’t one. That’s a real trade-off. You get twenty years of enterprise experience directly, and you don’t get the surge capacity of a large firm. If your problem needs forty consultants, I’m the wrong choice, and I’ll tell you on the first call.
What a fractional seat actually is.
I do the job. I run your sales meetings, own the number, sit on your leadership team and coach your managers. I stay on a monthly retainer until your team can run it without me.
A consultant studies your problem and hands you a report. You get someone who stays and runs it until it works.
A coach develops your people. You also get someone on the hook for the result. If your forecast is wrong, it’s my problem too.
A staffing firm sends you somebody to fill a role. You get twenty years of judgment, working with you directly, with no handoff.
Four signs the seat is already open.
Your producers are good but wildly inconsistent
You can name the top five. Nobody can say what they do differently. So it can’t be taught, and the gap between your best and your middle keeps widening.
The founder is still the operator
Every hour spent holding the firm together is an hour away from advising clients or winning business, the work only you can do.
The work is split across people who already have jobs
Three people each own a third of a function nobody owns. It gets done at nights and weekends, about as well as you’d expect.
You bought the platform and got nothing out of it
The CRM, the enablement tool and the AI practice environment are all licensed, and none of it has changed what happens in a client conversation on Tuesday.
Three functions. One operator who has run all of them.
A firm your size doesn’t need three specialists a quarter of the time. You need one person who has done each job and can tell which one your problem actually is.
Fractional sales leadership
Best for: producers who are good but inconsistent, and no system making them consistent.
The operating cadence, pipeline reviews that change behavior, a forecast that holds, and the manager coaching that makes the standard survive me. Built in the CRM your team already uses.
Fractional operations leadership
Best for: firms where decisions get made and then quietly don’t happen.
Process design, starting with the handoffs between teams that keep breaking. A reporting rhythm that tells the truth, and meetings that end in assignments with names and dates on them.
Fractional learning and development
Best for: firms with no curriculum, or one that stopped working.
Onboarding and ramp, sales and client service training, manager development, certification paths, and the scorecards that define what good sounds like so it can be measured.
The five ways firms try to solve this.
Most firms are really choosing between the first two rows. The bigger difference is that a hire is fixed the day you sign, and a retainer can be stopped.
The first ninety days.
Listen, then say the hard part out loud
Your leadership team, your managers, a sample of your real client conversations, and whatever process documentation you have. Then you hear what I found, including the parts you won’t enjoy.
Set the cadence and start running it
You agree on the meeting rhythm, and it starts that week. Your team sees something real inside the first month.
Build the standard and coach to it
You get scorecards drawn from your own best conversations, set up where the work already happens. Your managers get coached on using them. They’re the ones who keep this alive.
Hand it over
The cadence runs in the weeks I’m not in the room. Your managers coach to the standard without being reminded. By then the firm no longer depends on the seat, which is what I’m working toward from week one.
Engagements start at $10,000 a month.
I publish the floor because it saves everyone time. If that isn’t the right range for your firm, you know it now instead of after two calls.
You’re paying for a senior operator for the share of the week the job needs, with nothing fixed on your books.
Big banks and small firms, and everything in between.
Most people in this work have only ever worked in one kind of firm. I’ve worked in all of them. A process built for a wirehouse won’t survive in a twelve-person RIA, and knowing that in advance saves you a year.
Wirehouse and bank
Twenty years inside Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley building the learning architecture behind some of the largest advisor populations in the country, and the same work since at wirehouses and banks. Enterprise means compliance review, model risk, several business lines that all have to agree, and a rollout that survives all of it.
Independent and hybrid
RIAs and hybrid firms in the ten to fifty advisor range, where the founder is still advising clients and also holding the business together. The constraint is different. There’s no committee to clear and no bench either, so whatever gets built has to be run by the people already there.
Asset management and platforms
Distribution and wholesaling teams, asset managers funding advisor-facing programs, and technology platforms selling into all of the above. The same conversation seen from the other side of the desk, which is where most of the field intelligence comes from.
Client names are withheld where engagements are covered by confidentiality. References available under NDA.
An advisory firm with no operator.
An independent advisory firm of roughly forty people had grown fast into several teams with nobody holding the middle together. The founder was still the visionary and still carrying his own book.
They wanted senior operating experience. They didn’t want to take on a salary, bonus and benefits to get it. I built the sales operating system first, then stayed and ran it: leadership meetings, the operating cadence, pipeline in their CRM, and one-to-one work with the people carrying the number.
- StructureFractional seat, monthly retainer
- ScopeSales and operations leadership
- What it coversLeadership meetings, the sales cadence, and direct coaching for the people carrying the number
Where AI fits, and where it doesn’t.
Where it helps, I use it: conversation analysis to see what your best people actually do, practice environments so reps get repetitions before client meetings, and reporting that shows leadership what’s really happening in the field.
Plenty of firms bring me in and never touch an AI product. That’s a fine outcome, and I’ll tell you when it’s the right one.
The questions we get before the first call.
I already bought a platform. Does that make this pointless?
Usually the opposite. Most firms that call me have already bought something and can’t get a result out of it. I’m platform-agnostic on purpose. A good share of my work is making the tool you already own actually work.
How does this get through my compliance function?
This is the part most firms underestimate, and it’s where my experience earns its keep. I’ve taken AI practice and conversation analysis through information security review, legal, model risk and vendor onboarding inside large banks and wirehouses. I’ll tell you early what’s likely to clear and what isn’t, instead of finding out in month four.
What if I need more than the base scope?
Then I scope more, and the retainer moves with it. What I won’t do is quietly stretch one scope over twice the work, because that’s how these arrangements fail.
What if I decide I want a full-time hire instead?
Good. That’s the intended ending. You get help writing the job description, a second opinion in the interviews, and a working system handed over.
Are you one person?
Yes. I bring in specialists when a project needs them. You won’t be handed off to a junior team after the sale, because there isn’t one. That’s a real trade-off. You get twenty years of enterprise experience directly, and you don’t get the surge capacity of a large firm. If your problem needs forty consultants, I’m the wrong choice, and I’ll say so.
How will I know it’s working?
We agree up front on what the seat is accountable for. Usually that’s three things: pipeline behavior, conversation quality against a scorecard, and whether the cadence still runs in a week I’m not there. If it isn’t moving by month three, I’ll be the one raising it.
If the seat is open, let’s talk about it.
Four questions, two minutes, no email required. You’ll see the one motion worth fixing first, and where the other four rank.
Book a call with Mike Or find your bottleneck firstThe Performance Intelligence Flywheel™
Five connected motions. Each one feeds the next, and the loop tightens every quarter it runs.
SURFACE
Find what your best people actually do differently.
TEACH
Turn it into scorecards, scenarios and playbooks.
PUSH
Coach the managers. Raise the floor, not the ceiling.
COMPOUND
New hires start where the last cohort finished.
SIGNAL
Field intelligence back to the people setting strategy.
Fractional leadership is the Run practice.
Build designs the system, Run operates it, and Amplify makes performance visible while it happens. Most engagements start in one and grow into the others. Plenty stay in one, and that’s fine.
Build, sales operating systems → Amplify, AI-enabled performance →