Services / Fractional CS/PS Leadership
Fractional CS/PS Leadership
Put a senior CS or PS leader in the seat before you make the full-time hire.
Jeff works as the functional lead for the customer success or professional services team. He attends the leadership meetings, takes the customer calls that need a senior voice, manages the people doing the work and delivers work product every week.
25+Years CS/PS Leadership
$4B+Revenue Retained
4,500+Churn Cases Analyzed
40+Turnarounds Completed
Who It's For
Built for companies that need the leader now and can't wait out a search.
The usual triggers are a VP who left, a team that grew faster than its management layer, or a sponsor that wants post-sales fixed before the next board meeting. A full-time search for a VP of Customer Success or a CCO takes months, and the team still has to run in the meantime. Fractional leadership covers that gap, and it often clarifies what the permanent role should look like.
Good fit
When fractional leadership makes sense
- The head of CS or PS has left and the search will take months.
- The team grew faster than its management layer.
- A PE-backed company has a post-sales turnaround on a deadline.
- A founder-led company is ready for its first post-sales leader and wants to get the role right.
Scope
What Jeff owns
- Leadership team meetings and post-sales reporting to the CEO and board.
- Day-to-day management of CS, implementation, PS or support staff.
- Escalations and executive conversations with customers.
- Process, playbook and tooling decisions for the post-sales team.
- Weekly work product the team can put to use immediately.
How It Works
How a fractional engagement runs
The engagement is scoped to the problem, and it runs on the company's own operating cadence.
01
Scope
We agree on the teams Jeff will lead, the decisions he owns and how the company will measure success.
02
Embed
Jeff joins the leadership meetings, the team's operating cadence and the open customer escalations.
03
Deliver weekly
Every week the company gets work product the team can use, such as playbooks, reports, process fixes and coaching.
04
Hand off
When the permanent leader starts, Jeff hands over the operation, the documentation and the plan.
How It Compares
Fractional leadership and advisory are different engagements
Advisory gives a CEO or CS leader a senior thinking partner while the team does the work. In a fractional engagement Jeff is in the seat, so he runs the meetings, manages the staff and owns the deliverables.
Fractional
Jeff leads the team
He manages the staff, owns the plan and joins customer calls that need a senior voice in the room.
Advisory
Jeff advises the leader
He meets weekly with the CEO or CS leader, who keeps ownership of the team and the decisions.
Both
Weekly work product
Each engagement produces work the team can use that week, from playbooks to board reporting.
Next Step
Who is in the seat
Jeff Kushmerek has led customer success and professional services organizations for 25 years, including as VP of a professional services organization that went public in 2012. He wrote Retention Starts in Implementation and the HubSpot Customer Success Workspace Operators Manual, and he runs the same Four Rs operating model in every engagement.
Read about the team →
Related Services
Other ways to work with us
Strategic Advisory
Weekly sessions with Jeff for CEOs and CS leaders who want a senior thinking partner.
Learn about Advisory →
Operational Build & Execution
We build the workflows, models and playbooks, train the team and hand the operation back running.
Learn about Execution →
Post-Sales Audit
A ground-up review of the post-sales operation that finds what is driving churn and ranks what to fix first.
Learn about the Audit →
Common Questions
Questions about the fractional engagement
What does fractional CS or PS leadership look like day to day?
Jeff acts as the functional team lead. He attends leadership meetings, works directly with customers and stakeholders, oversees CS or PS staff and delivers weekly work product. When something needs to get built or a customer call needs a senior voice in the room, that is part of the engagement.
How is fractional leadership different from strategic advisory?
In a fractional engagement Jeff leads the team and owns the deliverables. In an advisory engagement he meets weekly with the CEO or CS leader, who keeps ownership of the team and the decisions.
Which functions can a fractional leader cover?
Jeff covers customer success, onboarding and implementation, professional services, support and renewals, in any combination the company needs.
Do you work with PE-backed companies?
A significant share of our work is with PE portfolio companies that need a fast post-sales turnaround, and fractional leadership is often how that turnaround starts.
What happens when the company hires a permanent leader?
Jeff hands over the operation, the documentation and the plan so the new leader starts with a working team.
Talk through the gap in the leadership team.
We will cover what the team needs, how long the gap is likely to last and whether fractional leadership is the right fit.
