You’re about to hire a fractional CMO, and nobody in the room is going to question it.

The logic is too clean. You need the experience, you can’t carry the salary, so you buy it by the day. Two days a week of someone who’s done it before, for a fraction of what a permanent hire would cost.

Then the plan arrives.

And the plan is always the same plan.

This isn’t a piece about fractional CMOs being bad at their jobs. Most of the ones I know are good, and some are very good. It’s a piece about what you’re actually buying, which is usually not what you think.

Six questions. Ask them before you sign, because afterwards they sound like an accusation.

1. Will this role own price and proposition, or only promotion?

Pricing is the strongest single lever on company profit there is. Fewer than fifteen per cent of businesses let marketing anywhere near it.

So think about what you’re setting up. Someone comes in two days a week. No headcount. No authority over price, product or who you sell to. And a revenue target.

They’ll pull the only lever you left them.

Campaigns.

Then everyone acts surprised.

2. Which of my numbers will my finance lead validate first?

Marketing marks its own homework nearly everywhere. That’s not a scandal, it’s just what happens when nobody else is looking.

BCG found that businesses where marketing and finance genuinely agree on how things are measured unlock financial improvements of twenty to forty per cent. They also found that only seven per cent of companies could say who was actually accountable for marketing return.

Seven.

So ask which number gets checked by someone outside marketing, and when. Before you sign, not after.

3. What happens in month thirteen?

Fractional engagements are short. Marketing effects are long. Nobody involved wants to raise it.

The Effie and System1 analysis of 1,265 campaigns found the biggest gains came from work that ran beyond two years, and that brands which kept changing creative direction produced weaker, blander, less recognisable work each time they did it.

Three fractional hires across three years is three restarts.

Every one of them will report a good quarter.

4. What would you need to see before you propose anything?

This is the one that tells you most, and it works because they’ll answer it honestly. They won’t know it’s a test.

Watch which way they reach.

Reach for an audit, a competitor scan and a website review, and they’re going to sell you activity.

Reach for what a customer costs you to win, and what that customer is worth once you’ve got them, and they’re thinking about your money.

Almost everyone reaches for the audit. It isn’t a character flaw. It’s what the training produces.

5. What stays in my business on the last day?

There are two possible endings here and they’re very different.

One: you own the cost of buying a customer, broken down by channel. You own what that customer is worth, in numbers your accountant will accept. You own a measurement that keeps running after the consultant has gone.

Two: you own a campaign calendar, three supplier contracts and a habit.

Put the answer in the contract. Then watch the room while you say that.

6. When would you tell me to spend less?

A retainer pays for continuation. Everybody involved understands this and nobody says it.

So ask the question that costs them money.

Anyone willing to tell you to cut spend in a segment that’s losing you money is arguing against their own renewal. Which is exactly why the answer is worth having.

While you’re there, ask how many other clients they’re carrying this month.

Now the part that isn’t about them.

I’ve been on the other side of this. I’ve had the revenue target and no authority over price, product or hiring, and I did what anyone does in that position. I optimised the only thing I was allowed to touch and I reported on it enthusiastically.

The fractional CMO market didn’t appear because marketers got worse. It appeared because the permanent role became impossible to defend.

Marketing spent thirty years measuring itself with numbers borrowed from sales. Leads, pipeline, influenced revenue, attribution. It worked well enough until finance got sophisticated enough to ask whether the pipeline would have arrived anyway, and at that point the whole measurement framework had no answer.

A role you can’t evidence is a role you eventually buy by the day.

So the fractional CMO isn’t the problem. They’re the consequence.

Which means the six questions are really only one question, asked six ways.

Are you hiring someone to run marketing, or are you hiring someone to find out whether your marketing pays?

Those are different jobs. The second one is harder to sell, harder to buy, and the only one that changes anything.

Ask which they’re offering. Most won’t have been asked before.