Bottleneck #1 – The 3 Hidden Bottlenecks That Doom Sales Hires

Bottleneck #1: Is 40 Hours per Month Really Enough?

This is one of the first questions we hear from founders considering fractional sales help:
“Is 40 hours enough? How can someone part-time possibly drive real results?”

It’s a fair question, especially if your mental model of a high-performing salesperson is someone hustling from sunup to sundown, glued to their CRM, pounding the phones, and making magic happen. But the reality is most full-time salespeople only spend about 10–15 hours a week on actual sales activity.

Not because they aren’t working hard, because they’re buried in everything but selling.

They’re sitting in weekly syncs with three different departments, reviewing deals that haven’t closed and leads that never should’ve made it to the pipeline. They’re spending hours logging CRM data manually because no one’s set up automation. They’re chasing down marketing for collateral that was promised two weeks ago. They’re responding to Slack messages that have nothing to do with their targets. They’re rebuilding decks, tweaking proposals, filling out internal reports, and troubleshooting whatever broke in Salesforce today.

The average full-time sales role is bloated. Distracted. And expensive.

So when a founder says, “I don’t think a fractional sales pro will have enough time to be effective,” what they’re really saying is: I’m used to a broken model, and I’m scared to change it.

Constraint is a Strategy

Our Fractional Sales Professionals (FSPs) are hired to sell. That’s it. No bloat. No internal busywork. No side projects. Just focused, consistent execution on the core sales activities that move the needle:

• Prospecting

• Qualifying

• Follow-up

• Calendar booking

• Pipeline progression

That focus is a competitive advantage.

Give an experienced rep 40-60 hours of uninterrupted, high-leverage work each month, and they will absolutely outperform a distracted full-time hire who’s buried in noise.

Better Inputs. Smarter Outputs.

Most companies hiring full-time are choosing between someone junior who’s “trainable” or someone expensive who still might not work out. But with Altezza, every FSP has a minimum of 10 years in the field, and most have multiple decades of experience! That means they know what works, what doesn’t, and how to make use of every hour they’re given.

This isn’t “more affordable talent.” It’s higher-leverage talent.

You're not just getting a seller. You're getting a strategist who knows how to use constraint as a filter. When time is limited, they zero in on what delivers the highest return.

Try the Bullet Before the Cannonball

Think of this as your test fire. You don’t have to throw a six-figure salary at a rep and hope they work out. You don’t have to move someone across the country. You don’t have to make the emotional leap that usually comes with hiring full-time.

At Altezza, we believe in bullets before cannonballs. 

Start small. Test your approach. Watch what works. Then scale with confidence. When you’re trying to build a scalable sales function, precision matters more than volume.