The level
Where the business sits now, in one word and one paragraph, with the six factors underneath it so the reader can see what pulled the level down.
Fractional CFO and FD networks
Your buyer cannot see the gap you sell into
A founder knows the numbers arrive late and tell them nothing. That is as far as it goes. They cannot say what a finance function should produce, which part of it is missing, or what a business their size normally pays for it. So they do nothing, and the gap you would be hired to close stays invisible until something breaks.
Not open yet. Ours scores your own pipeline rather than a client’s ledger, and it is four minutes on the other side of the screen.
Before
A discovery call, unpaid
After
Level 2 of 5The buyer
Founders can describe the symptom perfectly and the problem not at all
Every line on the left gets said on a discovery call. Nothing on the right ever does, and the right is where your retainer lives.
What they can say
- The numbers turn up about three weeks after month end.
- I do not know which customers actually make money.
- The bank balance looks fine, so I assume we are fine.
- My accountant does the year end and I like them.
What they cannot
- What the finance function should be producing, and when.
- Which of those things is missing, and in what order they matter.
- What a business this size normally pays for that work.
- Whether the person doing it now is the person who should be.
This is why the sale takes three conversations. The first two are spent building a picture of what good looks like, for free, and the founder only starts weighing the money once that picture exists. Everything below is an attempt to move that work in front of the first call instead of behind it.
How the work arrives now
Three routes in, and all three end in the same unpaid hour
Network, LinkedIn and accountant referral. Then a discovery call and an informal look at the accounts, which is a senior person’s afternoon spent finding out whether a prospect was ever going to buy.
67%
A founder will not book a call to find out whether they have a problem.
They will answer 12 questions about their own business to find out, because that costs four minutes and no eye contact. The call they book afterwards is a different call: it opens with the level they landed on and the two capabilities they themselves marked as missing.
The unpaid review does not disappear. It moves behind a qualification step. The afternoon gets spent on a business with a named gap, rather than on a founder who was always going to keep their bookkeeper.
What we would build
The finance function maturity index
Five levels, from reactive bookkeeping to strategic finance partner, scored on reporting cadence, forecasting, cash discipline, unit economics, board readiness and systems.
- Level 1
Reactive
The books get closed when somebody chases. Cash is whatever the banking app says this morning. There is no forecast, and the last set of accounts was a compliance exercise for somebody else’s benefit.
- Level 2
Recorded
Accurate, on time, and entirely backward looking. The founder receives a pack nobody talks them through, so it gets filed rather than read, and every decision is still made on instinct plus the bank balance.
- Level 3
Reviewed
A monthly pack with commentary, a 12 week cash view and budget against actual. Somebody is now explaining variances. This is where most owner-managed businesses stop, and where a fractional engagement usually starts.
- Level 4
Forward
A rolling forecast that gets re-run, scenarios with numbers attached, and margin visible by product, contract or customer. The founder can answer what happens if the biggest customer leaves, without a weekend of spreadsheet work.
- Level 5
Strategic
The numbers set the decisions rather than reporting on them. Board ready, lender ready, buyer ready. Very few businesses under 50 people get here without somebody senior owning it, which is the entire argument for the retainer.
A ladder does something a score out of 100 cannot. It tells a founder where they are, what the next rung is called, and what it takes to get there. That is a scope of work in everything but name. It also gives the relationship somewhere to go: the engagement that takes them from 2 to 3 is not the engagement that takes them from 3 to 4.
What they walk away with
A level, the capabilities that define the next one, and a page they forward
The founder reads the level. The person who reads it second is usually the one who has to agree to the spend.
The next rung
Named capabilities rather than advice. A rolling 13 week cash forecast, margin by customer, a monthly pack somebody walks them through. Each one is a piece of work with a size.
The order
What to fix first, and what genuinely does not matter yet. A report that lists nine improvements gets read as a sales document. One that names two gets acted on.
Who reaches your diary
Two of these bands are worth a call and the third is worth turning away
The routing is the commercial part, and it is the step most builds skip.
Levels 1 and 2 book a review
They have just watched three rungs of a ladder appear above them, each one named and costed. The call is no longer about whether they need help. It is about which rung to buy first, which is a conversation that closes.
Levels 3 and 4 go into follow-up
Written against the two capabilities their own answers marked as missing, not a monthly newsletter about cash flow. They come back when a funding round, an acquisition or a bad quarter moves the need forward.
Level 5 gets told to keep their money
A business already operating at the top rung does not need a fractional CFO and will resent being sold one. Saying so costs you nothing and it is the reason the other four bands are believed.
Your CRM ends up holding the level, the six factor scores and the date. When the same founder answers again a year later, the movement between the two is the most persuasive thing you will ever put in front of them.
Where the traffic comes from
One of these you already post on, and one you already have
No new spend is implied here. The ladder is a better destination for attention you are generating anyway.
Channel
Posts about late management accounts get engagement from exactly the wrong people and no way to tell which of them runs a business with a real problem. A level attached to a name sorts that in one click.
Channel
Content and webinars
A webinar on cash discipline ends with a poll nobody acts on. Ending it on the ladder turns attendance into a list ranked by how far each attendee is from the rung above.
Not a media channel
Your referring accountants
They want to keep the compliance work and hand on the rest. A ladder that puts compliance at level 2 without criticising anyone is the easiest thing they have ever had to forward.
What it takes
The levels are the deliverable, and defining them is your afternoon
We draft the six factors and the five rungs. You argue with them, because you are the one who has seen 40 finance functions and we have not seen yours.
That argument is the project. Everything after it is questions, wording, the report and the routing. None of it starts until the ladder is signed off as one page you would defend in front of a client.
Three packages, fixed scope. The prices are not published yet because they are not final, and when they are they go on the packages page in numbers rather than behind a form.
Questions
What fractional finance people ask before they build one
Referral still brings the best work and nothing here replaces it. What it cannot do is reach a founder who has never heard of you, at the moment they are privately wondering whether their numbers are good enough. The ladder does that, and it also gives your referring accountants something concrete to send a client instead of your phone number.
Your turn
You would not advise a founder on numbers you had not seen
Ours does the same thing to your pipeline that yours would do to their ledger. Four minutes, a score, and a report naming the step that is costing you the most enquiries.
Not open yet. When it opens, the score and the report are yours whether or not we ever speak.