What a fractional COO costs in the UK, and what the price should buy you
The short answer: two days a month from about £2,800, a day a week from around £5,900, two days a week from around £11,200, all billed monthly. Those are my prices, published on this site, and I would rather you read them here than had to ask for them. The longer answer is what those numbers should buy you, and what makes them move.
What you are buying
You are buying days, not a person. That sounds like a technicality and it is the whole point. A full-time chief operating officer in the UK costs somewhere between £150,000 and £250,000 a year once salary, employer's National Insurance, pension, bonus and benefits are counted, plus a recruiter's fee of a quarter to a third of base, plus three to six months to find them and three more before they are useful. A fractional COO is the same calibre of person for the fraction of the week you actually have executive work for, which in most businesses under £20m is one or two days.
The day itself should be a working day, not a meeting. Pre-reading done beforehand, the problem worked in the room, and a written set of actions afterwards that the business could carry out without the executive present. If a day ends without something in writing, you have bought a conversation.
Three ways it is priced
A day rate. The simplest, and the easiest to compare badly, because a day means different things to different people. Mine is the Diagnostic Day, from £1,450: pre-reading beforehand, a structured working session, and a written action plan within 48 hours. The test of any day rate is not the number but what exists at the end of the day that did not exist at the start.
A monthly retainer. The usual shape for fractional work, because operations is a rhythm rather than an event. Two days a month, one day a week, or two days a week, billed monthly, with a short minimum term and then rolling. Mine starts with three months, because nothing useful happens in the first one, and then rolls with thirty days' notice.
A fixed-price project. Right when the outcome can be written down before the work starts: an operating model redesign, a quote-to-cash process, a value creation plan turned into a roadmap. From £9,500, typically £15,000 to £45,000, billed against milestones you have accepted.
What moves the price
Four things, in order. The size and complexity of the business, because a £2m firm with one site and a £20m firm with four are different amounts of thinking. Whether the work is on site, because travel is time, and the train is recharged at cost. How much is at stake, because an exit in eighteen months prices differently from a tidy-up. And how much of the executive's week you want, because two days a week is not simply double one day: it changes what can be carried between sessions.
What should not move it: your postcode, your sector, or the fact that you asked. Anybody who quotes higher because you look as though you can afford it is telling you something about how they will behave later.
What the price should include
Ask for these in writing before you sign anything. A written set of actions after every session, prioritised, in plain English. Availability between sessions for the question that cannot wait, at no extra charge within reason. A stated minimum term and a stated notice period, both short. No recruitment fee, no severance exposure, no notice period beyond a month once the minimum has passed. And the same person throughout: the executive you meet on day one doing the work on day ninety, with no pyramid of associates appearing on the invoice.
Six questions to ask before you sign
Who, exactly, will do the work? What does a day consist of, and what do I have at the end of it? What is the minimum term and the notice? Have you done this at the scale I am trying to reach, not just the scale I am at? Are you engaged as a business or through a personal service company, which is where IR35 questions live? And the one people forget: what would make you tell me I no longer need you?
That last one matters more than the price. The right fractional COO is working to make the business run without them, which is capability rather than dependency, and a good answer to the question sounds like a plan with an end.
When it is the wrong buy
If the role is genuinely full-time, permanent and central to the business, hire it, and a fractional executive can help you specify and recruit it. If what you need is a manager to run the day to day, a fractional COO at executive rates is the wrong tool and you will pay executive prices for scheduling. And if the seat is simply empty for six months while you recruit, that is an interim, which is a different animal with a different price; I have set the three side by side here.
Want the maths for your business?
Thirty minutes, free, and if the honest answer is that you should hire full-time, I will say so and help you write the job description.
Or send me a note if you'd rather start by typing.
Fractional executive and portfolio consultant. Two decades inside global enterprises, now working with owner-managed businesses by the day, the month or the project. The person you meet is the person who does the work. Who am I? →