Most founders I talk to frame this as “can we afford a Head of Sales?” and then compare a salary with a consultant’s monthly fee. That comparison is wrong in both directions. A full-time hire costs a lot more than the salary, and a fractional leader isn’t right for every business. Here’s the honest maths for Australia in 2026.

What a full-time Head of Sales really costs

Start with salary. Payscale’s 2026 data puts the median base salary for a sales director in Sydney at about A$147,000, with most between A$93,000 and A$196,000. Commission and bonus sit on top, and total pay reaches around A$245,000 at the top end. Payscale data is self-reported, so treat it as a guide rather than a quote, but it’s a reasonable place to start.

Then add the costs that don’t appear in the job ad:

• Super: the super guarantee has been 12% since 1 July 2025, and the ATO confirms it stays at 12% for 2026–27.
• Payroll tax: in NSW it’s 5.45% of wages above A$1.2 million a year. If your total payroll is under that, it doesn’t apply. If it’s over, every new salary attracts it.
• Recruiter fees: Australian agencies typically charge 15–25% of salary for permanent roles, and 25–33% for executive search.
• Equipment and software: a laptop, CRM seat, call recorder, Sales Navigator and the rest add up to several thousand dollars a year.
• Ramp-up: a new sales leader rarely produces at full pace for the first few months. You pay full salary while they learn your product, customers and market.

A worked example

Take a Sydney Head of Sales on a A$150,000 base with A$40,000 commission at target:

Base salary	A$150,000
Commission and bonus at target	A$40,000
Super at 12%	A$22,800
Recruiter fee at 20% of base	A$30,000
Equipment and software	A$6,000
Year-one cost before payroll tax	A$248,800
Add NSW payroll tax at 5.45%, if it applies	about A$10,400

That’s roughly A$250,000 to A$260,000 in year one, before you count the months it takes to get up to speed. If the hire doesn’t work out, you pay much of it again to replace them.

What a fractional Head of Sales costs

A fractional leader works part-time across a small number of companies, usually on a monthly retainer. Fractionus, which tracks fractional executive rates in Australia, puts senior fractional day rates at about A$1,200 to A$2,500, and most retainers between A$7,000 and A$18,000 a month depending on the role and days involved. There’s no super, payroll tax or recruiter fee on a contractor’s invoice, although GST usually applies.

At A$10,000 a month, a year costs A$120,000. That’s less than half the full-time figure, but you get fewer hours. The real question is whether you need the hours or the expertise.

When full-time is the right call

• You already have a sales process that works and you need someone to run it every day.
• You have three or more reps who need daily coaching and management.
• You have the runway to absorb a slow ramp and a possible mis-hire.

When fractional is the smarter move

• The founder is still the main seller and needs to hand over properly.
• You need the strategy, pricing, process and CRM set up before you hire.
• You want someone senior to hire and onboard your first salespeople, so they aren’t managed by someone learning on the job.
• You’re not sure yet whether sales or marketing is the real bottleneck.

A common path is to start fractional, build the process and hire the first reps, and then hire a full-time leader once there’s a team to lead and a playbook that works. The fractional leader can help write the job description and interview the candidates.

Want to run your own numbers? The Fractional vs Full-Time Calculator lets you change every figure above.

Sources

1. Payscale: Director of Sales salary in Sydney (2026)
2. ATO: Key superannuation rates and thresholds
3. Payroll tax rates and thresholds 2026–27 (austax.tools, from Revenue NSW)
4. Scale Suite: Recruitment agency costs in Australia 2026
5. 9cv9: Australia recruitment agency fees 2026
6. Fractionus: Fractional executive cost in Australia

More of your buyers now start their research by asking an AI assistant instead of typing into Google. “Who are the best B2B sales consultants in Sydney?” “What should I look for in a CRM for a ten-person team?” If ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity don’t mention you, you’re not on the shortlist, and you won’t know you were left off.

The good news is that most of what gets you recommended is within your control. Here’s what the research says, and what to do about it.

What AI assistants actually cite

AI assistants build their answers from sources they trust, and those sources are not always your website. Peec AI analysed 30 million citations across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews in March 2026. The most-cited domains overall were Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, Wikipedia and Forbes, followed by review sites like G2. Reddit and YouTube were the only two in the top five for every engine.

Each engine also has its own habits. An earlier study by Profound, covering August 2024 to June 2025, found Wikipedia made up almost half of ChatGPT’s top-ten citations, while Reddit led for Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews. Peec found G2 in Perplexity’s top five, which matters if you sell software to businesses.

And ranking well on Google is not enough on its own. Frase’s analysis found Google rankings still predict citations in Google’s own AI Overviews, but barely predict them in ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini.

Six steps to get recommended

1. Find out where you stand

Ask the assistants the questions your buyers ask, in a logged-out or private window so your own history doesn’t skew the answer. Note whether you’re mentioned, recommended, or missing, and who appears instead. Our free AI Search Visibility Checker writes the questions for you and keeps score.

2. Make sure AI can read your site

Check your robots.txt doesn’t block AI crawlers such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot. Verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console and submit a sitemap. Bing’s index powers Microsoft Copilot, so it’s worth the ten minutes. Add structured data that says who you are and what you do. An llms.txt file is cheap to add, but don’t expect it to work miracles on its own.

3. Say what you do, plainly

AI assistants summarise. If your homepage says “we unlock potential through innovative solutions”, there’s nothing to summarise. Say what you do, who for and where, in the first two sentences. Then answer the questions buyers actually ask: what it costs, how long it takes, how you compare with the alternatives, and who it’s not for.

4. Be present where AI looks

This is the step most businesses skip. If the engines cite Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn and review sites, you need a genuine presence there:

• YouTube: short, useful videos answering your buyers’ questions.
• LinkedIn: an active company page and a founder who posts useful thinking, not just announcements.
• Review sites: ask happy customers for reviews on Google and the directories in your industry, and on G2 or Capterra if you sell software.
• Communities: take part in Reddit threads and industry forums where your buyers ask for advice. Be useful; obvious self-promotion backfires.

5. Be consistent everywhere

If your business is described three different ways across your site, LinkedIn, Google Business Profile and directories, AI assistants have to guess which is right. Use the same name, description, location and contact details everywhere.

6. Measure it every month

AI answers change. Re-run your questions monthly, or use a tracking tool. FreeSOV is free if you bring your own API keys, and paid platforms like Searchable add audits and reporting. Both are in Adam’s Stack with current prices.

What not to do

• Don’t publish dozens of thin AI-written pages hoping one gets picked up. Assistants favour sources that are useful and trusted.
• Don’t post fake reviews or astroturf Reddit. It’s against the platforms’ rules and it’s easy to spot.
• Don’t treat this as separate from good marketing. Being clear, useful and well regarded is what gets you cited.

Sources

1. Peec AI: Most-cited domains in AI search (March 2026)
2. Peec AI: Most-cited domains by engine (March 2026)
3. Search Engine Roundtable: Profound study of ChatGPT, AI Overviews and Perplexity sources
4. Frase: Which AI engines cite which sources

In 2021 I started Nonna Tina’s, an Italian-inspired pie business. I had spent years selling software to businesses, and I assumed pies would be a completely different game. They weren’t. Since then we’ve sold more than 11,000 pies, catered for teams at companies like TikTok, Stan, Airtasker and DocuSign, and won gold at Australia’s Best Pie Competition in 2023 with our Bolognese pie. Almost everything that worked was something I already knew from B2B sales, just with pastry.

1. Let them taste it

Nobody orders catering for a whole office from a menu they’ve never tried. The fastest way to a corporate order was getting the pies in front of the people who would eat them. That’s a free trial or a good demo in software terms: lower the risk for the buyer and let the product do the selling. If your sales process asks buyers to commit before they’ve experienced anything, you’re making it harder than it needs to be.

2. Find the person who actually buys

In corporate catering, the CEO doesn’t pick lunch. The office manager does, and their reputation is on the line every time they book a supplier. Make them look good and they’ll book you again and recommend you. B2B is the same. The person with the title isn’t always the person who runs the process, and the champion who has to live with the decision matters as much as the one who signs it.

3. Let someone else say you’re good

Telling people your pies are great is marketing. A gold medal from a national competition is proof. Third-party credibility (awards, reviews, case studies, a recognisable client list) does more selling than anything you say about yourself. It’s also exactly what AI assistants look for when they decide who to recommend.

4. The event is the easy part

One trade expo gave us more than 300 buyer leads. The expo was the easy part. The value was all in the follow-up: fast, personal, and organised enough that no lead went cold. I’ve seen the same pattern at every software event I’ve worked: the companies that win are rarely the ones with the biggest stand, they’re the ones with a follow-up plan before the doors open.

5. Repeat orders beat new orders

We built up 35 corporate catering clients, and the business got easier the moment they started reordering without being chased. Retention is the cheapest growth there is. In software we call it net revenue retention. In catering it’s just “they booked again”. Either way, the work you do after the first sale decides whether you have a business.

6. Know your story in 60 seconds

In 2024, Nonna Tina’s was one of 30 businesses selected to pitch to Gordon Ramsay and Janine Allis on Food Stars. Nothing sharpens your pitch like knowing you’ll get one shot in front of people who have heard thousands. If you can’t explain who you help, why it matters and why you, in under a minute, your buyers will struggle to explain it to their boss.

The lesson underneath all of it

Selling to businesses isn’t about the product category. It’s about lowering risk for the buyer, making your champion look good, proving it with someone else’s words, following up properly, and keeping the customers you win. Pies or platforms, it’s the same job.