On this page, CRO means Chief Revenue Officer (CRO): the executive accountable for sales, pipeline and forecast. It does not mean Contract Research Organization. If you are looking for clinical trials, field trials or regulatory research services, this is the wrong page and I will not waste your time.
A fractional Chief Revenue Officer for US market entry is a part-time revenue executive who owns your United States number while you build it, typically 10 to 20 hours per week for six to twelve months. Most companies entering the United States do not fail on product or on price. They fail because the commercial model that worked at home assumes a trust chain that does not exist in the new market, and nobody budgets for rebuilding it.
I am Andre Magrini. I ran revenue in Brazil and then in North America inside the same company, which is a different thing from advising on the crossing. From 2019 to 2022 I took the Ag Growth International Brazil operation from roughly $35M to more than $150M in revenue, moving from National Sales Manager to General Manager. From 2022 to 2025 I was Director for North America, covering the United States and Canada. I am based in the Greater Chicago area and hold a US green card. Portuguese is my native language, I work in English daily, and Spanish is workable for commercial conversation.
When you are ready for this, and when you are not
Most pages in this category tell you to hire early. That advice is wrong often enough to be expensive. Here is the trigger I actually use.
You are ready when at least one of these three is true:
- You have signed your first United States distributor or channel contract and you cannot tell whether the second one should look the same
- You have received a repeat order from a United States customer, which proves the product survives the market, and now the question is repeatability rather than viability
- You have sold through one complete season or one complete buying cycle in the United States and the number came in under plan for reasons nobody in the company can name
You are not ready when: you have never shipped to the United States, your product has no United States certification path, or your entity and tax structure is still open. None of those is a revenue problem, and no revenue leader fixes them. Get the product, the certification and the counsel first. I will say so in the first reply rather than take the retainer.
What you get, week by week
The most common complaint about fractional executives is that the buyer cannot tell what arrives. This engagement runs in four named steps, and each step has one artifact you can hold.
| Step | Weeks | What I do | What you receive |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Ground Truth | 1 to 4 | Field work in the United States: who buys, through what route, at what landed price, against which incumbent, and what they need in order to believe you | A written United States commercial model with every assumption marked verified or unverified, presented to you and to the board |
| 2. Account Map | 3 to 6 | Build the target set by name, not by segment description, and assign a route to market to each one | A named list of 30 to 50 United States target accounts, each with the buying role, the channel route, and the reason that account can be won this year |
| 3. Trust Chain | 5 to 10 | Build the evidence a United States buyer can check without calling your home country | A reference kit a buyer can verify, one signed or drafted channel partner agreement, and a twelve-month trade show and field event calendar with the specific booths, sessions and meetings that matter |
| 4. Run and Hand Over | 8 to 26 | Operate the pipeline, run the weekly review, and prepare the succession | United States pipeline stages inside your CRM, a forecast the board can read, and a written trigger that says when to hire the full-time leader |
The trade show calendar is a contracted deliverable, not a courtesy. In industrial, agricultural and food markets, a large share of the first year of a new entrant’s pipeline is created in person, at three or four events, and companies that decide their event plan in March have already lost the year.
How reporting works
A foreign owner buys predictability of information, not presence. Every week you receive one written report, in English and in Portuguese or Spanish if you want it, covering four things: what moved in the named account list, what changed in the forecast and why, what is blocked and who has to unblock it, and what I will do next week. It is one page. It goes out on the same day every week. If a week produces nothing, the report says that a week produced nothing.
The monthly version adds the channel view, the landed margin view, and a mark on which of the Ground Truth assumptions moved from unverified to verified, or failed.
Bringing a Latin American company into the United States
This is the section no competitor on this search result can write, so it is the one worth your attention. Growing revenue for a Latin American company in the United States is not a translation exercise. Six things change, and five of them are commercial rather than legal.
1. Payment terms move the whole model
A Brazilian industrial seller is used to negotiating term, interest and currency risk inside the price. In the United States channel, net 30 to net 60 is the expectation and the financing conversation happens somewhere else, often with a third party. If you carry the term the way you carried it at home, you are financing your distributor at your own cost of capital, and your working capital will run out before your pipeline matures.
2. The distributor contract is a different animal
In much of Latin America, the distributor relationship is personal and the paper follows the relationship. In the United States, the paper leads. Territory, exclusivity, minimum volume, inventory obligation, price protection, warranty responsibility, termination and post-termination stock all get written before the first order. A vague first contract is the single most expensive document a new entrant signs, because a distributor who underperforms inside an exclusive territory can freeze a whole region for the length of the term.
3. Your home list price does not survive the American channel
Between your factory gate and the United States end user sit freight, duty, insurance, warehousing, the distributor margin, the dealer margin, warranty reserve and often a rebate program. Companies routinely take the home list price, add a percentage, and discover they are either unsellable or unprofitable. The correct order is the opposite: start from what the end user pays today for the incumbent, subtract every layer of the channel, and see what is left for you. If what is left is negative, the answer is not a better sales pitch.
4. Seasonality inverts when you cross the equator
A Brazilian company whose strong quarter is built around the southern hemisphere planting and harvest calendar arrives in a market whose capital spending is built around the northern one. Your factory peak and your new market peak can land on opposite sides of the year. Handled well, that is an advantage, because it smooths your plant loading. Handled by accident, it means your United States launch quarter is your home crunch quarter, and the launch gets whatever attention is left.
5. Trust does not translate
A buyer in Ohio evaluating an unfamiliar supplier from Sao Paulo is not being provincial. They genuinely cannot check you, and the cost of being wrong lands on them personally. Every serious United States entry plan has to answer how the buyer verifies you, and most plans do not even name the problem. That is why the Trust Chain is a step with its own weeks and its own deliverable rather than a line in a slide.
6. Sixteen hours of latency kills deals nobody thinks are dying
When the person who can approve a price, a lead time or a warranty exception is asleep while the customer is deciding, the deal does not get rejected. It gets postponed, and postponed deals die quietly. Either the decision rights move to the United States or the calendar does. A revenue leader in the central time zone covers North America inside business hours and sits two to three hours behind Brazil, which is the practical version of this argument.
What actually breaks when a company crosses the border
| What leadership assumes | What actually happens |
|---|---|
| The product needs localization | The product is usually fine. The buying process is what is different |
| We need a US salesperson | A rep with no channel and no references produces meetings, not revenue |
| Our references will carry over | A US buying committee cannot verify a customer it has never heard of, in a market it does not follow |
| We will use the same channel model | US distributor economics, inventory expectations and margin structures are frequently incompatible with the home model |
| Pricing translates | Landed cost, freight, duties, warranty exposure and payment terms move the floor, sometimes past viability |
| We can run it from headquarters | Time zone plus signature authority plus no local presence equals a sales cycle that never closes |
US VP of Sales, subsidiary, or fractional CRO
This is the actual decision, and the answer depends on which of the three unknowns you have already resolved.
| Option | First-year cost | What it assumes you already know | Choose it when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hire a US VP of Sales | Roughly $295,000 to $320,000 fully loaded, before equity | That you already know the channel, the price point and the buyer | The model is validated and the job is execution and management |
| Open a subsidiary with a country manager | Payroll plus entity, office, insurance and administration | That the volume justifies fixed structure | You have recurring United States revenue and a legal or tax reason to localize |
| Fractional Chief Revenue Officer | A monthly retainer, six-month minimum, plus pre-approved travel | Nothing. Resolving the unknowns is the work | You have signal but not a system, and you need the model proven before you hire against it |
| Market entry consultancy | Project fee for a study | That your gap is analysis | You need a document for a board or an investor. If that is what you need, a consultancy is cheaper and I will say so |
The full-time hire carries a second cost that rarely appears in the business case. Harvard Business Review put average Chief Revenue Officer tenure at 25 months, among the shortest in the C-suite, and found that 62 percent of companies see growth flatten or decline in the year following a CRO transition. Hiring that role to answer questions you have not answered yet means you pay a premium to run a discovery project, and if it fails you lose the year, not the quarter.
How the engagement is priced and structured
Fixed monthly retainer. Six-month minimum. Travel inside the United States pre-approved by you and billed at cost. No pure commission structure, because commission-only alignment pushes a new entrant toward whatever closes fastest, and the fastest deal in a new market is usually the wrong distributor at the wrong price.
Market benchmarks in 2026 run $10,000 to $18,000 per month for companies between $3M and $10M in revenue and $15,000 to $25,000 between $10M and $25M. Across more than 1,000 assignments, Vendux reports an average monthly fee of $11,732 and an average hourly rate of $225 in 2025, with an average assignment length of 9.7 months at 14.6 hours per week. Full detail, with sources, on the fractional CRO cost page.
This is not a fit if
- You have no product revenue anywhere yet. A new market does not fix a product that has not been bought at home
- You want outsourced prospecting or a cold email campaign. That is a demand generation purchase, and it is a different vendor
- You will not fund travel inside the United States. This work is done in person, at plants, yards, dealerships and trade shows, and a market entry run entirely over video does not produce a channel
- You want a commission-only arrangement. I will decline
- You want a market entry study rather than an operator in the revenue seat
- Nobody on your executive team owns the United States internally. A fractional leader multiplies an owner and cannot replace one
- The board expects United States revenue next quarter. A realistic first cycle is two to four quarters, and I would rather lose the engagement than agree to a number I do not believe
Who this is for
- Latin American B2B companies (Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia) building revenue in the United States, whether the first US dollar or the first US team
- European or Israeli companies where the North American number has been missed two years running and the diagnosis is still unclear
- Private equity and growth funds with a portfolio company whose US expansion thesis has stalled
- US and Canadian companies building a real channel into Latin America, which is the same problem pointed the other direction
Frequently asked questions
Do you also take US companies into Latin America?
Yes. It is the same problem in the other direction, and I have been on that side of the table too: I sold Brazilian-built equipment into the United States and then ran the United States and Canada region buying from and selling into both. The work is the same four steps, with the trust chain built in the other language.
How is this different from a market entry consultancy?
A consultancy delivers a study. I take the revenue seat and run the motion, which means I am accountable for the number rather than for the document. If a study is genuinely what you need, a consultancy is cheaper and I will tell you so.
How is this different from a sales consultant?
A sales consultant advises your team and leaves the decisions with you. A fractional Chief Revenue Officer holds the decisions: pricing approval inside an agreed band, channel selection, forecast commitment to the board, and the hiring plan. If nobody is willing to hand over those four, hire a consultant instead, because the title will not change the outcome.
How many hours per week, and how many clients at a time?
Ten to twenty hours per week for a market entry engagement, which is the range where the work is real rather than advisory. I hold two to three engagements at a time, which is the arithmetic limit of that range.
Are you based in the US or in Brazil?
Greater Chicago, with a US green card. I work United States time zones and sit two to three hours behind Brazil.
Do you only work with agriculture companies?
No. My operating history is deepest in agriculture, agribusiness, food and industrial equipment, which is where I am useful in week one instead of week six. See the agtech and agribusiness page. The cross-border work itself applies to any B2B company with a physical or channel-led revenue motion.
Start with the constraint
Tell me where the United States number is breaking. If the problem is the commercial model, that is my work. If the problem is the product, the entity structure or the capital, I will say so in the first reply and point you at the right kind of help.
Related: what a fractional CRO does · fractional CRO in Chicago · fractional CRO vs VP of Sales
Last updated: August 25, 2026.
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