Fractional first sales hire

Your tech works.Your pipeline doesn’t.

30 minutes · Free · You leave knowing whether I’m right about your buyer

Tom Loebenstein Tom LoebensteinSan Francisco. I do the work myself. Who I am

I sold to the operator your product keeps bouncing off of.

Restaurant owners, GMs, ops directors, school district administrators, facilities teams. I spent close to a decade selling into the rooms most software never reaches, and translating technical products into plain terms those buyers actually care about. I know how that buyer decides, stalls, and says no. Most recently I was the first commercial hire at Parameter AI, a YC-backed AI security company, so I also know what the inside of your company looks like right now.

0 100sCustomers as founding AE at Therma°, across restaurants and K-12
$19MSeries A · drove 3× new-business growth
9AEs and SDRs led as player-coach · ~$75K average deal
20,000IoT sensors deployed into cold storage and kitchens

How it works

Three steps. Start with two weeks.

01
1–2 weeks

Buyer Truth Audit

The real buyer map for one vertical: who signs, who blocks, who champions, and what each actually cares about. The objections that kill the deal, in the buyer’s words. A buyer’s-eye teardown of your pitch and demo. Then a clear go/no-go on which segment to attack first.

02
3–4 weeks

Playbook Sprint

The sales playbook for one vertical, built and handed off. ICP at the operator level, messaging per persona, the outbound sequences, objection handling, the demo-to-close motion, the qualification bar. The test: a new rep could run it without you in the room.

03
60–90 days

First-Logos Engagement

Everything in the Sprint plus live execution. I build the pipeline into your target vertical, run the first outreach cycles, sit in on early calls, and work the first logos alongside you — iterating the playbook against what real buyers actually do.

After that, month-to-month if you want ongoing help. No retainer minimums, no 12-month contracts. I take two or three engagements at a time. Pricing on the call.

Thirty minutes. I’ll tell you if I’m wrong about your buyer.

Worth having before you hand a $180k rep a quota into a buyer they’ve never met.

© 2026 Tom Loebenstein · San Francisco LinkedIn X Deal-Won Email