Every growing company eventually faces the same question: do you bring someone inside the business to own RevOps, or do you lean on an agency that already has the muscle built up?
It’s tempting to look for a silver bullet, but in all honesty, there isn’t one.
An in-house hire sits in the room, learns the internal ways, and carries your culture.
Whereas an agency shows up with patterns, playbooks, and the speed that comes from solving the same problems across dozens of companies.
At RevBlack we’ve implemented Salesforce ↔ HubSpot integrations, built data governance frameworks, and cleaned up CRMs across PE-backed PortCos and scaling SaaS companies. Our playbooks are battle-tested and stretch across many territories.
The choice isn’t easy as both paths have trade-offs; cost, flexibility, depth, and control. The goal isn’t to pick one forever, it’s to know when you need one, when you need the other, and when you’re better off with both.
Let’s explore all three routes so you can pick the right one.
Why companies lean on a RevOps agency
1. It’s cost efficient.
Hiring in-house is rarely as straightforward as a salary number.
A $120K hire in the U.S. comes with an extra 7.5% in payroll tax and potentially $5K–$30K in benefits. By the time you’re done, that “$10K per month” employee costs far more.
“Almost always we’re going to be cheaper than internal hiring. For $10K a month, you usually get two or three people working on your account, not just one.” – Tate
At RevBlack, you’re paying for specialists; a Salesforce admin, a HubSpot architect, and a data strategist rotating in as needed. Clients like Biscom and OpenBrand have leveraged this bench without ballooning their payroll.
2. Spend can flex with the market.
Markets fluctuate. Budgets get pulled back. With an internal hire, you can’t adjust compensation when times are lean. With an agency, you can.
“You can’t tell an employee, ‘we had a bad month, I’ll pay you 75k instead of 120k.’ That never works.”
Agencies give you room to scale up or down as your needs change.
At RevBlack, some clients run us lightly. Others bring us in full force to re-architect Salesforce flows or roll out HubSpot across new acquisitions - these types of clients benefit the most from RevOps as a function.
3. You get unmatched tool expertise.
You can try to scout a single person with the same Salesforce and HubSpot expertise, but know you’re hunting a unicorn. They’re hard to find and it’s up to you to decide whether you have that level of time to invest.
We solve this common conundrum by training specialists and giving clients access to tool-specific knowledge across multiple CRMs and tech stacks. It goes well beyond just keeping HubSpot and Salesforce in sync.
At RevBlack, we’ve built a depth of expertise across the full revenue stack:
- HubSpot ↔ Salesforce integration – not just turning on the sync, but setting up governance around field ownership, enrichment workflows, and duplicate management so adoption actually sticks.
- Data enrichment platforms (ZoomInfo, Apollo, Clearbit, 6sense) – knowing which vendor matches your ICP, how to govern enrichment schedules, and how to prevent bad data from flooding your CRM.
- Attribution and analytics – GA4 event modeling, UTMs, and reporting that ties marketing spend directly to pipeline (so leadership finally trusts the numbers).
- Automation and workflows – everything from Salesforce Flows and Apex rules to HubSpot sequences and Make/Zapier automations, designed with guardrails so they scale without breaking.
- Cross-tool orchestration – stitching together billing systems, product usage data, and customer success platforms so your CRM becomes the single source of truth instead of another silo.
This matters because tools shouldn’t be treated as sidekicks, they are the literal parts that make up your operating system, and therefore, your go-to-market motion.
An internal hire may know one or two platforms well, but RevBlack brings playbooks across the full stack. We’ve already debugged the edge cases, untangled broken syncs, and learned which caveats derail adoption. That collective tool knowledge becomes the multiplier, far surpassing the surface value proposition of “HubSpot–Salesforce integration.
Agencies carry the weight of a full crew. Instead of one person trying to cover every gap, you get a bench of people cooperating to bring the best of their knowledge to your specific case.
The advantage is not just individual skill, but exposure: “We’ve done this attribution project 30 different times. We know what works, what doesn’t, and the caveats.”
One internal hire brings one perspective. An agency brings the combined lessons of dozens of deployments.
We often see companies hand RevOps projects to existing staff on top of their regular roles. On paper it looks like a money saver, but it can also easily lead to overworked employees who accomplish less.
If you go this route, be honest about the workload and what your team can actually take on, otherwise you risk burning people out and slowing everything down.
We’re commonly called to step in to relieve overburdened marketing ops or sales ops managers, freeing them to focus on strategy.
Outside eyes cut through blind spots
Employees quickly absorb a company’s culture. That can be great for alignment, but a fast-path to accrue blind spots. Agencies don’t live in your system day-to-day, which makes it easier to see when something’s broken.
“We can tell you, ‘Guys, the way you’re doing this is totally crazy,’ and no one internally had realized how bad it was.”
RevBlack clients often come to us after years of “this is just how we do it.” Fresh eyes and pattern recognition make it easier to reset.
4. You get better resource coverage
When you only have one RevOps person, vacations and sick days leave gaps. Worse, there’s a natural tendency for employees to build systems around themselves to guarantee job security.
“We build for scale, not around personalities. Employees sometimes make themselves indispensable by over-complicating things,” Tate explained.
Agencies design systems that are simple, scalable, and not dependent on any one person.
5. Agencies need to prove themselves to survive
There’s also the matter of accountability. Agencies have to prove their worth every month. If results lag, you can walk away. Internal employees are harder to move on from, even when it’s not working.
“As an agency, we have to continually prove our value. If it’s not working, we’re gone.”
Agencies are usually in a better spot to get RevOps off the ground.
An internal hire has one boss and one paycheck - which makes it really hard to push back when it’s necessary. An agency, on the other hand, doesn’t live or die by a single client.
That freedom matters. It lets them say the things leaders don’t always want to hear:
- “This move doesn’t serve your strategy.”
- “If you do that, here’s the fallout.”
- “No, that won’t work.”
Surprisingly, that pushback is exactly what builds trust with clients. It’s why so many clients often take their agency with them when they switch jobs - they had the guts to say no when it counted.
When internal hires make sense
Agencies aren’t the answer to everything. In certain situations, an internal RevOps person, or even a team, is exactly what you need.
At enterprise scale, in-house hiring can make sense. When governance, compliance, and strict controls are your top priorities, you’ll want people inside the company with direct oversight.
Another scenario is meeting-heavy roles. If you need someone in every leadership sync, running training, or serving as the RevOps voice at the table, an internal hire holds the advantage. Agencies excel at practical builds and executing strategy but they won’t step in to micromanage the ins-and-outs of everyday business.
And then there’s cultural closeness. Sometimes you simply want a RevOps person who is fully immersed in your company culture, available for quick questions, and integrated with your team’s rhythms.
Word of caution: Most first RevOps hires don’t succeed
Bringing in your first, standalone RevOps hire is riskier than most leaders realize.
Inside the company, almost no one knows what “good” RevOps actually looks like, so it can take months or even years to see whether the role is delivering.
That leaves the new hire in a tough spot: their entire paycheck depends on executive approval, which makes it far less likely they’ll challenge leadership when a strategy needs to change.
Few have the experience (or the safety net) to tell a CEO their idea is flawed. The easier path is to stay agreeable, even if it means letting bad calls slide.That’s the slippery slope - the business thinking all is in place, but in reality, it’s running without the pushback and discipline the function was built to provide in the first place.
The third way
Most companies don’t actually choose one side or the other, they combine both.
An internal RevOps manager can anchor strategy inside the company while an external agency provides depth of expertise and the extra manpower needed to move projects forward.
“It’s impossible to expect even a team of people to be experts in everything. Having outsourced experts ensures it’s built well, while your internal people keep the culture aligned.”
This hybrid approach is becoming increasingly common. Internal hires handle context and day-to-day, while agencies fill gaps, deliver best practices, and prevent technical debt.
At RevBlack, that hybrid often looks like: an internal RevOps lead managing leadership syncs while we manage the HubSpot ↔ Salesforce sync, data enrichment cadence, and quarterly audits to keep the CRM trustworthy.
Remember: Every path is a means to an end
Don’t think of in-house vs. agency as a cage match. It isn’t. If you have your objective clearly defined and locked in, it should be relatively easy to pick the shortest path.
As Warren Buffett once said, you only innovate where it matters. For everything else, lean on best practices.
RevOps is one of those areas where battle-tested best practice is the smartest innovation in almost all instances.
Would you like to join forces with a RevOps agency? Let’s talk about where you are, where you want to be, and how we can help.
