“When should I hire someone, and when should I bring in outside help instead?”
It sounds simple. But hiring versus getting help is one of the most important decisions a Solutions Partner makes. Get it right and you scale smoothly, stay profitable and protect your sanity. Get it wrong and you lock in unnecessary cost, create bottlenecks or struggle to say yes to work you could have won.
This is one of those topics partners feel all the time but rarely talk about openly.
Jason, Brian and Rikki break it down in a way every partner can use immediately.
Every successful HubSpot Partner uses outside help. It is normal, healthy and often the smarter choice.
Your core team should own client relationships, strategy and ongoing retainers.
Outside help works best for back-end delivery, specialist work, pre-sales support and burst capacity.
Most partners use external experts for CMS dev, API work, migrations, Ops Hub, workflow builds and anything technical.
Bringing in help lets you say yes to more work, test new services safely and avoid over-hiring.
The partners who scale fastest are the ones who balance core talent with flexible expert support.
Demand in the HubSpot ecosystem moves fast. A few big deals land. A team member goes on leave. A client throws an integration curveball. Suddenly your tidy capacity plan is blown up.
Hiring is a big commitment.
Getting help is flexible.
Knowing which route to take is an advantage.
As Brian put it:
“This is common practice. We hear it all the time. Partners already do this. The question is how to do it well.”
And that starts with understanding what work belongs in-house and what work is better handled by outside experts.
Brian introduced the clearest model for the whole discussion:
Your team should own the core.
Outside help should support the edge.
Core services are the things you do every week:
Your main retainers
Standard onboarding work
Relationship ownership
Strategy
Long term guidance
Outcomes that require ongoing context
These are the areas where consistency matters most, and hiring makes sense.
Edge services are everything else:
Work you rarely do
Work that requires deep specialism
Work that sits far from relationship management
Work that is easy to hand off
Work that appears suddenly or unpredictably
This is where outside help shines.
All three shared the same pattern from years of experience.
This is where almost every partner starts:
CMS development
API build and integrations
Data migrations
Technical workflow builds
Ops Hub architecture
Service Hub setups
Portal cleanups and re-implementations
Rikki explained it perfectly:
“Partners lean on flexible resources for the stuff that sits away from customer comms. CMS dev, API work, migrations, these task-based jobs. Most partners now use some type of flexible resource here.”
This work does not require relationship ownership. It requires skill. That makes it ideal for contractors.
Jason’s experience matches what we see across the platform:
“Partners are much less likely to outsource relationship owners. Far more likely to outsource back-end delivery.”
If the work is technical and does not require daily client communication, it is a great fit.
This is a huge use case that many partners overlook.
Outside specialists can:
Help scope complex builds
Validate technical requirements
Join pre-sales calls
Strengthen proposals
Improve pricing accuracy
Reduce risk
Shorten sales cycles
Brian sees this constantly:
“Partners bring in HubSpot experts to help with customer conversations during pre-sales and post-sale. It works really well.”
This can be the difference between winning or losing a deal.
Every partner hits moments where they simply need more hands.
Planned or unplanned leave
New deals landing at once
Delivery bottlenecks
Seasonal spikes
Team turnover
Bringing in help solves the immediate pressure without the ongoing cost of a full-time hire.
Jason summed it up simply:
“A skilled contractor can accomplish exactly what the customer needs without plugging into the relationship.”
One of the smartest points from the clip was this:
Outside help lets you test a service before committing.
Brian:
“It can be a great way to test a service before you fully commit to it.”
This can save partners from expensive hiring mistakes. Instead of hiring a full-time developer, data specialist or Service Hub expert, you can try the offering first, measure demand and then make a confident decision.
It is a safe way to expand your portfolio.
Partners often tell us “we have five great contractors, so we’re set.”
Rikki challenged this idea immediately:
“You’re only ever one life event away from your bench changing.”
People take full-time roles.
People go on maternity leave.
People change industries.
People go all-in on one client.
No contractor bench is ever finished.
Either you keep expanding your network or you use a platform like Profoundly to maintain access to vetted HubSpot specialists whenever you need them.
Jason warned about one common mistake:
“It’s unfortunate, but some organizations treat contractors like second-class team members. Don’t do that.”
The partners with the strongest contractor networks do one thing consistently:
They treat contractors like part of the team.
Simple changes make a huge difference:
Include them in Slack channels
Celebrate wins with them
Thank them publicly
Share context so they do their best work
Give them repeatable systems
Build trust both ways
Contractors who feel valued become long-term partners. They stay available. They prioritise your work. They adapt to your culture.
This is one of the biggest advantages a partner can create.
Hiring and outside help are not competing ideas. They work together.
The strongest HubSpot Partners build a hybrid model:
A core team that owns relationships and long term delivery.
A flexible bench of experts who handle specialist work, back-end delivery and peak demand.
To get this right:
Hire for your core services
Bring in help for the edge
Use specialists for technical work
Use pre-sales support to win more deals
Protect your team from over-capacity
Keep your contractor network alive
Treat contractors like teammates
Test new services through outside help before hiring
The partners who apply this approach scale faster, stay more profitable and keep saying “yes” without burning out their team.
When should I hire instead of getting help?
Hire when the work is core, repeatable and requires ongoing client context.
When should I bring in outside help?
When the work is specialist, technical, infrequent or easy to separate from relationship management.
What types of work do partners outsource most often?
CMS dev, API work, integrations, migrations, workflows, Ops Hub, Service Hub and portal rebuilds.
Is it normal for HubSpot Partners to use contractors?
Yes. Nearly every successful partner does.
What if my contractor network dries up?
Platforms like Profoundly exist to keep your bench full of vetted, reliable HubSpot experts.
Rikki Lear is Chief Growth Officer at Profoundly. He previously founded and led Digital 22 (later Avidly) to become the world’s largest HubSpot Partner, winning five Global Partner of the Year awards. Today, he helps Solutions Partners scale smarter through fractional HubSpot expertise and flexible delivery models.
Profoundly helps HubSpot Partners access trusted, vetted HubSpot experts on demand.
Scale delivery, strengthen pre-sales, expand services and avoid over-hiring with specialists who integrate into your way of working.
Full transcript:
0:00 All right, fantastic. I I got an amazing
0:01 question from a partner this week. So,
0:04 when should I bring in outside help
0:06 instead of hiring? Amazing question.
0:09 Yeah, that's a good question.
0:10 Brian, what do you think?
0:12 I think first and foremost, I think it's
0:15 important to say like partners do this,
0:17 right? It's common practice. We hear it
0:19 all the time. We've seen it firsthand.
0:21 Um I think the the common use cases for
0:26 bringing in outside help and instead of
0:28 hiring like we see it a lot on pre-sales
0:32 support postsale servicing like Why this is a critical decision point
0:35 consultancies that are looking to bring
0:36 in HubSpot experts to help with their
0:39 customer conversations pre-sales that
0:41 happens as well as you know once they've
0:43 closed the deal. Uh I think we see it
0:46 also like I think about it my mental
0:49 model is core versus edge services. I
0:52 think as a partner you look at like
0:55 what's your bread and butter? What are
0:57 your core services that you're going to
0:58 do directly and then there are things
1:00 that customers ask for right uh and you
1:03 don't want to say no. You don't want to
1:04 turn the business away. I think about
1:06 those as edge services. Well, it can be
1:08 really helpful to bring in outside help Common hiring mistakes
1:10 for those edge services, experts in
1:13 those areas. um while you maintain or
1:16 continue to maintain that customer
1:17 relationship. I think that works really
1:19 well. I think burst capacity of course
1:23 we see that all the time when we need
1:25 bench strength when we have planned or
1:27 unplanned leaves that partners are
1:30 looking to fill those can be great
1:31 opportunities to bring in people from
1:33 the outside versus sort of hiring and
1:35 carrying those costs in perpetuity.
1:38 Those are some of the things that come
1:39 to mind for me. Um, I don't know what
1:41 what your thoughts are, but that's what
1:44 I see.
1:46 I think you're firstly you're right.
1:47 Definitely partners do this. Uh, most
1:49 partners I speak to do it. I think the
1:52 way that I've seen most do it um is
1:55 looking at it from a back-end services
1:56 perspective and scale up and they start
1:59 where's most comfortable and kind of
2:00 picking up where you finished off,
2:02 Brian. It's stuff that's away from
2:04 customer account ownership, customer
2:06 coms. So things where they can work
2:08 behind the scenes and help you scale and
2:10 grow without it having a big impact on
2:12 the customer. So CMS dev, API work, data
2:16 migrations, 2:18 all of these taskbased scaleup jobs. I
2:22 think most partners now are leveraging
2:24 some type of flexible
2:26 uh resources in those areas for sure.
2:29 Have you seen Jason?
2:30 No, my experience is exactly the same
2:32 over the years. I've seen so many
2:34 partners leverage contractor help for
2:37 delivery, right? They're generally less
2:39 likely to bring in somebody who's the
2:41 primary account relationship owner,
2:43 somebody who's really in it with When outside help is the better choice
2:45 customer discovery and client
2:46 relationship management, and much more
2:49 likely to bring in folks in the back
2:50 end. Exactly. To your point, dev, API
2:52 creation, hands-on HubSpot work, the 2:56 type of things that can that can easily
2:58 be handed over to a really good, really
3:00 skilled contractor that that um
3:03 accomplishes what the customer needs
3:04 without that person having to plug into
3:06 the relationship.
3:08 Yeah, I think it'd be could be a great
3:09 way to like test a service too, right,
3:12 before you fully commit to it and and
3:14 resource it. So, it's a good way to sort
3:15 of expand the portfolio uh effectively
3:19 regardless like I think it it can be the
3:21 difference between turning work away and
3:24 turning that work into revenue.