In this clip, Rikki walks through what has changed for HubSpot Solutions Partners, why the traditional models have hit breaking point, and how the winning model for 2025 has already begun to emerge.
This guide takes that conversation much deeper. It talks about the realities Partners face today and turns it into a practical blueprint that any Solutions Partner can follow to grow, stay profitable, and protect quality while the industry shifts around them.
If you are short on time, here are the essential points:
The traditional models for scaling a Solutions Partner are breaking. The commission model is gone, the all in house model has become too expensive, and the platform is expanding faster than teams can keep up.
A new winning model has emerged: core in house team, fractional resources for edge work, AI for efficiency.
Partners that follow this model scale faster, stay profitable longer, and deliver higher quality outcomes.
Fractional support is now becoming critical for larger deals, pre sales scoping, specialist edge cases, seasonal demand, and protecting margins.
Profoundly has built the ecosystem’s largest bench of vetted HubSpot specialists, with curated matching in 48 hours and full flexibility in pricing models.
This guide explains how to restructure your Partner business into a resilient, profitable, scalable operation ready for 2025 and beyond.
For more than a decade, Solutions Partners have scaled with two models:
Scale on commission
Build a large in house team
These models worked when HubSpot was smaller, margins were easier, and talent was more affordable. That world no longer exists.
Many partners delivered services at cost and relied on HubSpot commission for their margin.
While HubSpot still offers an attractive commission incentive recent changes have made it so it cannot be solely relied upon to build a business.
Even before the change, it was a fragile model. It encouraged undervaluing services, created thin delivery margins, and tied profitability to something you cannot control.
Today, the commission model is not a strategic option.
Why it is failing:
Salaries for HubSpot talent have doubled in 3 to 5 years.
HubSpot expansion means new hubs and new skills every year.
To keep expertise across CMS, CRM, Sales Hub, Service Hub, Ops Hub, Data Hub, integrations, and AI, you would need a team of dozens.
Even the largest enterprise partners cannot hire specialists in every area.
Talent gaps force partners into riskier projects, slower sales cycles, or turning work away.
The in house model delivers quality, but it is now expensive and slow.
This is where the new partner model begins to take shape.
The three pillar model:
Keep core services in house
Use fractional specialists for edge cases
Use AI for efficiency and scale
Let’s break this down into real operational detail.
Your core team remains critical. This team:
Builds culture
Protects your intellectual property
Delivers consistency
Owns relationships
Drives predictable monthly recurring revenue
This team should cover your core services, meaning the repeatable, high margin work you deliver every month.
Examples include:
CRM onboarding
HubSpot Marketing Hub and Sales Hub implementations
Day to day retainers
Ongoing support
Reporting essentials
Typical automation setups
The key point:
Your in house team should specialise in the work you sell the most, not the rare or complex edge work.
This is the shift Partners need to make.
This is the part of the model that changes everything.
Fractional resources provide the flexibility and specialist support that partners have never had access to before. And for different reasons...
What counts as an edge use case? It differs for every partner! It's what you don't specialise in so it could be...
Migrations
Integrations
CMS development
Service Hub specialism
Ops Hub setups
HubSpot Data layer or advanced customisation
API work
Custom dashboards and attribution modelling
Multi system, multi region rollouts
Reimplementation and portal rebuilds
App partner onboarding
Complex workflow engineering
These are not things your team should be trained for unless you are delivering them every month.
Fractional specialists allow you to deliver these without full time hires.
Partners have always struggled with:
September to December sales spikes
Retainer renewals
Unexpected wins
Large enterprise projects landing suddenly
Losing staff to turnover or maternity leave
Fractional specialists allow Partners to smooth the peaks without the risk of over hiring.
This is one of the biggest insights from the transcript that partners often overlook.
Partners can use a fractional expert to:
Scope complex RFPs
Validate technical feasibility
Price multi system migrations
Join calls to answer specialist questions
Improve win rates
Help position complex solutions clearly
Most partners do not have an expert in every integration or platform. This model solves that.
This guide is not an AI deep dive, but we know this is where the industry is heading. AI is now essential for:
Speeding up early discovery
Reducing admin
Improving scoping accuracy
Supporting documentation
Automating QA processes
Workflow generation
The combination of AI plus fractional plus core in house team is the model that will win.
Profoundly provides:
Instant access to vetted HubSpot specialists
Curated matching within 48 hours
No upfront cost to post a project
Predictable pricing
Flexible engagement models
Experts who work under your brand
Support for pre sales, scoping, delivery and edge work
Take on more work without hiring
Cover skills gaps
Never turn work away
Expand services safely
Land and expand confidently
Profoundly helps partners:
Avoid scope creep
Protect margins with fixed pricing
Charge appropriately for complex work
Capture new revenue that used to be turned down
Maintain utilisation levels for in house teams
Every pro is vetted
Less than 10% acceptance rate
Specialists, not generalists
Proven delivery
Consistent outcomes for every HubSpot project
This is the backbone of predictable quality.
These use cases come directly from partner activity on Profoundly today:
The most requested category. Includes ERP integrations, CRM migrations, marketplace app installs, and custom API work.
Partners plug in CMS developers when needed.
Demand has grown fast because HubSpot’s reporting capability has expanded sharply.
Routing, logic, lead scoring, lifecycle management.
Partners win upmarket projects then need support to handle the sudden volume.
These categories represent the majority of partner demand today.
Even partners with 200 to 400 HubSpot staff still cannot cover every part of the ecosystem.
Edge work is unpredictable, infrequent, and expensive to handle in house.
Talent scarcity makes hiring slower and more costly.
HubSpot’s expansion has increased complexity year after year.
Large deals drop without warning and require deep expertise quickly.
Fractional resources match the new shape of partner demand.
This is the condensed strategic plan.
Define your core services
These stay in house, and become your primary profit engine.
List every edge use case you have turned down or struggled with
These become your fractional categories.
Set rules for when you use fractional talent
Examples:
When skill is not available in house
When utilisation drops below threshold
When demand spikes
When a deal requires specialist scoping
Build a fractional pre sales system
Use experts to improve scoping, pricing, proposals, and win rate.
Rework delivery to protect margin
Use fixed pricing for edge work.
Use in house for predictable work.
Blend the two to keep workloads sustainable.
Adopt AI to speed up repetitive work
Start with documentation, workflows, QA, and internal templates.
Use Profoundly to fill gaps on demand
Post your first project, test the model, and refine your process.
By combining an in house core team with fractional specialists for edge work and AI for efficiency.
Costs, platform expansion, salary inflation, and unpredictable demand make it unsustainable.
Integrations, migrations, CMS dev, Service Hub, Ops Hub, advanced reporting, and complex workflows.
By providing vetted HubSpot experts on demand with curated matching in 48 hours.
Yes. Fixed costs protect margins, and fractional delivery avoids over hiring.
Typically within 48 hours, based on platform data.
Yes. They can be white labelled or introduced directly.
Rikki Lear is the Chief Growth Officer at Profoundly and former co founder of Digital 22 and Avidly UK. He spent more than 12 years scaling one of the top global HubSpot Solutions Partners, winning multiple Partner of the Year awards. Today he helps Partners grow profitably through flexible, modern delivery models that match the reality of the HubSpot ecosystem.
Profoundly is the easiest place to hire vetted HubSpot experts. Partners, customers, app vendors, and HubSpot teams use Profoundly to solve complex HubSpot challenges through fast matching, vetted specialists, and flexible pricing models. More than 250 HubSpot projects have already been delivered through the platform.