Should You Fix Pipeline In-House or Bring in Outside Help?
Let’s be blunt: On paper, it sounds smarter to “just hire someone full-time” to own growth. Why bring in an outside partner when you could just get a marketing director or a sales lead, plug them in, and tell them to go get pipeline?
Here’s why that almost never works for dev / technical agencies in the $2M–$8M range, and what does.
Their logic (you should respect this)
“We’ll hire someone senior and make growth their job.”
“They can build the messaging, clean up our positioning, run marketing, spin up outbound.”
“Then the founder can finally get out of sales.”
That logic is not dumb. It’s exactly what a serious founder should want.
Where it actually blows up
You’re asking someone new to sell a story that doesn’t exist yet.
You’re asking them to define who you’re for, what problem you own, and why you’re different, while also generating demand.
Internally, they can’t get buy-in, because nothing is positioned. Sales doesn’t know how to pitch. Delivery doesn’t want to “promise too much.” Leadership can’t explain why you’re better without a 40-minute explanation.
Three months go by, the founder gets frustrated, and thinks “marketing people are fluff,” and nothing is actually fixed.
You didn’t hire the wrong person.
You hired someone into a fog.
The actual order that works
Step 1: Get the story.
Who are we for?
What painful, expensive problem do we solve?
How do we say that in under 20 seconds without sounding like every other dev shop?
That’s the 3-week “Why Us” Sprint.
Step 2: Get the first 90 days of go-to-market mapped.
What are we saying in market, where are we saying it, and who are we saying it to?
That’s part of the Sprint deliverable.
Step 3: Run it and tighten it.
Weekly/biweekly Advisory or Fractional help. We take that positioning and apply it live to outreach, proposals, partner intros, and content. We fix language in real deals, not in a vacuum.
Step 4: THEN you hire someone.
Now you’re not asking them to invent positioning. You’re handing them a working engine.
Cost math you can take to your leadership team
Hiring senior growth/marketing leadership in-house: ~$180K+ base, plus ~3–6 months of “figuring it out.”
The “Why Us” Sprint: $5K flat for positioning, ICP, offer, and a 90-day GTM plan.
Advisory / Fractional: $2K–$6K/mo to actually run/install the system short-term, without locking in permanent overhead.
One of those is a controlled experiment.
One of those is a bet.
So which are you?
If you don’t have a clear “Why us?” and a front-door offer people can say yes to → do the Sprint.
If you have the story but you’re inconsistent, chaotic, drifting, or constantly getting pulled into delivery → do Advisory for a few months and stabilize.
If you’re at ~10+ people and you’re ready for someone to drive this with your team (but you’re not ready to hire a $180K VP Marketing yet) → bring me in Fractionally for ~6 months.
After that, yes. Go hire. But now you’re hiring someone into a machine, not into fog.: