RevOps consultant, fractional lead, or full-time hire, what should you do first?

By Kim Talarczyk, founder of Demand Recruiting

I would let the shape of the work decide it. If it's a project with an end, like a CRM cleanup or one rebuild, a consultant or one of the partners I trust can do it without you adding a seat. If you need someone senior to own the system but the work doesn't fill a week yet, fractional can make sense. Once the work fills every week and keeps coming back, it's a hire.

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The shape of the work decides it

A project has an end, and a function doesn't. A CRM cleanup is finished when the CRM is clean, but owning the forecast, the stage definitions, and the handoffs between marketing, sales, and customer success keeps coming back every quarter. I don't draw the line by company size or rep count, because the work tells you more than the headcount does.

None of the three helps much if nobody has closed the same kind of deal more than once, since there's no motion yet to clean up or document. In that case I would start with a seller, and the first 5 GTM hires covers the order I see most often. If you're still deciding whether you need RevOps at all, I go through that in hiring RevOps in B2B SaaS.

When a RevOps consultant is enough

If the work is one CRM cleanup, one rebuild, or one integration, I would hire a RevOps consultant for it and skip adding a seat. Kevin at Revductive, one of the partners I trust, does part-time or project RevOps and AI systems work, and he can also come on as a contractor if you'd rather bring someone on directly. If the real gap is manual work and not the CRM, you may be looking at a different role, and I go through that in GTM engineer or RevOps, which should you hire first.

The catch with a project is that the consultant leaves when it ends. If nobody on your side picks it up, the cleanup can drift back to where it started.

When fractional makes sense

Fractional fits when you need someone senior to own the system and the work doesn't fill a week yet. It also fits when you're still working out what the role is, or when you're covering a gap before a hire starts. The difference from a consultant is that a consultant finishes something and a fractional lead keeps owning something.

I think of fractional as a stage, not a permanent answer. It works better when you use the time to learn what the job is, so you know what you'd hire for later. If you want a fractional lead, I also know good fractional operators, so I can point you to one.

When it's a hire

Once the work fills every week and keeps coming back, it's a hire. A few things usually show up first.

• Forecast and stage questions sit waiting for the one day a week the part-time person is around.
• The part-time scope keeps growing past the hours you agreed to.
• Real context on your product, your buyers, and your team has become part of the job.

That's when I would hire a RevOps lead, and I look for someone who can decide how the system should work and also build it.

Name who decides before anyone starts

Before anyone outside starts, I would name one person on your side who settles disputes and owns the result. A consultant can build what you ask for, and a good one may help you decide when sales and marketing disagree about what a stage means. A new hire shouldn't be the substitute for this.

What I would ask outside help to leave behind

Outside help leaves eventually, so what they leave behind decides whether the work lasts. Before you sign, there are three things I would get clear.

• Meet the person who will do the work, and not only the person who sells it.
• Ask when the documentation gets written. If the answer is the last week, it tends to be rushed.
• Agree by name who runs it after they leave, whether that's you, someone on your team, or a later hire.

Handing it to a full-time hire

If the work is heading toward a hire, I would open the search before the outside help ends, and write the role from what they built, so the new person steps into a defined job. That's the same way I hire a RevOps lead, by working out what's broken and what the person will own before I source anyone.

If you can, overlap the new person with the outside help for a few weeks, with the documentation already written, so the person who built it can explain it while they're still around.

On whether you need a recruiter, I recruit full-time hires, so weigh my view with that in mind. I would ask if you can tell a strong RevOps candidate from a confident one. That's hard to do in an interview if you haven't done the work yourself. If you can, or someone you trust who knows RevOps can sit in on the interviews, even the consultant who's leaving, you may not need one. If you can't, that's where I can help. I also know good contractors and freelancers, so I can point you to someone if that's the better fit.

Where to start

Most of the companies I work with are B2B SaaS under $10M ARR. If you're not sure which of the three you need, the hiring framework is a practical place to decide what the seat needs before you post anything, and if it comes down to one seat, you can start with a single search.

If you're not sure yet whether this is a project or a hire, I'd be glad to hear what's going on.

Let's talk about your next hire