Hiring Internally vs. Externally for Lead Gen Teams: A Strategic Guide for 2024

Introduction

If you run a B2B sales org in 2024-2025, you are probably feeling the squeeze.

Organic demand has become more volatile, one analysis found B2B organic leads dropped nearly 50% over the first ten months of 2025, and boards are still asking you to grow pipeline without blowing up headcount.

So you are staring at the same fork in the road as everyone else: do we hire SDRs internally or outsource lead generation to an external partner?

This is not just a budget question anymore. It is a strategic call about:

• How fast you need pipeline.
• How much control you need over messaging and brand.
• How much risk you can stomach if a hire or vendor does not work out.

In this guide, we will break down the real economics, trade‑offs, and use cases of hiring internally vs externally for lead gen teams. We will talk ramp times, turnover, cost per meeting, and how the best B2B companies are using hybrid models instead of picking one side forever. And we will show how a specialist partner like SalesHive can slot into that strategy.

Grab a coffee, we will walk through what actually works.

The Economics of Lead Gen in 2024-2025

Before we argue models, we need to understand the environment you are operating in.

Lead gen is more important, and more expensive, than ever

Recent data shows:

• 51% of U.S. B2B companies say getting new marketing‑qualified leads into the pipeline is an urgent priority, and 69% plan to increase lead gen investment over the next 12 months.
• 40% of B2B companies cite lead quality as a top challenge, not just lead volume.
• Many tech firms now send 45% or more of their marketing budget to outsourced or hybrid lead gen services.

In other words, everyone is spending more to chase increasingly elusive, high‑quality pipeline.

At the same time, the people side of sales is getting pricey:

• The latest DePaul University data puts the average cost to replace a salesperson at more than $130,000, once you include recruiting, onboarding, and lost sales.
• It takes about 381 days, more than a year, for a new rep to reach the performance of a tenured rep.
• The Bridge Group’s long‑running research shows average sales tenure now sits around 1.5 years with nearly 40% annual attrition in many organizations.

Do the math: if it takes a year to get someone to full effectiveness and they are gone in a year and a half, you don’t have a lot of productive runway.

The hidden cost stack of internal SDR hiring

On paper, adding an SDR looks simple:

• Base salary
• Commission/OTE
• A seat in your sales engagement platform

In reality, the fully loaded cost per SDR usually includes:

• Cash compensation (base + variable)
• Employer burden: payroll taxes, healthcare, benefits (commonly 25-35% of base)
• Recruiting: job ads, recruiter fees, hiring manager time
• Onboarding and training: playbooks, certifications, product training
• Management overhead: SDR manager, team leads, and enablement
• Tools and data: CRM, sales engagement, dialer, conversation intelligence, data providers
• Ramp drag: months of under‑productivity
• Attrition risk: repeating the cycle every 12-18 months

Various benchmark models for mid‑market North America put realistic SDR OTE in the $75k–$90k range, with all‑in tech and overhead pushing annual total cost per SDR into the low six figures.

Then factor in time:

• Hiring a sales specialist can easily take 50+ days in many markets.
• Ramp to full productivity typically lands around 3-6 months.

You can easily be halfway through the year before a new SDR is reliably generating the meetings you hired them for.

The outsourced side of the ledger

Now let’s look at the economics of an external lead gen partner.

Outsourced SDR or appointment‑setting providers typically charge in one of three ways:

• Monthly retainer per SDR‑equivalent (common ranges: $3,000–$6,500/month, with tools and data included)
• Pay‑per‑meeting (e.g., $175–$350 per qualified, held meeting, more for enterprise ICPs)
• Hybrid (smaller retainer plus outcome‑based pricing)

Cost studies and vendor comparisons consistently show that:

• A small in‑house SDR team (two SDRs + one manager) can easily cost $300,000–$400,000 per year once you include salaries, overhead, tools, and turnover.
• Comparable outsourced programs often land in the $6,000–$15,000 per month range, with tools and data included.
• That translates into 20-30% lower cost per lead and 30-40% savings overall, especially once you account for the cost of failed hires.

And then there is time‑to‑pipeline:

• In‑house: 3-6 months to recruit, onboard, and get consistent output.
• Outsourced: 2-4 weeks to go live with proven playbooks, trained reps, and existing infrastructure.

This doesn’t mean outsourcing is automatically “better”, the trade‑offs are real. But purely on economics and speed, it is a serious contender.

Hiring Internally: When It Makes Sense (And When It Doesn’t)

Internal SDRs are not going away. For many companies, they are critical. But you should be clear on why you are bringing them in‑house.

Advantages of building an internal SDR team

1. Deep product and domain knowledge

If your product is technical or your deals involve heavy discovery and education, internal reps who sit close to product, marketing, and customer success can ramp to a level of nuance that external reps may never reach.

1. Tighter cultural alignment and brand control

Internal SDRs live in your culture, absorb your tone, and naturally represent your brand in a way outsiders might struggle to match, especially in sensitive markets or regulated industries.

1. Career path and talent pipeline

Many companies view SDR programs as farm teams for AEs. A structured path (12-24 months SDR then AE or AM) can create a reliable bench of sellers who already understand your ICP, process, and product.

1. Cross‑functional impact

Internal SDRs can easily be looped into product feedback, marketing tests, and CS conversations. That feedback loop can be invaluable in high‑growth environments.

The downside: ramp, risk, and rigidity

All of that comes with real downsides:

• Slow to start, Hiring plus ramp means your first real pipeline from a new SDR often shows up a quarter or two after you start the process.
• High fixed cost, Salaries, benefits, tools, and management are on your P&L whether the SDR is producing or not.
• Churn kills momentum, Given how short SDR tenure is, every departure resets the clock on ramp and throws a wrench in territory coverage.
• Management overhead, You need good frontline management, QA, and enablement to get the most out of your reps. That is time your VP of Sales or CRO often does not really have.

When internal SDRs are the right call

Despite those challenges, there are very clear cases where you should lean internal:

1. Complex, high‑ACV sales motions

If your average deal involves multiple stakeholders, technical evaluation, POCs, and deep ROI modeling, you probably want SDRs who sit inside your four walls. They will need tight coordination with product and engineering and may handle more qualification than a typical outsourced team.

1. Heavy focus on expansion and customer‑led growth

If a big chunk of pipeline comes from existing customers (expansion, cross‑sell, upsell), internal SDRs working closely with CS and AEs usually outperform an external team that lacks context and account history.

1. You are building a talent engine, not just a pipeline engine

Early‑stage companies that expect to hire a lot of AEs over the next few years often build internal SDR programs specifically to develop that talent, even if it is slightly more expensive on a pure cost‑per‑meeting basis.

How to do internal SDR hiring right

If you decide to build in‑house, a few non‑negotiables:

• Budget realistically for ramp, Assume at least 3-6 months before full productivity and set early quotas accordingly.
• Invest in enablement like it is a quota‑carrying role, Structured onboarding, call reviews, shadowing, and ongoing coaching, not a one‑week firehose.
• Create a visible career path, Show SDRs how to get to AE or other roles, with clear milestones. Without that, your best people will jump ship.
• Instrument everything, Track activities, meetings, opportunities, and downstream revenue by rep and by channel. You need this to compare against external options later.

And if you can’t fund these foundational pieces? You are probably better off outsourcing at least part of the motion while you shore up the basics.

Outsourcing Lead Gen: Speed, Scale, and Real Trade‑Offs

Outsourcing has come a long way from the “spray‑and‑pray call center” stereotype. Today’s better agencies look more like specialized, fractional SDR teams plugged into your go‑to‑market.

Advantages of outsourcing lead generation

1. Speed‑to‑pipeline

Mature providers already have SDRs, managers, QA, tools, and data contracts in place. You plug into that engine instead of building your own. Hitting the ground in 2-4 weeks is completely normal.

1. Lower and more flexible cost structure

You typically avoid long recruiting cycles, large up‑front tool investments, and full‑time salary commitments. Instead, you pay flat monthly fees or per‑meeting pricing you can ramp up or down.

1. Specialization and playbooks

Strong agencies live and breathe outbound. They run thousands of calls and emails per week across industries, constantly testing messaging, cadences, and channels. You benefit from that shared learning.

1. Access to a full stack of tech and data

Instead of stitching together your own CRM, sales engagement, dialer, data provider, and AI stack, you often get them bundled as part of the service.

1. Risk sharing

With month‑to‑month contracts and clearly defined SLAs, you can walk away faster than you can unwind a team of full‑time hires.

Real risks and how to mitigate them

Outsourcing is not magic. Done poorly, it absolutely can:

• Produce low‑quality meetings that waste AE time.
• Misrepresent your brand with off‑tone messaging.
• Operate as a black box with no clear attribution or learning.

To avoid that, you need to:

• Own the ICP and qualification criteria, Don’t let a vendor guess who your best buyers are.
• Insist on CRM integration and data transparency, All activities and results should be visible in your systems.
• Co‑create messaging, Provide core value props, proof points, and objection handling, then collaborate on tests.
• Measure outcomes, not activities, Evaluate on held meetings, conversion to opportunities, and eventually revenue, not just dials or booked meetings.

What a good outsourced partner looks like

Look for providers who:

• Specialize in B2B outbound (cold calling and email), not generic telemarketing.
• Offer US‑based and offshore options so you can balance cost and coverage.
• Bring their own AI‑enabled platform and data, not just bodies.
• Provide transparent dashboards and clean CRM sync.
• Are comfortable being held accountable for show rates and opportunity conversion, not just bookings.

This is where SalesHive stands out.

They are a B2B lead gen agency built specifically around outbound: cold calling, email outreach, SDR outsourcing, and list building. Since 2016, they have booked 100,000+ meetings for 1,500+ clients by pairing specialized SDR pods with an AI sales platform.

• On email, their eMod engine automatically researches prospects and personalizes templates at scale, which helps cut through inbox noise and drive reply rates.
• On the phone, professionally trained SDRs use proven frameworks and real‑time analytics to convert conversations to qualified appointments.
• Clients can choose between US‑based or Philippines‑based teams, depending on complexity and budget.
• All of it runs on month‑to‑month contracts with risk‑free onboarding, so you are not locking in a year‑long experiment.

If you want outsourced lead gen that behaves like an extension of your team instead of a black box, that is the model to look for.

Hybrid Models: How Mature B2B Orgs Actually Operate

Here is the thing most blog posts gloss over: the best‑run sales orgs are not purely internal or purely outsourced.

They are hybrid.

Why hybrid wins

A hybrid model lets you:

• Keep strategy, ICP, and core accounts under your roof.
• Use outsourced teams for speed and scale in specific motions.
• Flex capacity up or down without whiplashing your internal headcount.

Research on outsourcing more broadly shows companies using hybrid models (internal strategy + external execution) often see significantly higher ROI than those going all‑in on one approach, because they match the right resource to the right problem.

Common hybrid setups that work

Here are a few patterns we see over and over in B2B teams that hit their numbers:

1. Internal SDRs on named accounts, external SDRs on net‑new segments
• Internal: focus on strategic accounts, ABM targets, high‑ACV enterprise deals.
• External: run volume programs into mid‑market, new industries, or new regions.

1. Internal SDRs on inbound, external SDRs on outbound
• Internal: qualify and route inbound demos, trials, content leads.
• External: run cold outbound across phone, email, and LinkedIn to create net‑new opportunities.

1. Internal SDR “lab”, external SDR “factory”
• Internal: small, senior SDR team experimenting with new messages, offers, and sequences.
• External: once a motion works, hand it to an agency to scale execution across thousands of accounts.

1. Seasonal or campaign‑based external support
• Internal: steady‑state daily outbound and inbound handling.
• External: surge capacity around events, product launches, or end‑of‑quarter push.

In every scenario, the constant is this: you keep control of the playbook, the data, and the definition of success. You use external partners to amplify, not replace, that engine.

Decision Framework: Internal vs External for Your Org

Instead of asking "which is better," ask "better for what, right now?"

Here’s a simple way to think through the decision.

Step 1: Score your situation on four dimensions

Give yourself a 1-5 score on each:

1. Urgency of pipeline
• 1 = we are fine for the next 12 months.
• 5 = we need more qualified opportunities this quarter.

1. Complexity of sale and discovery
• 1 = transactional or low‑touch deals.
• 5 = multi‑stakeholder, technical, long‑cycle deals.

1. Internal capacity to hire and manage SDRs
• 1 = no SDR manager, no playbooks, stretched leadership.
• 5 = experienced SDR leadership and enablement already in place.

1. Budget flexibility
• 1 = we can only afford variable or short‑term commitments.
• 5 = we are comfortable adding fixed headcount.

Step 2: Match patterns

• High urgency, low complexity, low internal capacity

→ Strong fit for outsourcing first, ideally with a partner who can spin up in weeks.

• Low urgency, high complexity, high internal capacity

→ Good fit for internal hiring, maybe with some external testing help.

• High urgency, high complexity

→ Often best served by a hybrid: hire or repurpose a small internal team for strategic accounts while an external partner fills the top of funnel elsewhere.

• Moderate scores across the board

→ Start with a 90‑day outsourced pilot for one motion while you plan your internal build‑out.

Step 3: Run the unit economics

For each option, calculate:

• Monthly fully loaded cost per SDR‑equivalent, internal and external.
• Expected meetings per month (or per quarter) at steady state.
• Expected show rate and stage‑2 opportunity conversion.

From there, you can derive:

• Cost per held meeting.
• Cost per opportunity.
• Pipeline generated per dollar.

Do this for internal SDRs, outsourced SDRs, and your current inbound channels. When you see the numbers next to each other, the decision tends to get clearer fast.

How This Applies to Your Sales Team

Let’s make this practical. Here is how a typical B2B leadership team might apply this framework over a quarter.

1. Audit your current pipeline sources

Pull the last 6-12 months of data and break down:

• Opportunities and revenue by source (inbound, outbound, partner, events, etc.).
• Cost by source (media, tools, people, vendors).
• Conversion rates and sales cycle lengths.

You might find that outbound is a small share of revenue but a surprisingly efficient cost‑per‑opportunity, or the other way around.

2. Decide where you need more pipeline and why

Be specific:

• Do you need more mid‑market logos to prove traction?
• Are you light in a specific vertical (healthcare, manufacturing, fintech)?
• Do you need to land more enterprise brands for fundraising optics?

You are not deciding "internal vs external" for the whole company; you are deciding for concrete motions.

3. Pick motions to own internally vs partner on

Example split:

• Internal SDRs:
• Inbound lead qualification and routing.
• Expansion and cross‑sell in existing accounts.
• Named enterprise accounts with heavy ABM support.

• External SDR partner (e.g., SalesHive):
• Net‑new outbound into a specific ICP (e.g., VP Operations at mid‑market manufacturers in North America).
• Event or webinar follow‑up across thousands of leads.
• Testing a new product line or region.

4. Stand up a 90‑day pilot

If you engage a partner like SalesHive, use that first 90 days to:

• Align on ICP, messaging, and qualification criteria.
• Build a shared dashboard in your CRM or their platform.
• Run multivariate tests on subject lines, openers, CTAs, and call scripts.
• Meet weekly to adjust targeting and messaging based on real conversations.

You are not just buying meetings; you are buying learnings. After 90 days, you should have data to compare internal vs external performance and to decide where to double down.

5. Evolve into a deliberate hybrid model

Over time:

• Shift successful, high‑complexity motions to internal teams where career paths and deep enablement make sense.
• Keep net‑new experiments, volume plays, or less‑strategic segments with external partners where you value speed and flexibility.

That is how you build a resilient pipeline engine that can handle hiring cycles, market swings, and budget shifts without your forecast falling apart.

How SalesHive Fits Into the Picture

Let’s connect all this theory to a concrete option.

SalesHive is built for exactly the hybrid, data‑driven model we have been talking about.

• Founded in 2016 and headquartered in the U.S., SalesHive focuses 100% on B2B lead generation.
• They have booked 100,000+ sales meetings for 1,500+ clients across nearly every major B2B industry.
• Their services cover the entire outbound stack: cold calling, email outreach, SDR outsourcing, and list building.

On the execution side, you get dedicated SDR pods, not lone wolves, with clear specializations:

• US‑based SDR teams for complex, nuanced conversations where accent, culture, and time zone matter.
• Philippines‑based SDR teams for cost‑efficient, high‑volume outreach where budgets are tighter.

On the tech side, everything runs through SalesHive’s AI‑powered sales platform:

• Their eMod engine turns your email templates into personalized messages at scale by automatically researching prospects and companies.
• Their platform handles multivariate testing (subject lines, openers, CTAs, etc.) and automatically kills underperforming variants.
• Real‑time dashboards give you full visibility into dials, emails, meetings, and pipeline generated.

From a commercial standpoint, SalesHive is designed to reduce risk:

• No annual contracts, month‑to‑month flexibility.
• Risk‑free onboarding, they build a custom playbook before you commit.
• Flat‑rate pricing, no surprise overages or complex commissions.

If you are debating whether to hire internally or outsource, a SalesHive pilot lets you answer a simpler question: “What is our cost per qualified, held meeting if we plug into an expert engine instead of building everything ourselves?” Once you have that number, the internal vs external discussion becomes a straightforward comparison instead of a philosophical debate.

Conclusion + Next Steps

Hiring internally vs externally for lead gen is not about choosing the “right” religion. It is about designing a system that gives you:

• Predictable, high‑quality pipeline.
• Flexibility as markets and budgets change.
• A talent engine that does not implode every time an SDR quits.

In 2024-2025, the reality is:

• Internal SDRs shine in complex, strategic, or customer‑led motions and as a farm team for future AEs.
• Outsourced lead gen shines when you need speed, scale, and specialized expertise without taking on full‑time headcount risk.
• The most effective B2B teams are doing both, using a hybrid model anchored in hard numbers, not gut feel.

Your next move:

1. Run the unit economics on your current internal model.
2. Decide which motions truly require in‑house SDRs and which do not.
3. Pilot an external partner, whether for a segment, a region, or a campaign, and compare.

If you want a partner that has already booked over 100,000 meetings and knows the pitfalls of both models, SalesHive is built for exactly this moment. Plug in a pod, get real data on what great outbound can look like, and then decide how much of that engine you want to own vs rent.

Because at the end of the day, your quota does not care how the meeting was sourced, only that it was the right prospect, at the right time, with a real chance to turn into revenue.