A common concern we hear, especially from procurement or legal teams, is about the cost of our Grow product. For example, staffing a team of five SDRs (three US-based and two offshore) might come to $37,000 per month, resulting in a four-month total of $148,000. The question we often get is, "Why should we pay FullFunnel $148,000 without any guarantees of outcomes or performance?" The reality is that the total cost of ownership for recruiting, hiring, training, ramping, and retaining internally is far greater than that.
The Reality of In-House Hiring
The reality is, that whether you hire these five SDRs through us or go the in-house route, you will likely end up spending as much or more money. Here’s why:
- Recruiting Costs: Finding the right talent is an expensive process. You’ll need to invest in sourcing candidates, background checks, and possibly recruitment agencies. This is especially challenging when internal HR or recruiting resources are servicing all departments, as sourcing a strong SDR candidate requires a different approach than sourcing engineering, accounting, or other internal functions. Timeline is also a factor that increases costs, both hard cost and opportunity cost, as it may take your internal recruiting functions months to source those five qualified SDRs, where as FullFunnel would have them working on your account in two weeks.
- Onboarding and Training Costs: New employees require time to be onboarded and trained, costing you both money and resources. They don’t hit the ground running on day one. Most SDRs don’t reach productivity until they’ve been fully ramped—often after 3-4 months*.
- Turnover and Reputation Risk: SDR positions often have high turnover rates. Many companies cycle through multiple hires before finding someone who can perform consistently. Unfortunately, this churn can result in negative Glassdoor reviews or bad publicity that tarnishes your company’s reputation, as former employees air their grievances. By outsourcing this function to FullFunnel, you remove the risk of bad hires and turnover leading to these public complaints. Since these SDRs aren’t your employees, they won’t have a platform to negatively impact your brand with reviews or poor feedback. And after the initial four months, you’ll have the option to take these SDRs in-house as full-time employees—only when they’ve proven themselves as productive assets and great cultural fits. This way, there’s no reputational risk until they are a known quantity, fully vetted by our process.
- Opportunity Cost: One of the most significant, often overlooked costs is the opportunity cost of using your existing sales team to train, onboard, and ramp new hires. Your core sales team should be focused on closing deals and driving revenue, but when they’re diverted to handle the hiring and training of new SDRs, their productivity suffers. This distraction can lead to lost revenue opportunities. With FullFunnel’s Grow product, your sales team stays focused on what they do best—selling—while we handle the recruitment, training, and ramping of SDRs efficiently, without burdening your internal resources.
- Salaries and Benefits: Full-time hires come with fixed salaries, benefits, and other employment costs. For example, a US-based SDR typically costs around $5000-$6,000 per month in salary alone, not including additional benefits, infrastructure, and software tools.
Even after spending these sums, you cannot guarantee that your in-house team will deliver results in the first four months. Like with any new hires, they need time to ramp up, and there’s always the risk that they might not work out.
FullFunnel's Value: Expertise and Efficiency
At FullFunnel, we’re not just offering you SDRs—we’re offering you a proven professionalized process. This is what we do every day, and we’re very good at it. Our SDRs are experienced professionals who are trained in outbound prospecting, hitting the ground running for your business from day one.
Our Grow product isn’t designed to be a short-term solution. We don’t believe in simply engaging for four months and walking away. We aim to retain you as a long-term client, which means we are invested in your success. Our goal is to generate pipeline and help your business grow, not just collect a fee.
No Performative Risk—And Here's Why
We understand the desire for performance guarantees, but here’s the challenge: No company can offer guarantees on SDR outcomes, whether you hire internally or through an outsourced partner. There are simply too many variables in outbound prospecting—market conditions, lead quality, sales cycles—that are out of anyone’s control.
On the financial side, it’s important to understand that we don’t make massive margins. For a US-based rep, you might be paying us $9,000 per month, but our operating margin on that is only about $3,000. Over four months, for one US-based SDR, you’re paying us $36,000, of which $24,000 goes towards operating costs before accounting for overhead. This means there’s no financial incentive for us to take on performative risk.
The True Alternative
If you were to build your own SDR team, you’d likely spend the same amount of money over the first four months—without the certainty of success. Moreover, managing the entire process of recruiting, onboarding, and training these reps would take significant internal resources, including your valuable sales team's time. FullFunnel removes that burden, allowing you to focus on your core business while we handle the execution with professionals who specialize in this work.
It’s a lot like building an addition to your house—you could try to do it yourself, but unless you’re a professional carpenter, the results likely won’t be as efficient or high quality as hiring experts.
With FullFunnel, you’re paying for expertise, speed, and scalability, ensuring you have a team that is already well-equipped to generate results in outbound sales. And, after the initial four months, you have the option to bring these SDRs in-house, fully vetted and proven, so you only take on full-time employees when they are known productive assets—avoiding any reputational risk along the way.
*Per the Bridge Group 2023 SDR Metrics Report
