In-House BizDev vs Outsourced Sales: Which Pays Off for an iGaming Agency

Sooner or later, an agency that knows how to run traffic hits a wall that has nothing to do with creatives. The bottleneck is sales: there is capacity to spare, but no new brands coming in. At that point the founder has three options — hire an in-house BizDev, sell personally, or hand client acquisition to an outsourced sales team.

There is no one-size-fits-all answer. Below is a no-spin comparison, an illustrative six-month calculation and the ground rules without which any of these models stalls.

Three models at a glance

Start with the big picture. Each model is covered in detail in the sections that follow.

In-house BizDev: what it really costs

Salary is the most visible line item, but it is not the only one. Count the full cost:

• Hiring. Sourcing, interviews, a test assignment. This usually comes out of the founder's or a manager's time, which never shows up in any budget.
• Onboarding. The new hire needs to get to grips with your traffic sources, GEOs, caps, payment models and case studies. While they're learning, they're not selling.
• Ramp-up. Even an experienced BizDev needs time to warm up contacts for your agency: first meetings, tests, agreeing terms.
• Overheads. CRM, paid tools, conference travel, deal bonuses.

Then there is the risk of the employee leaving. A lot of iGaming runs on personal relationships: the acquisition manager on the brand side knows a specific person, not your agency. When the BizDev walks out, some of the warm conversations walk out with them.

You can reduce that risk, but only if you plan for it upfront:

• correspondence with brands runs through work accounts and shared chats that a manager is part of;
• every contact and every deal stage lives in the CRM, not in someone's personal Telegram;
• for key clients, the agency head personally knows the decision-maker on the brand side;
• the employment contract includes a confidentiality clause — have a lawyer sign off on the wording.

When the founder does the selling

At the start, this is normal and even the right call: nobody can pitch the agency's strengths better than the founder. The first clients often come straight from the founder's personal network.

Trouble starts when sales become a second job. The founder is usually the one responsible for what actually delivers results to clients: the media buying team, creatives, ad accounts, traffic quality. Every hour spent in negotiations is an hour taken away from delivery.

Signs the model has run its course:

• follow-ups to brands go out days or even weeks late;
• new clients only come through referrals, with no active outreach;
• numbers for existing clients dipped while you were negotiating with new ones;
• the pipeline lives in your head, and nobody else knows what stage any deal is at.

Outsourced sales team: what you're actually buying

An outsourced sales team is not a mass email blast to a contact list. You are buying three things: existing relationships at brands and operators, an understanding of who needs what right now, and negotiation experience on terms — payment models, caps, test launches.

The upside:

• Faster to first meetings. No need to grind through cold outreach from scratch: the team already has conversations going with brands.
• Payment tied closer to results. Most often it's a commission on revenue or margin from the clients they bring in, or a small retainer plus a percentage. The exact structure is set in the contract.
• No hiring or onboarding. You package the agency properly once, instead of training a new person from zero.

The downsides and conditions:

• You need transparency. You should be able to see who you're being pitched to, with what message and with what result.
• Potential conflict of interest. An outsourced team usually represents several agencies. Ask how it keeps them apart: by GEO, traffic source or vertical.
• Commission over the long run. With a large client base, a percentage can end up costing more than a salary. More on that in the calculation below.

This is how Avero works, for example: the team represents Facebook and influencer agencies, finds them brands and operators that fit their traffic sources, GEOs and capacity, runs the negotiations and supports the partnership. More on the format on our page for agencies.

An illustrative calculation: the first six months

Over a short horizon, speed wins: the money starts coming in earlier. But look further out. With three clients, the BizDev costs $3,000 + $1,200 = $4,200 a month, while the outsourced team costs $2,400. With eight clients ($32,000 of margin), the picture changes: $3,000 + $3,200 = $6,200 versus $6,400.

In this illustrative example, an in-house BizDev becomes the cheaper option at roughly $30,000 of monthly margin — that is, from 7–8 clients. But only if they actually bring in that many and don't leave after six months.

The main takeaway is the method, not the numbers: don't compare salary with commission — compare the full cost of sales, including time to first revenue and the risk that the hire doesn't work out.

When an in-house BizDev pays off

Outsourced sales are not the answer to everything. An in-house BizDev is the better choice if:

• you have a steady flow of inbound requests that need handling rather than new leads that need finding;
• the market already understands your agency's offer, your case studies are packaged and your terms are standardized;
• you plan to sign many clients, and the commission on them would exceed the cost of an employee;
• it matters to you that every brand relationship stays inside the company;
• you have a manager who knows how to set a BizDev's targets and keep the pipeline under control.

A common setup that works is a hybrid. The outsourced team opens new GEOs and verticals, while your own account manager handles the brands already signed: reporting, upsells, renewals. That way you pay commission for the hardest part — getting in the door — and keep the ongoing work in-house.

How to set up work with an outsourced team

Outsourced sales work when both sides see the same picture. Agree on the rules at the start, not after the first disputed deal.

1. A shared pipeline. One spreadsheet or CRM: brand, contact, GEO, stage, next step, date. You can see it at any time.
2. Regular reporting. For example, once a week: who received a proposal, who replied, which meetings are booked, what objections came up.
3. Agreed positioning. The team sells you in your own words: an agency profile, case studies, limits on GEOs and caps. How to prepare them is covered in our article on packaging case studies.
4. Attribution rules. Whose client is it if the brand was already in conversation with you? Draw up a list of your “own” brands before you start.
5. Exclusivity. Spell out what it covers — GEO, traffic source, vertical or specific brands — and for how long.
6. Confidentiality. A mutual NDA: your rates, case studies and terms don't go to other agencies, and brand contacts aren't used to go around the agreement.
7. Commission term. For how many months the team earns a percentage on a client it brought in, and what happens if the partnership pauses and then resumes.
8. Compliance. You work only with licensed brands, in GEOs where this kind of advertising is allowed by local law, within platform rules and strictly 18+. This protects both you and the sales team.

Here's how that might sound at the first meeting:

“Let's lock this in from the start: a shared pipeline sheet, a report every Friday, a list of the brands we're already talking to, and exclusivity on [GEO] only, for three months. If the process works, we expand.”

The payment model you have with the brand also affects how the outsourced team's commission should be calculated: under CPA, RevShare and Hybrid, agency margin comes in differently. We break this down in our article on CPA vs RevShare vs Hybrid.