Let me be direct: if you're spending $10,000 to $20,000+ annually on HubSpot licenses and handing the keys to a recent college graduate or intern, you're setting up both your company and that person for failure.
This isn't a knock on their talent or potential. But asking someone fresh out of school to manage a sophisticated revenue operations platform is like buying a Ferrari and giving it to someone who just got their learner's permit.
The results are predictable: poor lead quality, frustrated sales teams, inaccurate reporting, and leadership wondering why their expensive marketing technology isn't delivering ROI.
Here's the truth: HubSpot has evolved far beyond its origins as a simple marketing automation tool. Today's HubSpot requires strategic thinking, technical expertise, and cross-functional experience that takes years to develop. If you want your investment to pay off, you need to match the sophistication of your platform with the expertise of the people managing it.
The math doesn't add up for most organizations.
A mid-sized B2B company typically invests between $18,000 and $50,000 per year in HubSpot licenses alone. Add implementation costs, integrations, and custom development, and you're potentially looking at six figures in total MarTech spend.
Then they hire a marketing coordinator at $45,000 to $55,000 per year and expect them to "own HubSpot" with minimal training, no strategic guidance, and no support structure.
According to HubSpot's State of Marketing Report, companies that fail to properly implement and manage their CRM see adoption rates below 40% and lose an average of 23% of potential revenue due to poor lead management. That's not a technology problem. That's a people and process problem.
The disconnect is staggering. Companies treat HubSpot like a simple tool when it's actually a complex platform that touches every part of the revenue engine: marketing automation, sales enablement, customer service, operations, and reporting.
When you assign platform management to someone without the experience to handle that complexity, four things happen:
The real cost isn't just the wasted license fees. It's the lost revenue, the team frustration, and the opportunity cost of what your marketing technology could be doing if it were managed properly.
These aren't edge cases. These are standard requirements for any company using HubSpot seriously as a revenue operations platform.
Managing HubSpot effectively requires a combination of skills that typically take 2 to 4 years of focused experience to develop:
Technical Competencies:
Strategic Competencies:
Operational Competencies:
Entry-level marketers are still building foundational skills in content creation, campaign execution, and basic analytics. Expecting them to architect your entire revenue operations platform on top of this is a recipe for burnout and failure.
When HubSpot is managed by someone without adequate experience, the problems can compound quickly:
Leads go to the wrong salesperson, fall through the cracks, or never get followed up because routing rules are misconfigured. A Harvard Business Review study found that the average lead response time was 14 hours and 29 minutes, and that responding within an hour makes a business seven times more likely to have a meaningful conversation with a decision-maker. Imagine the impact on your business!
When sales reps don't trust the data in the CRM, they stop using it. They build shadow systems in spreadsheets, and suddenly your single source of truth becomes fragmented and unreliable. Getting sales teams to re-adopt a CRM after they've lost confidence is incredibly difficult.
Incorrect property mappings, duplicate records, and broken workflows create data quality issues that make accurate reporting impossible. When leadership can't trust the numbers, they can't make informed decisions about where to invest marketing resources.
The biggest waste isn't what goes wrong. It's what never gets built. Companies with underqualified HubSpot management miss opportunities to automate lead nurturing, streamline sales processes, improve customer onboarding, and scale their operations efficiently.
Consider this scenario: A B2B software company with a $2 million annual marketing budget assigns HubSpot management to a junior coordinator. Over 12 months:
The total cost of underqualified management easily exceeds $500,000 in lost revenue and wasted marketing spend.
If you're hiring for HubSpot management, here's what to look for:
Here's an uncomfortable truth: one person may not be enough to manage HubSpot anymore.
Effective HubSpot management typically requires multiple roles:
Larger organizations build internal teams with these specialized roles. Mid-sized companies often can't justify four full-time positions, which is where the build versus buy decision becomes critical.
Many successful companies use a hybrid approach: hire one experienced HubSpot manager internally and partner with a specialized agency or a fractional RevOps person for strategic guidance, technical development, and ongoing optimization. This gives you dedicated internal ownership plus access to deep expertise without the cost of building an entire team.
Hiring senior talent internally makes sense when:
Partnering with a HubSpot solutions partner makes sense when:
The hybrid approach (internal manager + agency partnership) often delivers the best results: dedicated internal ownership for day-to-day management plus strategic guidance and technical expertise from specialists.
HubSpot is a powerful revenue operations platform that can transform how your company attracts, converts, and retains customers. But only if it's managed by people with the expertise to unlock that potential.
Whittington Consulting is a digital marketing agency that helps companies make their websites into sales engines. We specialize in HubSpot, SEO, digital marketing, and website redesign to generate qualified leads and grow revenue.
If you're ready to stop wasting money on underutilized marketing technology and start seeing real ROI from your HubSpot investment, we can help.
Your HubSpot investment deserves expert management. Let's make sure you're getting the results you're paying for.
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