# Companies staff RevOps in the worst way. Source: https://revductive.com/newsletter/005-companies-hire-revops-in-the-wrong-order Summary: Issue 005: companies staff RevOps backwards, agency first and fractional last. Two tools I'd adopt, a subscription I'd skip, and three things to do. Every page, and the topic files: https://revductive.com/llms.txt The newsletter Once or twice a week. 1 hot take, 2 tool suggestions, 3 best practices. [Newsletter](https://revductive.com/newsletter) No. 005 No. 005 September 29, 2026 Best practices and tool suggestions pulled out of my week. 01 / The hot take Said twice last week Most companies start with an agency because the agency is the easiest thing to find. They’re a bigger company, they win on SEO and market presence, and it looks like they can design the whole system around your business. They can’t. An agency is a good extension of somebody who already owns the function. They’re good at execution. If nobody inside the company knows what the system should look like, the agency is being asked to make decisions it isn’t set up to make. Or worse, decisions made by someone who has never owned the ops function (usually sales). > The reason that you run into the agencies when you’re trying to find somebody that can do that is because they’re bigger companies. So they’re going to win on SEO and market presence and branding. So you’re going to think that they can do everything. They can’t do everything. Me, on a call this week So the agency comes first, the outcomes are bad, and then the company hires somebody junior in-house to fix it. That person does okay, but they don’t know how to own the whole function yet and nobody knows why they can’t get it cleaned up. Then the company finally brings in somebody fractional. Do the whole thing backwards. Start with the fractional person and let them build the first version around the business. Then hire the junior person, keep the fractional person around to coach them, and once that person can manage it on their own, give the leveled up in-house hire an agency to extend the team. I sell the first step, so weigh that however you want. But everybody does this in the polar opposite way and it’s almost always a disaster. > Get somebody fractional, transition to that fractional person taking a step back and coaching a junior in-house role, and then give the in-house person agency support for execution eventually. Me, same week, different call [Fractional RevOps vs. agency vs. in-house →](https://revductive.com/revops/fractional-vs-agency-vs-in-house) 02 / The stack Two to adopt, one to remove ## Two tools I used this week. One subscription I'd skip. ![SalesEQ](https://revductive.com/_astro/saleseq.BAHcY5qE_Z1y8yLd.webp) Adopt 01 Cheaper than Gong ### SalesEQ Gong coaches your reps off the transcript. SalesEQ is the first call recorder I’ve seen that uses the video and audio too. The first bit of feedback I noticed was that it told me I touched my face three times on one call. How someone’s voice or face changes in reaction to something you say is also something unique this picks up on over a standard transcription-based coaching/conversational intelligence tool. With AI giving us more ability to use more and richer data, this is the direction the conversational intelligence category is definitely going to go. [saleseq.ai →](https://www.saleseq.ai) ![treg](https://revductive.com/_astro/treg.6OgKN5e4_ZBv0bX.webp) Adopt 02 Pay per call, $1 free to start ### treg I’m fascinated by this one and I haven’t even used it much. But the cost is so low for so much value I had to include it this week. It’s one account that lets your AI tool call a few thousand paid data APIs, keyword data, email lookups, etc, and you pay per call instead of per month. For example, I did a GEO check (like SEO for AI responses) on a bunch of different queries. Revductive got named in two. The whole test cost about three cents. There are a ton of tools like that I wouldn’t pay a recurring $20-300ish subscription for but would gladly pay a few cents each time it’s useful. Speaking of….see the tool I’d remove next. [treg.to →](https://treg.to) ![Semrush](https://revductive.com/_astro/semrush.DIbJyKCv_1viP7U.webp) Drop / replace Good tool, wrong price for most teams ### Semrush I don’t have a paid Semrush account. I’d like the features but I wouldn’t use it enough to get value out of the Pro sub at $139.95 a month. Most companies get to a place where it’s useful eventually. But if you look up keywords a few times a month, you’re paying a monthly price for a handful of lookups. Now you can use it as early and infrequently as you like with something like treg. Replacing it with treg. Search volume on 22 keywords cost me about a penny, and pulling every keyword my site ranks for was under two cents. 03 / The work Pulled from this week's calls ## Three things I'd do this week 01 ### Build the version you might only use once. I’ve been spinning up small apps for one task, or sometimes one day, knowing I may never return to them. It’s an interesting change in how you expect to interact with your work. A lot of people are focused on repeatable, templated AI work, but traditional automation has handled that for 20 years. I’m more interested in making the thing I’m building grow a little bit every day. Build a system where your repeated AI tasks also give you feedback on how to make it better next time. Then update your prompt and get the new version tomorrow. > Having almost like an interface that’s spun up for a particular task or for a particular day that you don’t ever intend to return to is kind of how I’ve been looking at things recently. Me, on a call this week [Get an AI audit →](https://revductive.com/ai/audit) 02 ### Ship it at 80 or 90% and let it get better. People expect a build to solve the problem perfectly and forever. That’s not how processes work. You build something that works 80 or 90% of the time, set a clear set of rules, and then you stick to them and improve from there. The thing that actually makes a CRM messy isn’t the first version. It’s changing the rules every six months. > Otherwise, you’re going to be spending six months building something. Me, same week [Get a RevOps audit →](https://revductive.com/revops/audit) 03 ### Hold the AI to the bar your people actually hit. I keep hearing “we can’t trust it until it’s right 99.9% of the time.” OK. How often is your team right when they perform that process today? Measure what you have now first, then decide if the AI version clears it. Companies are full of processes where humans do it right 80-90% of the time and it works fine. Why should AI’s bar be higher? > You’re not even hitting that bar right now. So let’s be real here. Me, same week [How I pick which AI tool to use →](https://revductive.com/blog/how-i-pick-which-ai-tool-to-use) Thanks for reading. If you’ve hired an agency, a junior ops person or somebody fractional recently, reply and tell me which came first. I want to hear how it went. Kevin The newsletter This one went out in September 2026. Get the next one first. Once or twice a week. Quotes from the calls, the tools I would buy, and what I would do this week. No spam. Unsubscribe in one click. ## Generate revenue. Subtract everything else. Leads slip through cracks, reporting is a mess, and growth feels stuck. You’re not missing tools. You’re missing the system that ties them together. [Book a 30-min call →](https://revductive.com/contact) Or text me — [(478) 377-5985](sms:+14783775985) Texting powered by [Salesmsg](https://join.salesmessage.com/yr0gveggxy4f) (referral link) Past issues [The full archive →](https://revductive.com/newsletter) - [No. 007 Founder-led sales is improv.](https://revductive.com/newsletter/007-founder-led-sales-is-improv) - [No. 006 Pretty soon you won't know what software you're using.](https://revductive.com/newsletter/006-you-wont-know-what-software-youre-using) - [No. 004 95% of the time, your AI project is a RevOps project.](https://revductive.com/newsletter/004-your-ai-project-is-a-revops-project)