Lead generation agency or a sales hire in Ireland: what each really costs

Short answer: for an Irish firm starting outbound, a junior sales hire costs about €40,000 to €51,000 a year in salary, employer PRSI and pension before you add tools, data, recruitment fees or the months it takes them to get going. An agency brings the system, the data and the people from the first month, so it usually costs less in year one. A hire wins once you have a proven message, a full pipeline to work and someone to manage them. Many firms end up with both: the agency starts the conversations and their own salesperson closes them.

Morgan McKinley's 2026 Ireland salary guide puts a business development representative in Dublin with 0 to 3 years' experience at €35,000 to €45,000, and 3 to 5 years at €45,000 to €55,000. On top of salary, employer PRSI rose to 11.40% on 1 October 2026 for weekly pay above €552. Since 1 January 2026, auto-enrolment adds a 1.5% employer pension contribution for eligible staff not already in a scheme.

That is the floor. These costs come on top, and depend on your setup:

• Commission or bonus, if the role has one
• Recruitment fee, or the time it takes you to hire
• Laptop, phone and software: CRM, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, a data source for contacts, and email sending tools
• Your own time managing, coaching and checking their work
• Leave: at least four working weeks plus public holidays when nobody is prospecting
• The months before they are fully productive, and the cost of starting again if they leave

An outbound agency is not one person. With a managed service you are paying for a working system from the first month:

• Research: building the list of firms and named decision makers who fit your market
• Data: verified contact details, checked before anything is sent
• Sending set-up: separate sending domains and warmed inboxes, so your main email address is protected
• Copy: messages written for your buyers, tested and changed when they don't land
• Reply handling: someone reading every reply and booking the interested ones into your calendar
• Reporting: what was sent, who replied and which meetings came from it

There is no standard price, and you should be wary of anyone who quotes before they understand your market. What drives the cost is how many decision makers there are in your market, how many you want to reach each month and how many channels are used. See B2B lead generation in Ireland for how we scope it.

The two are not either-or. Most of our clients already have someone who sells. What they lack is a steady flow of new conversations for that person to work on. The agency finds and opens the conversations; your own people do what they are best at, which is closing them and looking after the client.

One example we can share: Summit Scaffolding went from pricing around €250k of work a month to around €1m a month compared with a year earlier, and through the outreach started talking to two developers it had no previous relationship with. Keith from Summit talks about it in a video on our site.

For construction and trade firms selling to main contractors and developers, see construction lead generation. For the email side, see cold email outreach.