The second person on my lead desk paid for herself in month four
Hired one part timer in October to do the phone half while I do the sourcing half. Posting the numbers because everyone tells you to hire and nobody tells you what the middle three months look like.
Before: me alone, roughly 12 accepted leads a month across two clients, about 90 hours of my time. After the hire, months one through three: 14, 13, then 16 accepted. So barely moved for two months while I paid her 1,400 a month plus a 50 bonus per accepted lead she sourced the conversation on. I was down about 3,900 cumulative by end of month three and seriously thinking about ending it.
Month four it turned. 24 accepted, then 27, then 26. Her per-conversation acceptance rate passed mine in month five, which was humbling and also the point of hiring somebody who likes phones. My hours went from 90 to about 55 because I stopped doing the part I'm bad at.
Revenue went from around 2,100 a month to 4,600 average over the last three months, against her cost of about 2,700 including bonus. So call it net 1,900 better with 35 fewer hours of mine in it.
The part that nearly broke it was months two and three. Not the money, the fact that I couldn't tell whether she was getting better or whether I'd hired wrong, because 13 accepted leads a month is too small a sample to see a trend in. What saved me was that I'd been logging rejection reasons, so I could see her rejections shifting from "owner not actually selling" toward "price too high," which is a better class of failure. That was the only evidence I had and it was enough.
What I'd keep: the bonus per accepted lead, small enough that it doesn't distort but big enough that she cares which ones get accepted. What I'd change: I'd have budgeted five months of runway instead of three. I nearly killed something that worked because I sized the patience wrong.
And employment classification for a role like this varies by state and gets people in trouble, so that part went through a professional before she started.