It's one of those difficult questions, isn't it? What should we outsouce? To start, I'm 1990's old-school: outsource what's not your core competency. So, to be more specific, the questions is, is marketing a core competency? is sales? Let's start with marketing. It's not much of a stretch to claim that marketing is not a core competency of a non-marketing business. Indeed, most companies get help with their marketing, and thus we have companies like Synaxis. But, there are two limit cases. One is companies like Synaxis. Should Synaxis do its own marketing? And the second is larger companies—companies who can afford (or want to afford) "insourcing" their marketing and doing it themselves. These are the people for CMOs, Directors of Marketing, etc. Sometimes they even have a design staff. So, the question here is whether these cases are good ideas. I don't think so. And here's why. Marketing is an intensely reflective function. And, as eveyrone already knows, it's hard to know yourself as well as your friends and family know you. Marketing requires looking at a company from outside, and it's hard to get outside yourself. Not only is it not as effective to do your own marketing (unless you are really dedicated and concentrated), you actually get big improvements from the outside perspective. In just a few meetings, a good marketing company can tell you things about your company that would have taken months to determine internally. Next time, outsourcing sales?