How we list and order firms
By Cameron Pauluzzi · Updated · How we rank · Report an error
How we choose which firms to list, where every fact comes from, how the order on each ranking is set, and what this research cannot tell you.
Which firms are in scope
We cover firms that build and run B2B go-to-market systems inside the client's own tools: the CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce and others), the marketing automation platform, the Clay workspace. The client keeps the system when the engagement ends. That covers RevOps agencies, GTM ops and embedded teams, GTM engineering and Clay studios, marketing ops consultancies, CRM partners and fractional RevOps leaders.
We leave out pure outbound and lead-generation agencies (cold email, SDR outsourcing, list building), whose deliverable is meetings booked from their own infrastructure, as well as enterprise systems integrators, B2C lifecycle agencies, software vendors and talent marketplaces.
Within a ranking, a firm is listed when it sells that service on a page of its own or shows it in named client work. A firm can appear in several rankings; its full entry sits on one of them and the others link to it.
How the research is done, and its limits
Every entry is desk research, done in November 2026 from: the firm's own website (services, pricing, case studies, about pages), the vendor partner directories (HubSpot's Solutions Directory, Clay's experts directory; Salesforce AppExchange where it loaded), Clutch and G2 profiles, and press releases for acquisitions. Each fact is shown with a link to where we read it and the date we checked it.
What we do not do, so that you know:
- For this research we did not hire any of these firms, run a project with them or ask them for a quote.
- We did not speak to their clients or take references.
- We have not audited any result a firm publishes. Outcomes in case studies are shown as the firm's own statements.
- Some sources blocked our tools: G2 in every case, Salesforce AppExchange in most, a few firms' own pages. Where that happened the entry says so.
Each entry ends with a list of what we could not verify. An entry that looks strong here can still be wrong for you.
How the order is set
Two rules, applied the same way on every ranking:
- Editor's pick first. On every ranking it belongs to, LeanScale is shown first, labelled "Editor's pick" in the table and in its entry. That position is the editor's choice for a venture-backed B2B software company that wants one outside team to run its GTM systems on a short rolling term. It is not the result of the score below, and the entry lists the same gaps as any other (no published price, no third-party reviews yet).
- Everyone else by score. All other firms are ordered by the score below, highest first; equal scores are ordered by name. No other manual adjustment is made.
How the score is calculated
The score is out of 100 and uses only what can be checked from outside. It rewards firms that make themselves easy to evaluate: a price you can see, clients you can name, reviews you can read, an address and a team you can find. It says nothing about the quality of the work itself, which no outside source can show.
Pricing transparency (up to 30 points)
| A price figure published on the firm's own website | 30 |
| A figure only on a third-party directory (Clutch, the Clay or HubSpot directory) | 12 |
| No figure anywhere we looked | 0 |
Named client work (up to 30 points)
| Each case study on the firm's site that names the client and states an outcome | 6 |
| Each case study that names the client without a stated outcome | 3 |
| Capped at | 30 |
Review record we could open (up to 20 points)
| 100 or more reviews, summed across Clutch, the HubSpot, Clay and AppExchange directories | 20 |
| 25 to 99 | 15 |
| 5 to 24 | 10 |
| 1 to 4 | 5 |
| None | 0 |
G2 blocked our research tools in November 2026, so G2 counts are shown when another source reports them but do not count toward the score. Ratings never count, only the number of reviews, because nearly every firm here is rated between 4.7 and 5.0.
Public accountability (up to 20 points)
| A location we could find | 7 |
| A founding year | 7 |
| A team size, from the firm or a third party | 6 |
Firms we researched and left out
These firms came up in our research but are not listed, for the reason given:
- Ateko (formerly CloudKettle): Enterprise systems integrator owned by Bell Canada (ServiceNow, Azure, Salesforce at enterprise scale), outside our scope.
- Canidium: Sales performance management and pricing specialist (SAP, Xactly, Varicent), not a RevOps or CRM operations team.
- Iron Horse: Growth marketing agency; its one case study does not name the client and no service is built and handed over inside a client CRM.
- Carabiner Group: Acquired by SBI in May 2024; carabinergroup.com now redirects to SBI's revenue technology page, so the brand no longer sells on its own.
- Purasu: Its website returned 404 on every address we tried on 10 Nov 2026, so nothing could be checked against the firm's own pages.
Updates and corrections
A fact changes on the site when we re-check it, either because a firm or a reader reports a change or because we review the entry; the date next to each fact is the date it was last checked. To report a mistake, use the corrections page.