Hiring a country manager or appointing a commercial agent.

The comparison, in one table

The cost side, with real numbers

Lithuania's statutory minimum monthly wage in 2026 is €1,153 gross and the national average was €2,628.20 gross in Q2 2026. A senior B2B salesperson with a real network sits materially above the national average, and public salary surveys for that specific role are thin enough that any number quoted to you is probably a guess. What is solid is the employer add-on: Sodra costs the employer 1.77 percent of gross on a standard open-ended contract, so total employer cost is close to gross. That is a genuine Lithuanian advantage. Latvia is around 23.6 percent, Estonia 33.8 percent and Finland around 20 percent.

Then add the parts nobody models: the entity or employer of record, recruitment, a car, equipment, and the management time of whoever in your head office now has a direct report in another country. And add the failure rate, because the first country manager hire into a small unfamiliar market does not always work.

The legal position is not symmetrical

An employee is protected by employment law. An agent is protected by agency law, and that protection is stronger than most principals expect. Under EU Directive 86/653/EEC an agent has statutory notice periods, a right to commission on transactions concluded after termination in defined cases, and a claim to indemnity or compensation on termination capped at one year's average annual remuneration. None of it can be contracted away to the agent's detriment.

Germany's version, the Ausgleichsanspruch under HGB section 89b, is the one German principals already know. A German company reading this should take one thing from it: the agency relationship you are considering in Lithuania is the same instrument you already use at home.

The tax question

Employing someone in Lithuania requires a local entity or an employer of record, and the entity has its own tax profile. Appointing an agent does not require an entity, but it raises the permanent establishment question instead: a dependent agent who habitually concludes contracts in your name, or habitually plays the principal role leading to their conclusion, may create a taxable presence. An independent agent acting in the ordinary course of its own business normally does not. This is a matter for your tax adviser on your facts, not for a website.

When to hire instead

• Your region already produces enough revenue to pay a full salary comfortably.
• The role is more than selling: local operations, service engineers, a warehouse, a team.
• You need someone inside your systems, your meetings and your culture full time.
• You are bidding for public tenders that require a local entity anyway.
• Your product needs so much technical depth that no external agent could carry it credibly.

When to appoint an agent instead

• You do not yet know whether the market is real.
• The region is four small countries rather than one big one, and no single employee can cover them all.
• You want cost tied to revenue rather than to headcount.
• You want to be selling in two months, not next year.
• You would rather buy twenty years of existing relationships than build new ones.

The sequence that usually works

Agent first, employee later. Use the agency relationship to establish whether the market supports a full time person, and then hire against real revenue rather than a forecast. Write the agency contract so that conversion is contemplated: what happens to the customer base, what the agent is owed, and whether the agent themselves is a candidate for the job.