B2B lead generation agencies, explained
A lead generation agency finds companies that look like your customers, gets someone there to respond, and hands your sales team a lead or a meeting. Agencies differ in three ways: how they build the list, which channels they use, and how they get paid.
We’re one of them. We build the list from buying signals, we run email with LinkedIn, calling, and Meta ads as options, and we charge starting at $2,999 a month, month to month. But this page isn’t a pitch. It’s the explainer we wish someone had handed us when we were buying this stuff, and it should help you judge any agency, including us.
What they actually do
Four jobs, and most agencies are good at one or two of them.
Five questions to ask before you sign anything
These separate agencies faster than a case study page ever will.
How do you build the list, and how often? If the answer is “ZoomInfo and Apollo,” it’s a title-based list pulled once. If the answer is “we watch job posts, permits, and filings in your market and rebuild it daily,” it’s a signal-based list. The second one costs the agency more to run and sends fewer emails. That’s the point of it.
Who owns the sending domains and mailboxes when we leave? If the agency does, you lose your deliverability history and your reply threads the day you walk. The right answer is that they’re set up in your name.
What exactly is the billable unit? A lead, a positive reply, a booked meeting, and a held meeting are four different things. Make them put the definition in the contract.
Other ways to work with us
Cold email agency, if you want the email only, on domains you own.
Outbound agency, if you want email, LinkedIn, and phone with our team on the phones.
Meta and Facebook ads agency, if you want the same signal list retargeted with paid social.
What did your last three clients at my deal size produce in month three? Month one is setup. Month two is warmup. Month three is the first number that’s real.
Can I see every reply, including the negative ones? An agency that reports sends and opens is hiding the reply list. An agency that shows you the rude replies too has nothing to hide.
What “lead” means
It means something different at every agency, which is why the number on one proposal can’t be compared to the number on another.
An MQL is someone who downloaded something. An SQL is someone who agreed to talk. A sales accepted lead is one your rep looked at and said “yes, that’s a real one.” A booked meeting is a calendar invite. A held meeting is one that actually happened.
We report positive replies and booked meetings, and we write the line down with you before anything sends: minimum company size, industries in and out, geography, titles. Replies that don’t meet the line get handed over as notes and don’t count.
Whoever you go with, get the definition in writing and check the reply list against it once a month. That one habit heads off most of the arguments people have with agencies in this category.
Agency or hire a rep?
A sales development rep in the US costs $70,000 to $100,000 a year fully loaded, before tools, data, and the manager’s time, and takes three or four months to ramp. An agency at $3,000 to $10,000 a month is cheaper per year and starts sending in two weeks.
The agency wins when you’ve got one or two products, a buyer you can describe in a sentence, and nobody to manage a rep. The in-house rep wins when the sale is complicated enough that the person doing outreach has to understand the product deeply, or when you’ve decided outbound is a core function you want to own.
Most of our clients in the $10K to $50K range run an agency for the first year and hire in-house once the signals and the messaging are proven. Doing it in that order is cheaper than doing it the other way around, because the in-house rep inherits a playbook instead of writing one.
Building the list. Deciding who gets contacted and why. The cheap way is a database pull: every VP of Ops at every company between 100 and 500 people. The expensive way is watching what changed at each company (hires, permits, funding, leases, deadlines) and rebuilding the list from that every day.
Reaching out. Email, LinkedIn, phone, ads, in some sequence. People argue about channels a lot. In our experience the channel matters much less than whether the message is about something the prospect actually recognizes.
Deciding what counts. Which replies are leads and which aren’t. This is where agencies and clients fall out, so it needs to be written down before the first email goes.
Handing it off. Getting the lead to a rep with enough context to run the call. A calendar invite with a company name is a handoff. A calendar invite with the reply thread and the reason this company was on the list in the first place is a much better one.
| Type | What you get | Roughly what it costs | Where it goes wrong |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cold email agency | Domains, mailboxes, list, copy, sending, replies. | $2,000 to $8,000 a month. | Goes wrong when the list is title-based and every reply is "not interested." |
| Appointment setting agency | Meetings on your calendar, usually by phone plus email. | $300 to $1,500 a meeting, or $3,000 to $10,000 a month. | Goes wrong because they're paid for the meeting, not the fit, so anyone who agrees to a call gets booked. |
| Rented sales rep | A named rep working your list across email, LinkedIn, and phone. | $6,000 to $15,000 a month per rep. | Goes wrong when the rep is shared across too many clients, or when the list was handed to them by a database instead of built from signals. |
| Demand generation agency | Content, paid media, webinars, nurture, all aimed at inbound. | $10,000 a month and up, plus ad spend. | Goes wrong in small markets, where there aren't enough buyers for inbound to reach them inside a sales cycle. |
| Lead list vendor | Names and emails, sometimes with an "intent score." | $500 to $5,000 a month. | Goes wrong because the same list got sold to your competitors and nobody contacts the names anyway. |
We're the first kind, with the second and third available on top, starting at $2,999 a month, month to month. We put ourselves in the table because leaving us out of a pricing guide on our own website would be weird, and those are the numbers we use when a buyer asks how we stack up.
The buyer, the signals, and the message are different in each one. Every page below covers a single industry.
Not listed? See all 29 industries or book a call
Tell us your market, your deal size, and who takes the meetings. We’ll tell you whether we’d take the account, what the qualification line should say, and, if it shouldn’t be us, which row of the table above to buy from instead.
Terms we use on this page
What does a lead generation agency do?
Builds a list of companies that look like your customers, contacts decision makers by email, phone, LinkedIn, or ads, sorts the replies, and hands your sales team a lead or a meeting. The differences between agencies come down to how the list gets built and how the agency gets paid.
How much does a lead generation agency cost?
Cold email agencies run $2,000 to $8,000 a month. Appointment setters are $300 to $1,500 a meeting or $3,000 to $10,000 a month. Rented sales reps are $6,000 to $15,000 a month per rep. Demand gen starts around $10,000 a month plus ad spend. We start as low as $2,999 a month, month to month.
Is it worth it for a small B2B company?
If the deal is $10K or more and someone on your team can run the meetings, yes. Under that, a booked meeting usually costs more than the deal is worth, and you’re better off spending on inbound or referrals.
What’s the difference between lead generation and appointment setting?
Appointment setting is one output of lead gen: a meeting on the calendar. The agencies that call themselves appointment setters are usually paid per meeting, and that changes what they book. Lead gen agencies usually charge a retainer and report replies as well as meetings.
How long before an agency produces anything?
Two weeks to the first send, three to five weeks to the first meetings, and month three is the first month worth judging. If an agency promises meetings in week one, they’re either buying them or using a definition of “meeting” you wouldn’t accept.
Agency or in-house rep?
Agency first if you know your buyer and don’t have a sales manager to run a rep. In-house once the messaging and the signals are proven, usually after a year. The other order costs more and ramps slower.