Pay Per Meeting vs Retainer: How We Think About Paying for Outbound

The first question founders ask us is how we charge, and the second is what happens if the meetings don't come. Here's how we answer both, and why we built our pricing the way we did.

The first question most founders ask us on a call is how we charge. The second, usually right after, is some version of "we don't pay ahead", because most of them have already paid an agency or a contractor for months of activity that never turned into a single conversation worth having.

So this is how we think about paying for outbound, why we stopped charging retainers, and what to ask any provider before you sign with them, whether that's us or someone else.

The problem with retainers

Most outbound providers charge a monthly retainer, which means you pay for activity: lists built, emails sent and a report at the end of the month. The reason why founders sign them is that the cost is predictable. The reason why so many regret them is that the fee is the same whether the right buyers end up on your calendar or not, and the minimum term holds you in place during the exact months when the provider is still learning your market on your budget.

The part that hurts most is what happens when it ends. In most retainers the domains, the data and everything learned about your buyers stay with the provider, which means the next person you hire starts again from zero.

Why pay per meeting needs a written definition

Pay per meeting fixes the incentive, because the provider only earns when a meeting lands, so they have every reason to keep improving who gets contacted and what they're told.

The catch is the word "qualified". If the definition is loose, a calendar can fill up with people who were never going to buy, and you pay for every one of them. The way we avoid that is to agree a written definition with you before anything sends, so that every meeting we bill is held against it. A meeting only counts when all four of these hold:

• –The company matches one of the customer segments we agreed before launch.
• –The person who attends is a decision maker or a named decision influencer.
• –They replied to the specific message we sent them.
• –The meeting is booked on your calendar.

A meeting that misses any of these isn't counted and isn't billed.

How we charge

The key thing is that regardless of how we work together, we don't charge anything upfront. We're only paid once results start coming in, either in the form of the engine we build or in the form of the meetings it creates, and there are no fixed retainers that charge for volume and activity.

In terms of how it's structured, it depends on where you are today:

• –If you're already running outreach, we plug into the sending infrastructure you already have and only charge for the opportunities we help create. This is where it works best, because you're already paying for the software.
• –If you're not running outreach yet, you pay a one-time build fee once the engine is built and working, and then either run it yourself or have us run it and only charge per qualified meeting from there.
• –If you'd rather not pay for the build at all, there's no build fee, and the rate per meeting is higher instead.

Under every option the software and inboxes sit in your own accounts and are paid directly to the providers at no markup, so that the engine, the data and everything learned about your buyers stay with you whether we keep working together or not.

Why we don't promise a number of meetings

A guaranteed number of meetings is not a guarantee anyone can honour. It is either priced into the fee or renegotiated later.

What we guarantee instead is what we build and run: the engine in your accounts, the campaigns live on the timeline in your plan, and the written definition every billed meeting is held against. How many meetings follow depends on your market, and being paid per meeting is what keeps us working on it until they come in.

How to work out what a meeting is worth to you

The number that matters is your own. Take your average contract value and multiply it by how often a qualified conversation turns into a customer. For example, if a typical contract is worth $30,000 and one in five qualified conversations closes, each conversation is worth around $6,000 in expected revenue, which tells you exactly how much you can afford to spend to get one.

Compare that with hiring. A full-time SDR typically takes four to six months to ramp, and you're still the one deciding who they go after and what they say, which means you pay the salary while the strategy keeps coming from you.

If you'd like to see how this would work for your business, the free diagnostic sizes the build to your market and lays out the options, so you can pick the one that fits your team and your cash flow.