Sales outsourcing pricing and cost: What you’ll actually pay in 2025

The biggest mistake companies make when outsourcing sales isn’t choosing the wrong pricing model — it’s trying to solve all their sales problems at once.

It’s also not worth obsessing over finding the cheapest per-meeting option. Every pricing model starts at a high cost in the first year.

For mid-level and enterprise B2B, you’ll likely start with $3,000 to $5,000 per meeting booked in year one. In year two, you might get down to $2,000 per meeting booked. By year three, you could optimize it to $1,000 and eventually get it to something like $250 per meeting.

The time it takes to go from high cost of acquisition to low is what matters. How fast everything happens depends greatly on the specialists you’re working with, and how well you address problems as they arise.

In this guide, we’ll dissect sales outsourcing pricing, the major cost factors, different pricing models, and common mistakes to avoid.

Cost factors for sales operations

Regardless of the model or pricing you choose, the starting price-per-meeting is going to be unsustainably high. Expecting to lock in the lowest price point you can find is not the right mindset.

Another common misstep is that companies tend to approach outsourcing partners with a laundry list of needs that looks like this:

• Appointment setting
• Lead research
• Email campaigns
• LinkedIn outreach
• Cold calling
• CRM integration

They also want:

• Lowest possible price
• Highest possible results
• Everyone moving fast
• Everything working on the first try

These kinds of expectations not only guarantee disappointment and overwhelm, they ignore the real cost factors.

Successful outsourcing involves iterations, testing, multiple strategy calls, and constantly refining your approach. That’s why every pricing model — whether retainer, pay-per-appointment, or commission-based — starts at roughly the same cost point.

To better understand the cost of outsourced sales, first look at the 3 main factors that drive all sales costs.

Factor 1: Team composition and expertise

The unicorn employee who can handle every aspect of modern sales doesn’t exist.

You’re not going to find someone who knows your industry inside out and excels at sales, communication, automation, scraping, qualification, outreach, and copywriting. You could try, but chances are they will need support from other people, lots of your time, or endless SaaS tools with AI. They seem like a great opportunity to save on costs, but most of the time, organizations overpay by 200% for someone who’s bringing average results.

At Belkins, we take a human-centric approach, investing in the best talent we can find and grow with through our outsourced SDR services. When we tell you to give up on the unicorn hunt, we’re speaking from experience. As Belkins co-founder Michael Maximoff points out, 

Realistically, if you’re considering hiring in-house, you need to invest in a team.

In-house hiring costs $10,000 to $20,000 per recruit. Then it takes three months to hire and another three months for them to ramp up. During those six months, you’re burning through resources without seeing results.

If you think you can game the system and pay a premium for a well-rounded specialist, you’ll be forced to compromise. That “unicorn” hire? They’ll actually be mediocre at most tasks and good at maybe one or two.

Teams are better for long-term costs. But outsourced teams can compress years of optimization into months.

For instance, an in-house generalist is going to struggle with things like email deliverability issues, something an outsourced sales team has already solved hundreds of times.

In-house teams are time-consuming and costly to build. Finding the right individual for each role is a crapshoot for most organizations. Outsourced sales teams have experience that helps them move through learning cycles faster.

Factor 2: Infrastructure and tools

Salaries are just one piece of the cost puzzle. The entire ecosystem is responsible for results. Hence, it’s a major cost consideration. 

Additionally, any in-house team will need to juggle an array of responsibilities:

• Lead sourcing and data management
• Tool selection, implementation, and maintenance
• Outreach execution and follow-up sequences
• LinkedIn outreach strategy and connection management
• Cold calling scripts, timing optimization, and call tracking
• Deliverability monitoring and reputation management
• Template optimization and A/B testing

Take email deliverability as an example. You will need email deliverability tools, reputation monitoring systems, domain management, and someone who understands the technical nuances of avoiding spam filters. That’s before you even send your first outreach email.

Outsourced teams come with a lot of infrastructure costs. They’ve already built or mastered premium tools, established processes, and trained specialists who know exactly how to use them.

Factor 3: Time to optimization

The journey from $5,000 per meeting to $1,000 comes with faster learning and optimization over time.

Year one is expensive regardless of your chosen pricing model. Michael’s data gives you a predictable optimization curve:

Belkins’ internal team has exemplified this progression, moving from $2,000 per appointment down to $500. But know that this kind of optimization took years of continuous refinement.

In-house teams will move through these cycles more slowly. Understandably, they’re bogged down by what Michael calls “HR culture” — team meetings, product discussions, and organizational overhead that pulls them away from actual sales work.

Every company event, every all-hands meeting, every cross-functional project slows progress, which aligns with Salesforce research showing that sales professionals spend 70% of their time on non-selling activities.

A specialized outsourcing partner can compress this timeline because they already know which ICP responds best to specific messaging.

At Belkins, we’ve also tested hundreds of subject lines for years across multiple B2B sectors and customer personas. We know which automation tools actually work versus which ones just sound impressive.

Speed is the area where outsourcing makes the biggest difference in terms of cost. In-house teams might take three years to optimize costs by 75%, while a specialized partner can achieve similar results in 12–18 months.

The secret to faster optimization lies in how specialized agencies structure their teams differently from typical SDR-focused models. 

This structured approach to team longevity and knowledge retention explains exactly how specialized providers compress cost-reduction timelines from years into months.

Sales outsourcing pricing models

Every sales outsourcing pricing model is a marketing tactic designed to appeal to your psychological triggers.

Strip away the positioning, and, again, they all cost roughly the same initially, as detailed in our comprehensive pricing model analysis. Whether you choose retainer, pay-per-appointment, or revenue share, you’re looking at $3,000–$5,000 per qualified meeting in year one. Prices tend to be this high when you:

• Are breaking into a new market or ICP
• Haven’t yet achieved messaging-market-fit
• Don’t know what your tangible differentiators are yet
• Are new to outsourcing sales
• Are after sales qualified leads (SQL) with companies that have between 1,000 and 5,000 employees

Once you accept that pricing models are mostly a marketing ploy, you can see what’s really best for your business.

Retainer model

Retainer models offer fixed monthly investments. They provide simplicity and stability, and allow for the speediest optimization path.

You’re typically looking at $10,000 to $50,000+ per month, depending on scope and scale. Here’s what you can expect within this range:

$10,000–$15,000/month typically includes:

• 1–2 dedicated BDRs
• Basic tool stack (email, CRM, prospecting tools)
• Account management
• Standard messaging and template optimization
• Single-channel outreach (usually email)

$20,000-$35,000/month expands to:

• 3–5 dedicated team members with specialized roles
• Advanced tool infrastructure and deliverability management
• Multi-channel campaigns (email + LinkedIn + cold calling)
• Custom ICP research and list building
• A/B testing across messaging, timing, and channels
• Regular strategy calls and campaign optimization

$35,000–$50,000+/month includes:

• Full specialized team (BDRs, copywriters, data researchers, deliverability specialists)
• Enterprise-grade tool ecosystem
• Omnichannel orchestration across multiple touchpoints
• Custom automation and workflow development
• Industry-specific messaging and positioning
• Advanced analytics and attribution tracking
• Dedicated customer success and strategic consulting

However, the real value of retainer models is in how well they work with predictable budgets. They also work best for companies that understand how optimization requires consistency.

Additionally, when your outsourced provider knows they have guaranteed revenue, they can invest in a long-term strategy that leverages the momentum of your quick wins.

For example, if a provider’s initial email campaign shows strong response rates, that could be used as the foundation for an omnichannel strategy by adding LinkedIn and cold calling to the same audience. In this context, it signals an opportunity for testing adjacent market segments or investing in more sophisticated automation.

However, outsourced providers without guaranteed revenue will stop at the quick win on response rates. They’re not going to take the risk of reinvesting insights in broader optimization.

The psychological appeal of a retainer model is stability. Finance teams love predictable costs. Sales leaders appreciate consistent pipeline development.

An often overlooked benefit is that retainers optimize sales operations faster because there’s no interruption in testing and refinement. If you’re testing whether LinkedIn outreach works better than cold calling for your ICP, you may need a solid 6–8 weeks of data to draw a meaningful conclusion. 

Companies that pause service and halt testing after a couple of weeks will likely revert to email-only campaigns. Instead of powering through the problem, you’ve put yourself back in the same loop, wasted time, and increased overall cost.

Belkins works on a retainer model. We might be biased, but consider the other options. They’re all “performance-based.” They create stop-start dynamics.

Had a good month? You scale up. Bad month? The partnership pauses.

Reacting to constant fluctuations prevents systematic optimization. Steady, consistent improvement is necessary to drive costs down over time.

Pay-per-appointment

Pay-per-appointment feels safer but has hidden premiums that most companies miss.

Remember, you’re still starting at around $1,000–$2,000 per qualified meeting, just with different payment timing. 10 meetings at $2,000 each equals $20,000 monthly, which is the same price range as a retainer. But you don’t have the predictability of a retainer model. Your provider can’t plan anything long term. Without being able to invest in optimization, you’ve relegated them to a strict diet of low-hanging fruit. Once the easy wins are exhausted, they know it’s time for them to move on.

Additionally, your providers still need to pay their people, whether they produce results or not. In this sense, pay-per-appointment treats marketing in a simplistic, linear way that’s not true to reality.

The psychological appeal is that you feel the risk has shifted to the provider.

But providers aren’t charities. When they assume performance risk, they build that risk into pricing. The question is, how?

One way is that they tend to make more conservative choices that slow your optimization.

Why test a bold new approach when safe, proven methods guarantee payment?

This model appeals to risk-averse companies who want to “test the waters.” The irony is that this same mindset is matched by the provider. Conservative approaches yield conservative outcomes, and you end up paying premium (retainer) prices for average performance.

In other words, companies think they’re playing it safe when they choose pay-per-appointment providers. What they’re really doing is avoiding the commitment necessary to drive down costs and increase a meaningful return, year over year.

Commission/revenue share

Revenue share models promise the deepest alignment but require the most transparency and trust. These typically combine a base fee with a percentage of closed deals.

The psychological appeal is that your provider only wins when you win.

The reality is that this model only works when you have mature sales metrics and are willing to share complete visibility into your pipeline. The real barrier isn’t CRM access — providers get that in retainer models anyway.

The bigger issue is that most companies don’t know their own numbers well enough to determine revenue share.

What percentage can you actually afford to give when you don’t have an accurate understanding of your annual contract value (ACV), sales cycle length, or customer lifetime value (LTV)?

Without these metrics, you’re either overpaying or creating an unsustainable deal.

From the provider’s perspective, there’s no incentive to commit anything upfront because they haven’t seen your sales process work yet. They’re essentially paying BDR salaries out of pocket while hoping your sales team closes deals months later. Since most BDRs earn 70-80% base salary with only 20% in commission, revenue share should only cover the 20% incentive.

The catch is that revenue share models only tend to work for mature sales organizations with proven metrics.

If your sales process is broken, even the best appointments won’t convert. If your unit economics are unclear, you can’t structure a fair deal. Most companies end up paying base fees anyway while negotiating revenue percentages they can’t actually afford, costing wasted time and resources.

Sales outsourcing cost breakdown

So far, we’ve established that understanding the real numbers behind each model means looking beyond the sticker price. And also, that every company starts at $3,000–$5,000 per qualified meeting.

The next question is, what does $30,000 per month actually buy?

With an outsourced provider, it’s not just meetings. You’re investing in:

• A list of qualified, highly researched leads
• Infrastructure (tools and processes)
• Intelligence (playbook, approaches, do’s and don’ts)
• Engagement (collected as intent data)
• Awareness and activation of leads coming into contact with your brand

Arguably most importantly, you’re investing in problem solving. Each marketing campaign comes with a unique set of problems that requires a team to solve. That requires experienced, A-tier players. 

Companies that will succeed understand they’re buying a transformation process, not just a service.

Michael’s experience at Belkins illustrates a similar journey — moving from $2,000 per appointment down to $400–$500 for mid-market accounts. Enterprise appointments still run $1,000, and that’s after years of refinement.

So, as you go through the different costs by service type given below, keep in mind that it’s not so much about the rate; it’s about the rate of change.

Average costs by service type

Different sales functions have different optimization curves and cost structures.

Top-of-funnel appointment setting has the fastest optimization potential. It’s the most systematized with clear metrics and established best practices. Expect to start at $3,000 per meeting but potentially bring it down to $500-$1,000 within 12 months.

Full-funnel SDR services add complexity and will extend your cost-cutting timeline. That’s because you’re not just booking meetings — you’re qualifying prospects at different stages of the funnel and nurturing relationships, resulting in leads with much higher buying intent. 

Cost reduction is slower due to the increased number of variables, but starting costs are similar. You’re looking at $500–$700 per appointment for mid-level targets, scaling up to $800–$1,000 for C-suite meetings. Project-based campaigns typically run $10,000–$50,000, with comprehensive strategy and automation pushing costs to $200,000+.

While those numbers probably seem daunting, let’s put them in perspective.

A $200,000 comprehensive program typically generates 150–300 qualified appointments over 6–12 months. Assuming a conservative 8–12% conversion rate and $75,000 average deal size, you’re looking at about $1M–$3M+ in potential pipeline value.

That math comes out to be that if you achieve a 10% close rate, you generate 5–10x ROI for the initial investment.

Revenue operations (RevOps) consulting addresses the gaps that prevent sales teams from converting meetings into deals. Most companies find that booking appointments is only half the battle — if your handoff process, lead scoring, or sales enablement is broken, even perfect appointments won’t convert. 

RevOps services typically range from $15,000–$75,000 for comprehensive process optimization but can dramatically improve your appointment-to-deal conversion rates.

Omnichannel support scales with campaign complexity while reducing cost.

For instance, starting with only email campaigns limits your optimization potential. At $1,000 per appointment with just one channel, you quickly hit a ceiling in terms of how much you can improve.

Adding LinkedIn or cold calling initially increases short-term costs — you might pay $1,250 per appointment during the first 30 days as teams integrate the new channels. But once these channels work together, your cost-per-appointment actually drops below the single-channel baseline.

An integrated approach can help you bring costs back down to $1,000, then $900, and continue to optimize from there.

The same pattern applies to paid ads and other channels. Each addition temporarily increases complexity and cost, but the long-term effect is better optimization potential. Multichannel campaigns range $10,000–$50,000 initially, but they create compound optimization opportunities that single-channel approaches simply can’t match.

Omnichannel (when done right) can actually reduce all these costs through efficiency. Most comprehensive omnichannel campaigns range $10,000–$50,000 initially, but they typically create 3-5 distinct optimization opportunities, such as:

• Channel synergy effects
• Cross-channel data insights
• Improved targeting precision
• Automated sequencing
• Audience segmentation refinements

Cost projection follows the same optimization curve as other services. Expect a 50% cost reduction by year two and another 25% by year three. 

Hence, a $30,000 omnichannel campaign that starts at $1,200 per appointment can realistically optimize to $600 per appointment by month 18, then to $450 by month 36 as the channels work together more effectively.

Cost of in-house vs. outsourced sales

Since reducing cost (increasing ROI) is really about the speed of improvement, let’s compare in-house to outsourced sales in terms of optimization potential.

We can say that in-house true costs will extend far beyond salaries. Recruitment runs $10,000–$20,000 per hire. Add salary, benefits, tools, training, and management overhead.

Don’t forget opportunity cost, which is, on average, six months of ramp time (while your competitors are fully operational).

The big killer is what Michael calls the “multi-hat problem.” Your in-house SDR becomes a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. Their week looks something like this:

• Monday: Debugging email deliverability
• Tuesday: Writing cold email sequences
• Wednesday: Building prospect lists
• Thursday: Internal team meetings
• Friday: Updating the CRM

When do they actually master any of these skills? How long before they even learn what optimizing for cost even looks like? Realistically, probably never.

Outsourced teams have their own locked, stocked, and specialized expertise. If they didn’t already have proven playbooks, you likely wouldn’t have ever heard of them.

While your in-house hire is googling “how to improve email deliverability,” outsourced specialists are often the ones writing the articles in the search results, backed with examples from past clients.

Outsourced providers are not learning the ropes on your dime — they’re more often tailoring best practices to your business.

A final consideration, a mixed model of in-house and outsourced is typically best. As Michael notes,

In-house teams provide company knowledge and cultural alignment. Outsourced partners bring specialized skills and modern playbooks that leverage what’s already working.

Determining your sales outsourcing budget

Your budget should be built around your optimization timeline, not just monthly expenses. Start with realistic expectations and build from there.

Year one is your learning investment. Budget for $3,000-5,000 per meeting as you test ICPs, refine messaging, and establish baselines. If you need 10 meetings monthly to hit pipeline targets, that’s $30,000–$50,000 per month initially, depending on your specific pricing structure.

Most companies make the mistake of setting costs indefinitely. Smart companies plan for 50% cost reduction by year two, another 25% reduction in year three. If you’re not seeing this progression, something’s wrong.

Include a testing budget separate from your meeting targets. Testing multiple ICPs, messaging approaches, and channels requires investment without immediate returns. Companies that scrimp on this are more likely to get stuck with high costs because they’re less likely to find breakthrough strategies.

Scale factors matter more than most realize. Booking 5 meetings per month costs far more per meeting than booking 50, even though the ladder is more expensive due to the sheer volume. Fixed costs get distributed across higher volumes, and optimization insights come faster and more reliably with more data. Consider starting with higher volume to accelerate learning, then optimizing for efficiency.

Michael adds,

The idea is that each stage will require different investment levels, which means different success metrics.

Which pricing model is right for your business?

Choose your pricing model entirely based on optimization readiness, not perceived cost savings.

Choose retainer models when:

• You want a partner/provider who can help design and deploy a modern playbook (not just using whatever old learnings you have)
• You want a strategy that combines quick wins with long-term optimization
• You’re focused on finding the right ICP, messaging-market fit, and data to support future investment
• You want an end-to-end strategy that impacts the entire business, not just one channel

Choose pay-per-appointment when:

• You need to prove ROI before making commitments
• Your organization is risk-averse and needs psychological safety
• You’re testing multiple providers simultaneously
• You have a proven sales process that just needs more volume

Choose revenue share when:

• You have a mature sales process with predictable conversion rates
• You’re willing to provide complete transparency into your pipeline
• You want true partnership alignment that relies on incentive-based growth
• You’re optimizing for quality over quantity

Most companies, by default, end up taking a mixed approach. It often starts with pay-per-appointment to prove viability. They later transition to retainer once certain tactics and strategies have been proven to work. They may add revenue share components as the relationship matures.

Whatever you choose, focus on partner quality over pricing model. As Michael warns, “wanting everything at once” is the biggest mistake companies make. The best partners seek to guide you through tough decisions and set realistic goals from the get-go, regardless of pricing structure.

A final note on evaluating pricing and value

Once you’ve looked beyond the initial advertised costs and taken stock of how ready your organization is for cost optimization, you can then evaluate service providers based on 2 key qualities:

1. Cost optimization capability
2. Depth of specialization

When you zero in on these KPIs, the cheapest provider is never the best value.

Here are a few questions that can help you figure these out:

• What’s your optimization track record?
• Can you show specific examples of taking clients from $5,000 to $500 per meeting?
• Do you specialize in your industry? Only B2B? Or anyone with the budget?
• How deep is your expertise in the channels our ICP favors most?

A few other pointers:

Red flags scream louder than prices. Providers promising instant results at low rates are telling you they don’t understand the value of optimizing cost-per-appointment, or how to pull it off.

Additionally, those offering everything — appointment setting, content marketing, paid ads, SEO, social media management — will always lack the specialization needed to excel at anything.

Most importantly, avoid anyone who won’t discuss the messy reality of testing and iteration.

Green flags indicate that providers are capable of cost-per-appointment optimization. They tend to be:

• Transparent about the learning curve.
• Willing to show clear optimization timelines based on past client experiences.
• Happy to discuss specific strategies for your industry, not generic best practices.
• Averse to offering services outside their expertise.

The ultimate test is to ask potential partners about their own optimization journey.

How have they reduced costs for similar clients? What specific strategies drove those improvements?

If they can’t provide detailed examples, they can’t deliver the optimization you need.