Why do so many B2B sales prospecting services struggle to deliver consistent results? It’s what they’re experts on, right? Their execution isn’t the problem. The fact that most rely solely on marketing tactics is.
Most B2B sales prospecting service providers will promise you fixed outcomes — X amount of meetings in Y months.
But even proven tactics don’t work for every situation. They won’t do well against roadblocks like spam filters, domain deliverability issues, or non-responsive audiences. Tactics also have a limited shelf life.
What’s going to happen when “what’s working in marketing” shifts yet again? Proven tactics and promised outcomes sound good, but the best sales prospecting service providers emphasize:
- Strategy
- Testing
- Adapting to different situations
In this article, we’ll give you an understanding of what works and what doesn’t for B2B sales prospecting in 2025, then we’ll take a look at the best service provider options available.
Understanding effective B2B sales prospecting in 2025
B2B prospecting has become more sophisticated and personalized. High-volume, automated approaches are now counterproductive for companies with complex sales cycles and high-value deals.
Modern B2B buyers require multitouch-point engagement strategies. Generating many high-value deals demands integrating all your channels (LinkedIn, ads, content, email outreach, etc.) and aligning them with broader sales and marketing efforts.
If you plan to outsource your sales prospecting, look for partners who already understand your industry and can adapt when things don’t go as planned.
The hidden costs of volume-based prospecting
Volume-based prospecting wastes resources and produces poor-quality leads that don’t convert to high-value B2B deals.
Volume services typically promise unrealistic results, such as “150 meetings over 6 months with a fixed budget of $30,000 using only email.” Promises like these don’t work because there’s no way to project fixed budgets for short periods while relying on a single-channel strategy.
Infrastructure requirements include utilizing countless mailboxes, hundreds of domains, and warm-up software just to achieve low conversion rates like 0.01% or 0.001%.
Additionally, the conversations tend to be of poor quality with high no-show rates. Those that do show generally don’t have buying potential. Account executives end up wasting time on unqualified prospects instead of closing deals, leading to considerable unnecessary spends.
Companies spend tons of resources on setup and maintenance — such as ensuring email deliverability — while burning marketing budgets that could otherwise yield results through targeted campaigns.
Why single-channel outreach fails in complex B2B sales cycles
Services that focus on one channel like LinkedIn, email, or cold calling usually operate in silos. Their methodology doesn’t connect to other marketing initiatives, and this disconnect makes achieving a seamless customer journey impossible.
While a LinkedIn prospecting firm might be great at LinkedIn outreach, they’ll be lacking in other essential areas, such as lead research and data enrichment. Instead, they’ll rely on more generic solutions like LinkedIn Sales Navigator or other tools that are scalable but don’t yield results.
Single-channel strategies also tend to be very reliant on automation, which often lacks the necessary depth. The overall marketing strategy and buyer journey need to be well-developed first.
When a service depends on a single channel, vendors rarely anticipate roadblocks. They rely on an all-or-nothing system, so when their primary channel fails, there’s no backup plan.
Why companies struggle to achieve sustainable results
Too many companies expect tactics to solve strategic problems. Because they think fresh tactics are all that’s needed, they don’t want to invest in a partnership for sales prospecting. The result is they get sold on lower-commitment prospecting services and then receive outcomes totally different from what’s been promised. These services look really good on paper, but the real question is how well they solve bottlenecks and roadblocks.
Stitching different service providers together to form a comprehensive sales prospecting strategy doesn’t work well.
For our team at Belkins, that approach often causes integration issues. Clients will have one firm handling LinkedIn prospecting, so we can’t integrate LinkedIn with our other efforts. If they’ve got an email marketing provider, it prevents us from executing an omnichannel approach because the client doesn’t want to do anything that might compromise email deliverability.
Sales journey presentations make the buyer journey look clean and simple. In reality, the buyer’s journey is messy. Staying non-committal and trying to shop for the best cookie-cutter approach won’t work. Companies need to choose a dedicated partner to address the complexities of sales prospecting.
A quick comparison: B2B sales prospecting services
Here’s a simple breakdown of our top 5 picks for sales prospecting services and the processes they rely on:
| Service | Approach | Best for | Process |
| Belkins | Omnichannel strategy + execution | Complex sales, high-ACV | Strategy sessions → SME interviews → Multi-channel setup → Optimization |
| Superhuman Prospecting | Cold calling specialists | Call-heavy strategies | Script development → Caller training |
| Valve+Meter | Performance marketing | Analytics-focused companies | Data analysis → Multi-tactic execution → Performance optimization |
| CIENCE | Scaling through automation | Mid-market data-driven companies | Standardized outreach → Automated volume execution → Performance tracking |
| Martal Group | Assigning a single professional to each account | Simple sales cycles | List curation → Single professional execution → Lead qualification |
Top 5 services for B2B sales prospecting
We’ve categorized the best B2B prospecting services primarily by their prospecting process as well as by their channel and industry expertise.
Services range from full strategic partnerships to specialized tactical execution in specific channels. Each service has distinct advantages for different company sizes, levels of sales cycle complexity, and internal capabilities.
The choice depends on your needs, whether it’s a comprehensive omnichannel strategy or focused expertise in a particular area. Pricing models and engagement approaches also vary based on the service’s positioning and target market.
To make the best choice, understanding each service’s limitations is just as important as understanding its strengths.
1. Belkins: best for complex B2B sales cycles
We describe ourselves as the antithesis of everything we’ve criticized about modern prospecting services. While others promise fixed outcomes through single channels, we start with your pipeline goals and work backwards to create integrated customer journeys.
Company overview: Founded in 2017, we’ve pioneered a strategic partnership approach to B2B prospecting. We don’t replace your infrastructure — we optimize it. By working as an extension of your current infrastructure, using your domain, mailboxes, and LinkedIn accounts, we both protect and enhance what’s already working.
Unlike volume-based services, we focus on quality over quantity. Our approach allows us to integrate multiple channels, plan for roadblocks, and act as a strategic partner.
Channels: We leverage whatever channels make sense for your situation, then integrate them into a seamless customer experience rather than operating in isolation:
- Cold email outreach with the latest deliverability standards and manual, personalized response handling.
- LinkedIn lead generation by targeting decision-makers within identified buying committees.
- Strategic cold calling that follows up on preexisting interactions.
- Appointment scheduling with hand-picked and verified lists of sales-ready prospects.
- CRM consulting as a HubSpot Premium Solution Partner to ensure everything works within one system.
The difference in our approach is that we focus on ramping up what’s working while forming hypotheses on and testing what’s not to find the best approach. We don’t start by promising — only after a thorough evaluation has taken place can we begin setting realistic expectations for you in terms of results and timelines.
Industry focus: We work with B2B companies with complex sales cycles and high-value deals across 50+ industries. Our service model works best for companies that need account-based engagement rather than broad audience targeting, including those in manufacturing, healthcare, finance, IT services, SaaS, consulting, and telecommunications.
Notable clients: General Electric, TechData, Cisco, Berkeley College, OutSystems, HP, Zendesk, Sharp
Pricing: We offer fully customized strategies with SLAs and contract terms tailored to enterprise procurement. Our pricing aligns with your pipeline goals. Clients save up to $10,000 annually on the premium lead generation and marketing tools included in our retainer.
Prospecting process: Our process directly addresses the roadblocks that cause other services to fail. We start by reviewing your current playbook — especially your buying journey and ICP — using data to back up your strategy. Then we look at your marketing to determine where your customers are and how we can connect with them.
We identify what you do best and where there is the greatest opportunity for improvement. Combining these insights, we build a framework where all parts of the process communicate and work within one system.
This isn’t about automation or scalability: It’s about creating tailored, customized playbooks based on your unique needs, then optimizing them as we go.
📚 A B2B sales prospecting framework that lands high-value meetings
Proprietary products:
- Folderly: Email deliverability platform for maximum campaign reach
- Charge: Email campaign optimization and tracking for sales engagement
Case studies: Our results speak to the strategic approach we’ve advocated for throughout this article:
- General Electric: Scheduled 135 in-person meetings over seven months, significantly outperforming their goal of 30 meetings, with lead-to-appointment conversion rates ranging from 4.2% to 13.8%
- Get Well: Achieved 44 qualified meetings in 5.5 months, with a 22% lead-to-meeting conversion rate. We also expanded their reach so that 72% of meetings came from previously untargeted buyer personas (IT leadership and C-level executives) and delivered a 60% year-over-year increase in meetings while achieving 39% pipeline conversion from meetings to qualified opportunities.
- An investment platform client: Improved lead-to-conversion rate to 9% and achieved 30+ monthly qualified meetings by focusing on prospects that met strict qualification criteria rather than volume.
What clients say: Our 95% retention rate reflects what happens when you choose a partner instead of a vendor. Clients consistently highlight our human-centric approach to digital marketing and our commitment to transparency throughout campaigns.
“We had an increase in our pipeline of 200% in the first 3 months.”
– Roman Eaton, Head of sales and customer success
“In the first month, we closed our first contract, which was a promising start. Belkins helped us build a robust sales pipeline.”
– Patrick Benasillo, CCO, EVP & Co-Founder
“The exceptional quality of their leads is impressive!”
– Jenifer Tagliaferro, VP of sales at Koda
“Belkins impressed us with their ability to consistently deliver high-quality appointments, exceeding our requirements.”
– Chris Thomas, VP of sales at Kingbee Vans
“Their creative approach to breaking through the clutter of digital marketing is impressive.”
– Scott Chatten, Senior director of technology at Programmers.io
2. Superhuman Prospecting: best for call-centric outreach
Company overview: Superhuman Prospecting is a U.S.-based team of sales prospecting experts built to support in-house sales teams. They focus on quality by hiring experienced SDRs using a tested and thorough process. Since 2017, they have cold-called for over a thousand B2B companies ranging in size and experience.
Channels: Cold calling, email outreach
Industry focus: IT, cybersecurity, healthcare, manufacturing, education technology, financial services, construction, commercial insurance, and various other B2B industries
Notable clients: Waterpik, Miles IT, Motion Controls, Uber, Amazon Services Locker
Pricing: U.S.-based cold-calling and appointment-setting services starting at $1,125 monthly, with options to fit the needs of small, medium, or enterprise companies. Flexible pricing with a Flex Subscription or Premium SDR Subscription, customized based on volume.
Prospecting process: Every cold caller is trained and certified in the H2H Sales Script Methodology to ensure consistency and quality. They create custom outbound prospecting campaigns focused on providing quality leads, opportunities, and sales appointments based on specific needs and qualifications.
Proprietary products: The H2H Sales Script Methodology
- EdTech to K-12 schools: Generated 1,309 qualified leads over 4 years from 74,291 dials to private K-12 school decision makers, maintaining consistent performance with continuous strategy optimization.
- Chemical manufacturing: Achieved a 1.76% appointment setting rate for an industrial release agents company, resulting in 75 sales appointments and 96 qualified leads from 4,272 targeted dials over 10 months.
What clients say:
“Superhuman Prospecting has been instrumental in jumpstarting our sales pipeline after our acquisition. Their strategic approach led to above-average appointment setting rates.”
– A chemical manufacturing company owner
“Their specialized approach to our industry resulted in warm leads with return rates over 2%, which has streamlined our entire prospecting process.”
– An IT services company
“The team’s understanding of the education market timing and decision-maker hierarchy has kept our campaign successful for over 4 years. They constantly improve the strategy to maintain results.”
– An Edtech virtual bookstore client
3. Valve+Meter: the best performance marketing approach to prospecting
Company overview: Valve+Meter Performance Marketing focuses on customer acquisition and believes marketing isn’t performing until it delivers a definite, consistent flow of new business. They are a 2021 Inc. 5000 honoree applying their Math-Before-Marketing™ approach to develop data-backed strategies and systems to measure campaign results.
Channels: PPC, SEO, social media management, and email marketing
Industry focus: Professional services, managed service providers, nonprofits, SaaS, telecom, home services
Notable clients: Doc Dancer, RPM Machinery, Kenney Machinery, Evergreen Heating & Cooling
Pricing: Custom pricing based on ThinkFirst™ discovery and the strategy development process
Prospecting process: Focuses on controlling the “valve” (rate of new business) and “meter” (measurable results). The ThinkFirst™ methodology is comprised of four phases:
- Discovery
- Research and Planning
- Strategy Execution
- Analytics and Continuous Improvement
Proprietary products: The Math-Before-Marketing™ methodology, the ThinkFirst™ process
Case study:
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RPM Machinery: Generated $2.5M in marketing attributable revenue with $6.46-to-$1 gross margin ROMS, provided 16 additional qualified leads per month through multichannel outbound prospecting, achieved a 92% sit-rate with 86% of meetings held with owners.
What clients say:
“We’ve literally had a 50% increase in revenue, which is astounding.”
– Mike Kenney, RPM machinery
“Since teaming up with Valve+Meter, our growth has doubled. I’m learning more about our business because of the way they consolidate our information and data."
– Bill Berning, Doc Dancer
4. CIENCE: best for automating what’s already working
Company overview: CIENCE has repositioned itself as an all-in-one platform focused on scalability, operating more as a SaaS company specializing in AI-powered automated marketing solutions combined with human expertise.
Channels: Email outreach, LinkedIn, cold calling through automated platforms
Industry focus: Technology companies, information technology services, manufacturing, internet companies, e-commerce, healthcare, and financial services
Notable clients: Okta, Segment, Symbl.ai, Emotive
Pricing: All-in-one platform pricing with significant onboarding requirements
Prospecting process: AI and human collaboration where humans orchestrate while AI personalizes and executes at scale
Proprietary products: An AI-powered outbound SDR platform with programmatic outbound capabilities reaching millions of contacts monthly
- Okta: Aggressively scaled lead generation with 1 million contact records enriched by CIENCE.
- Segment: Helped grow system integrations by targeting MarTech 5000 companies, achieving 8–10 partnership sign-ups per week.
What clients say:
“The team at CIENCE has quadrupled our organic traffic in a fraction of the time, cost, and total resources it would have taken our internal team to accomplish the same tasks.”
– An IT client
“They have booked more qualified appointments than we may have been able to anticipate over time.”
– A manufacturing client
5. Martal Group: best for simpler B2B sales cycles
Company overview: Martal Group has operated for over 15 years as a top-ranking Sales as a Service company, providing 200+ onshore sales executives based in the EU, North America, and LATAM to help B2B organizations from startups to Fortune 500 companies accelerate their sales pipeline.
Channels: Email outreach, LinkedIn networking, cold calling
Industry focus: Technology, software development, MSP, education, e-commerce, telecom, web development, AI/ML, B2B SaaS, healthcare, cybersecurity, fintech, digital marketing agencies
Notable clients: Awin (its affiliate marketing platform), Polygon, and software development companies
Pricing: Flexible team structures: Fractional, Full-Time, and Enterprise options with custom pricing
Prospecting process: A proprietary AI outreach system with intent-based prospecting, automated contact validation, CRM tracking, and omnichannel strategy using email, LinkedIn, and Power Dialer
Proprietary products: An AI outreach system trained on 40+ million top-performing emails, automated multivariate testing
Case studies: Generated 10,500 prospects and 3 qualified leads monthly for its fast-growing affiliate marketing platform
What clients say:
“The project manager and SDR worked seamlessly with me and my team. In fact, I think of them as an extension of my team. They care.”
– Fred M.
Choosing the right sales prospecting service for your business
We encourage you to build a systematic evaluation framework that goes beyond surface-level promises. This will help you assess a given service’s deeper capabilities and alignment with your specific business requirements.
Evaluation must focus on the service provider’s track record with companies matching your exact profile and challenges. Your selection process should also stress-test the service’s ability to handle real-world obstacles and adapt strategies.
Your choice between vendor and partner depends on your internal capabilities, business maturity, and strategic needs. Hence, proper evaluation will involve multiple stakeholders and comprehensive expectation setting beyond just sales team input.
The right service will fit like a glove with your existing marketing and sales infrastructure. Here’s how to vet them properly.
Evaluate their process for your industry and ICP
The service provider in question should have a proven playbook for your ICP in your specific industry. They should also be able to provide examples of their work.
Next, test their expertise: Give them the ICP for your smaller company clients and then another ICP for your larger company clients. See how different one approach is from the other.
Here are some other red flags to watch for:
- Their projections are not based on the ICP size or industry, indicating a cookie-cutter approach.
- They don’t have work samples or case studies specific to your industry and company size.
- The playbook they use is based on their own pre-existing playbook instead of one they tailored to your unique needs.
Lastly, look for industry-specific knowledge, specialized terminology, and an understanding of your buyer’s journey. Verify they understand your specific sales cycle’s complexity and stakeholder involvement. Smart questions about appointment setting work well here.
Assess their ability to handle roadblocks and adapt strategies
Most services fail when they encounter obstacles, so choose services that plan for adaptation and have multiple approaches ready. Understanding why B2B appointment setting is so important can help you evaluate potential partners.
Here are the red flags:
- Without proper evaluation, they’re promising hundreds of meetings at a fixed cost.
- They’re only confident in one channel and don’t have playbooks for other channels in case the primary one fails.
- There is no mention of a ramp-up period.
A solid green flag is that they speak about ramping up, testing, hypotheses, and having to discover the right approach.
Look for services that want to build their sales prospecting methodology as an extension of your current infrastructure. That means using your domain, your mailboxes, and your LinkedIn accounts. Verify they have a proven process for ensuring it won’t harm what you already have in place.
Determine if you need a vendor or a strategic partner based on your business maturity
Every company has to make the tough choice between tactical execution and strategic collaboration based on its internal capabilities and business needs.
When it comes to sales prospecting, you almost always need a partner. But, either way, the vendor you’re considering should assess your company’s maturity level. Here are some red flags to watch for in this regard:
- They only talked to the sales team during the evaluation stage but didn’t speak with other people like business owners or those in fulfillment, delivery, or execution.
- Realistic expectations weren’t set properly at the beginning.
Green flags include:
- They identified what your company does best and where your areas of improvement were.
- They built an alignment framework where all the parts of the process communicate and work within one system.
Switching between sales prospecting vendors happens very often because companies don’t spend enough time on the evaluation stage, and as a result, expectations aren’t set correctly. They then become impatient and eager to try a different vendor while they’re still in the building phase.
The most successful partnerships happen when companies invest time in proper evaluation, set realistic expectations, and commit to working with their prospecting partner.
That’s why our clients stick with us: not because we promise the impossible, but because we deliver on what’s actually achievable through strategic thinking, omnichannel integration, and genuine cooperation.
If you’re ready to integrate your teams, break down silos, and build a sales prospecting strategy, start a conversation with us.
