What a B2B lead generation agency does week by week, the four ways it charges, the cost per held meeting of each, and when not to hire one.
By Moe Alhosni, founder of ROI Maximizer. Published 14 October 2026.
Short answer: A B2B lead generation agency builds your prospect list, sets up sending domains that are not your main one, writes and runs the outreach, answers every reply and books the qualified ones into your calendar. You will be offered one of four pricing models: a monthly retainer, a retainer plus a fee per meeting, a pure fee per meeting, or an hourly setter. Per held meeting they overlap more than the sales pages suggest, from roughly $200 to $1,900 on the figures in the four-model table below. What separates them is what you owe in a month that produces nothing.
A lead generation agency is an outside firm that builds a list of people likely to buy from you, contacts them by email, phone or LinkedIn, answers the replies and books the qualified ones into your sales calendar. You pay it a monthly retainer, a retainer plus a meeting fee, a fee per meeting, or an hourly rate.
I run one of these agencies. ROI Maximizer sells the third model and a flat retainer, so I am biased. Every figure about another company comes from a page I opened on 13 or 14 October 2026, linked where it appears, so prices are as of October 2026. Where a company publishes nothing, I say so rather than guess.
Six agencies I have written up in full, plus us. Each price is the one the firm publishes or, where it publishes none, the best figure I could source, as of October 2026. The model column matters more than the price column, for the reason in the next section.
| Agency | Pricing model | Published or estimated price | Our page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Belkins | Monthly retainer packages | No price on its pricing page; third-party estimates of $5,000 to $14,800+ a month (Salesforge) | Belkins pricing |
| CIENCE | Retainer plus a bonus tied to held meetings | $2,000 a month campaign team, $499 a month platform, SDRs from $1,750 a month each; setup quoted on the call (pricing page) | CIENCE pricing |
| Martal Group | Flat monthly fee, plus sales commission on Tiers 2 and 3, after a three- or four-month pilot | No price on its pricing page; its own ROI calculator shows $11,500 a month for one sales executive | Martal Group pricing |
| SalesHive | One flat monthly fee, month to month | "Plans are custom quoted" (pricing page); one 2026 client paid $7,000 a month (Trustpilot) | SalesHive review |
| Callbox | Monthly fee per "Campaign Pod" of one dedicated SDR | $16,000 to $32,000 a month per pod, estimated on its pricing page | Callbox pricing |
| SalesRoads | Fee per SDR, billed every four weeks | $11,950 per four weeks for one SDR (pricing page) | SalesRoads pricing |
| ROI Maximizer (us) | Pay per meeting, or a flat retainer | Setup $1,000 to $3,000, then $200 to $500 per qualified meeting that took place and you approved, nothing for a no-show, no minimum spend; or $5,000 a month flat with no per-meeting fee | Pay per meeting lead generation pricing |
Outsourced lead generation is sold in four shapes. The only fair way to compare them is cost per held meeting: a meeting that took place, with someone who fits your definition. A booked meeting that no-shows is worth nothing to you, whatever the invoice says.
| Model | Who sells it, at what price | A zero-meeting month costs | Cost per held meeting | The long version |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Retainer | Belkins publishes no price; Salesforge collects third-party estimates of $5,000 to $14,800+ a month. SalesRoads: $11,950 per four weeks for one SDR. Sopro: "around €3.4K per month". One SalesHive client: $7,000 a month. Us: $5,000 a month flat, no per-meeting fee | The full fee | $555 to $1,910 at Belkins, on third-party estimates and one firm's worked example; $700 to $1,400 at SalesHive if $7,000 buys five to ten meetings, my assumption | Belkins pricing, SalesHive review, SalesRoads pricing, Sopro alternatives |
| Hybrid: retainer plus a meeting fee | FunnL: "$2000 monthly retainer and $300 per completed sales meeting". CIENCE: $2,000 team, $499 platform, SDRs from $1,750, plus a bonus tied to held meetings | The retainer | $500 to $700 at FunnL on five to ten meetings; $547 to $850 at CIENCE with one offshore SDR | CIENCE pricing, SalesHive vs CIENCE |
| Pure pay per meeting | Us: setup $1,000 to $3,000, then $200 to $500 per qualified meeting | Nothing | $200 to $500. On today's terms, a month like PR Noir's first would come to $300 to $800 a meeting with setup included | Pay per meeting lead generation pricing |
| Hourly setter | Stealth Agents: "$10 to $15 per hour for B2B appointment setters", which is $1,600 to $2,400 for 160 hours on my arithmetic | $1,600 to $2,400 | $400 to $1,200 if that buys two to four held meetings, my assumption, before tools | Appointment setting for marketing agencies |
The assumptions, row by row.
Retainer. Belkins shows no price on its pricing page. The bottom of its band is the top estimate, $14,800 a month, over 400 appointments a year. The top, $1,910, is a worked example from Arvani Media, $10,700 a month and seven appointments, which I read as seven a month, 84 a year. Both use an 80% show rate, also my assumption. SalesHive's pricing page says "Plans are custom quoted", and SalesHive publicly disputes the $7,000 reviewer's account, as the SalesHive review records. SalesRoads at ten held meetings in four weeks is $1,195 each.
Hybrid. FunnL at five meetings is $3,500, or $700 each; at ten, $500. CIENCE changed its page while I was writing. On 14 October setup was "quoted on the call", and the meeting fee had become a bonus against each SDR's held-meeting target. Team, platform and one offshore SDR are $4,249 a month. If the SDR hits a target of ten, the bonus at "base x percent of target x 0.7" is $1,225, or $547 a meeting. At five they are under the 60% threshold, no bonus, and each meeting costs $850. Setup is excluded. The target of ten, and reading "base" as the $1,750 SDR price, are my assumptions. Ask for theirs.
Pure pay per meeting. The fee is the cost per held meeting, since a no-show is not billed. Setup is the only payment before a meeting happens.
Hourly setter. $10 to $15 an hour over 160 hours is $1,600 to $2,400 a month, my multiplication. If that buys two to four held meetings, which I am assuming, each costs $400 to $1,200, plus tools, data and domains.
Read the cost column again. The ranges overlap. At high volume a retainer beats our per-meeting terms, and I say so on our pay per meeting lead generation pricing page. What separates them is the zero-month column: three of the four models bill you in a month with no meetings, our own retainer included. That is the decision you are actually making: who pays for a bad month. The long version is in pay per meeting vs retainer lead generation.
Whatever the model, the work is the same six jobs. If an agency cannot tell you who does each one, and when, that is your answer.
The qualification definition gets written and signed before anything else: the titles that count, company size and sector, budget authority, what the prospect has to have said, and held versus booked. So does the exclusion list: your clients, your open deals, your competitors. Everything after this is measured against those two documents.
The list is built against the definition and verified, with titles checked by hand because the data tools are wrong often enough to matter. In parallel, sending domains are registered, in your name and never your main domain, and the mailboxes and DNS records are set up. Then the mailboxes warm up. Instantly's help centre says an account needs "At least 2 weeks of warmup" and a health score "Above 90%" before it is ready for campaigns. So a fresh setup cannot send properly until week three. An agency promising meetings in week one is using pre-warmed inboxes or a domain that is not yours. Ask which.
A first email, three or four follow-ups, and several subject lines on the first email. In one 46,201-send campaign for P1 Communications in 2026, the best of three first-email subject lines drew human replies at 1.34% and the worst at 0.79%, on the same list. That is 1.7 times the replies from a change of a few words, and somebody has to be watching to catch it. If replies are not coming at all, why cold emails get no replies is the diagnosis.
This is the job buyers underrate. Of 1,543 positive replies across our own and clients' campaigns between August 2025 and July 2026, only 10.9% asked for a call outright. 17.4% said they were interested, 7.4% asked the price before anything else, and 56.3% fit none of those categories, many of them a "sure", an "ok" or a signature that needed a person to turn it into anything. Each one needs an answer the same working day. A price question answered with "let's hop on a call" goes cold. The full breakdown by vertical is in the cold email positive reply rate benchmark.
Before a reply becomes a calendar slot, it is checked against the definition. A keen reply from a junior executive at a company too small to buy gets a polite answer, not a meeting. On a retainer, skipping that check costs the agency nothing. On per-meeting terms, skipping it produces a meeting you will reject and we will not be paid for.
The invite, the confirmation, a reminder the day before, and the reschedule when it moves. The agency's job ends when the right person is in the room. Held, not booked. What happens next is yours.
Sequences decay, and a good agency prunes them. Across four of our 2026 campaigns and more than 91,000 sends, the first email produced between a quarter and two-fifths of human replies, and follow-ups one to three produced between 41% and 68%. In one eight-step campaign, follow-ups five to seven produced one reply on 1,474 sends. Those counts are replies of any sentiment, not positive ones, but the lesson holds: four or five steps, and more only while the later ones are still producing. The detail is in how many follow-ups a cold email sequence needs, and how long until cold outreach books meetings covers the ramp.
The SalesHive complaint quoted below the table comes back to one word the contract did not define. Here is what to get on paper, and what the wrong answer sounds like.
| Clause | A good answer | An answer that should worry you |
|---|---|---|
| Qualified meeting | Titles, size, sector, budget authority, expressed need, held not booked | "We'll know one when we see it" |
| No-shows and reschedules | Not billed, or replaced; a reschedule is one meeting, billed once | Billed when booked |
| Domains, mailboxes and data at exit | Registered in your name, exported on the last day | "The data stays in our system" |
| A zero-meeting month | A number, in writing | "We review it together" |
| Who does the work | A named person, and how many other accounts they run | "Dedicated", undefined |
| Notice period | A number of days | Notice that adds a full billing month |
| Exclusions | Your clients, open deals and competitors, agreed before sending | Agreed after the first complaint |
The "dedicated" row is not hypothetical. Scott Andrews wrote on Trustpilot on 5 April 2026 that SalesHive sold his firm a "dedicated" SDR, and that "Their definition appears to mean the same SDR working across multiple accounts." Put the number of accounts in the contract and that argument cannot happen.
The longer checklist is in how to tell if a lead generation agency is any good. The short version:
A fair share of readers should not hire anyone yet, us included. The argument is in lead generation agency vs doing outbound yourself. The cases:
The free GTM teardown is there if you would rather do the homework first.
If you already have a shortlist, start with the page for the agency that quoted you.
| Page | Read it if |
|---|---|
| Belkins pricing | You want a Belkins quote as a cost per held meeting |
| Belkins vs SalesHive | You are choosing between multi-channel and phone-first |
| Belkins vs Martal Group | Both are on your shortlist |
| SalesHive review | You want to know what the 2026 complaints have in common |
| SalesHive vs CIENCE | You want SDRs as a service and are comparing the two |
| CIENCE pricing | You want the CIENCE rate card as a cost per meeting |
| CIENCE vs Martal Group | You have quotes from both |
| Martal Group pricing | You were quoted by Martal. Martal's pricing page shows no price and its G2 page would not load for me, so the Martal figure above is from its own ROI calculator |
| SalesRoads pricing | You were quoted $11,950 for four weeks of one SDR |
| Callbox pricing | You were quoted by Callbox, whose pricing page estimates $16,000 to $32,000 a month for one "Campaign Pod" |
| Sopro alternatives | You are a UK buyer comparing managed outreach services |
For the model questions rather than the vendors: read cold email agency if email is the channel you want, appointment setting services if what you want is meetings in the diary, and B2B lead generation if you are still deciding which channel to use at all.
I can name two clients. Everyone else appears in our data by vertical.
PR Noir is a New York PR agency. In the first 30 days: 27 leads, 10 qualified meetings, a 37% lead-to-meeting rate, and one $90,000 close. On today's pay per meeting lead generation pricing, set in October 2026, a month like that would cost $2,000 to $5,000 for the ten meetings plus the setup fee. That is a hypothetical, not PR Noir's invoice. The month is broken down in PR Noir's first 30 days. It is our best first month, not our typical one.
P1 Communications is a UK hospitality PR agency working with travel and property brands. The campaign produced 20+ qualified meetings, about half of which moved into commercial discussions, four new deals, and a projected £12K a month in pipeline. Those are P1's results, in P1's currency.
That is where most of our replies have come from. Of those 1,543 positive replies, 19.4% came from campaigns for B2B PR agencies, 18.7% from agency partnership campaigns and 13.5% from UK hospitality PR. If you run a PR firm, start with lead generation for PR agencies, then cold email for PR agencies and new business for PR agencies. If you run a marketing agency, it is appointment setting for marketing agencies.
Two options, in USD for every client, UK included:
If you budget in pounds, what a booked sales meeting costs in the UK sets these terms against UK retainers and salaries. If you are choosing between UK firms, the B2B lead generation agency UK shortlist sorts eight of them by how they charge.
We do not accept every applicant, mostly for the deal-size reason above. The full terms are on pay per meeting lead generation pricing. The company is M Ventures LTD, registered in Bath; I run it from Warsaw for UK and US clients, and there is more about ROI Maximizer if you want it. For a second opinion on a quote, ours or anyone's, grab 20 minutes or email moe@roimaxi.com.
On the figures in the four-model table above, a held meeting costs roughly $200 to $1,900, as of October 2026. Monthly fees vary more: SalesRoads charges $11,950 per four weeks for one SDR, and Callbox estimates $16,000 to $32,000 a month per pod. Our terms are a one-off setup of $1,000 to $3,000, then $200 to $500 per qualified meeting that took place and you approved, with nothing for a no-show and no minimum spend, or a flat $5,000 a month with no per-meeting fee.
Not yet, if you have never closed a deal from outbound, your deal is worth under roughly $5,000 a year, or your whole market is a few hundred companies. In those cases, send fifty emails yourself first, or keep the work in-house. An agency earns its fee once outbound has won you at least one deal, the deal is big enough to carry the cost of a meeting, and someone on your side can take a call within a day or two.
Not always. At high volume a retainer can work out cheaper per meeting, and the cost ranges in the four-model table overlap. The real difference is what you owe in a month with no meetings: the full fee on a retainer, our own included, and nothing on pure pay per meeting, where the one-off setup is the only payment before a meeting happens. Pick the model by who you want carrying the risk of a bad month.
On new sending domains, not before week three, because that is when proper sending starts. Instantly's help centre says a mailbox needs at least two weeks of warmup before it is ready for campaigns, so once the definition is signed, the first fortnight goes on the list, the copy and the mailboxes. An agency promising meetings in week one is using pre-warmed inboxes or a domain that is not yours, so ask which.
The good ones do not promise a number of meetings, because nobody controls how many prospects reply. A guaranteed count in a fixed window usually gets met by loosening what counts as a meeting. What you can get in writing is the definition of a qualified meeting, no charge for a no-show, and a number for what you owe in a month with no meetings.
Get four things in writing, from us or from any agency on the list above:
What a workable definition of "qualified" looks like, clause by clause, is in what counts as a qualified meeting. Then put your deal size and close rate into the ROI calculator and find the most a meeting is worth to you before anyone quotes you a price.
Or run the free GTM teardown on your own site for the ICP, cold email and numbers specific to your company.