What an outbound agency actually costs, and what you get for the retainer

Almost no agency in this category publishes a price. This is the longer version of what a retainer actually buys: what it covers, what it does not, and the point below which you should not spend it.

What does an outbound agency cost per month?#

The wider market is hard to answer honestly, because the price is usually not published. Build-and-run GTM engagements tend to land between €3,000 and €15,000 a month, and where you fall in that band has more to do with what an agency believes you can pay than what the work costs to do. The alternative model, paying per meeting or per qualified lead, reads as lower risk and generally is not. It pays the vendor for volume, which makes broad targeting the rational choice on their side of the table and makes your calendar the place that cost shows up.

We walk through fit and scope on the first call rather than putting a floor on the homepage.

What does a monthly retainer actually cover?#

The build and then running what was built. Concretely, that is the ICP definition and disqualifiers, the enrichment and scoring layer in Clay, the sending infrastructure, the sequences across email and LinkedIn, the routing rules that decide which reply goes where, the CRM writes, and the reporting that tells you which segment is responding.

It also covers the part nobody quotes for, which is somebody watching it on a Tuesday. Data decays, sequences go stale, and routing rules stop matching how you sell. A system handed over as documentation degrades quietly and then gets blamed for not working.

What it does not cover is tooling. Clay, HeyReach, sending infrastructure, and a data budget are billed to you directly, usually €400 to €1,200 a month depending on volume. Those accounts stay in your name so that handover is a transfer rather than a rebuild.

Why is there a three-month minimum?#

Because three months is how long the build takes, and a system switched off in month two has produced nothing you can judge.

Month three is the first month where the numbers mean anything, because it is the first month with enough replies to separate a bad segment from a bad week. An agency that lets you cancel after month one is selling you a setup rather than an outcome, and the setup is the cheap part.

How does this compare with hiring an SDR?#

One SDR is the closest comparison most teams reach for, and a loaded hire is roughly twice a mid-market agency retainer.

The Bridge Group's 2025 SDR Models, Metrics and Compensation report, which surveyed 351 B2B companies, puts median SDR on-target earnings at $80,000, split $55,000 base and $25,000 variable. Load that with employer taxes and benefits, add tooling, and add a share of the manager the role requires, and the real annual cost of one SDR lands near $130,000. Those figures stay in dollars here because that is the currency the research reports, and re-denominating someone else's survey would invent a number nobody measured.

That is before the timing problem. The same report puts average ramp at 3.0 months and average tenure at 1.9 years, so you are buying roughly 20 productive months per hire, and 40% median annual attrition means the clock restarts more often than the plan assumes.

How many deals does the system have to produce to pay for itself?#

This is the arithmetic worth doing before anything else, because it decides whether outbound is a fit at all.

At a €10K ACV the system needs several closed deals a year before a mid-market agency fee is back, which is achievable but leaves little margin for a slow quarter. At €50,000 it needs one and change, and the conversation stops being about whether it pays for itself and starts being about how fast you can widen it.

Below €10K the arithmetic stops working. That is the reason €10K is on our qualification list rather than a preference, and it is the most common reason we turn work down.

When is this the wrong thing to spend the money on?#

Four situations, all of them published on the homepage before anyone gets on a call.

If you are pre-revenue or still finding product-market fit, outbound will find you the wrong customers efficiently. If you want a freelance SDR, this is more expensive and slower to start. If you want an order-taker who builds the list you specify, we will argue with you, which is the service. And if you need pipeline inside thirty days, no system built properly will give you that: month one is infrastructure and month three is the first honest read.

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Harochi helped us scale our outbound, close numerous deals, including our biggest customer, and build the infrastructure we needed to move from Seed to Series B.

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What happens when the build is finished?#

You choose, and both answers are fine.

Some clients take the system in-house once it is stable, which is what the documentation, the named accounts, and the handover are for. The engagement is built to end, and a system you cannot run without us is a system we built badly. Others keep us on because running it is the part they do not want to own; our longest engagement is in its second year.

The reason to say this out loud in a pricing article is that it changes what you are buying. You are not buying meetings, and you are not buying a retainer that has to be renewed forever to keep working. You are buying a system, plus somebody to run it for the stretch where running it is the hard part.

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Questions we get asked about this

How much does an outbound agency cost per month?

Across the category the honest answer is that almost nobody publishes a number, so the range you will be quoted depends on what the agency thinks you can pay. Retainers for build-and-run GTM work generally sit somewhere between €3,000 and €15,000 a month. Pay-per-meeting and pay-per-lead pricing looks cheaper and is not, because you end up buying meetings rather than a system. We walk through fit and scope on the first call.

Why is there a three-month minimum?

Because the build takes three months and a system that is switched off in month two produces nothing to judge. The first month is ICP, data, and infrastructure, the second is sequences and routing going live, and the third is where the reply data starts telling you which segment actually responds. Any agency that lets you cancel in month one is selling you the setup, not the outcome.

What is not included in the monthly fee?

Tooling. Clay, HeyReach, a sending infrastructure, and a data budget are billed to you directly by those vendors, typically €400 to €1,200 a month depending on volume. We keep it that way deliberately, so the accounts are in your name and stay with you at handover rather than being something you have to rebuild when the engagement ends.

What ACV do we need for outbound to pay for itself?

Around €10K is the floor. At a mid-market agency retainer, a €10K ACV needs several closed deals a year from the system just to cover the agency line, before tooling or your own time. At a €50,000 ACV it needs one and a bit. Below €10K the arithmetic stops working and we will tell you so on the call.

Do you charge per meeting or per lead?

No. Per-meeting pricing means the vendor is paid for volume and you are paid in no-shows, and it quietly makes broad targeting the rational choice for them. We charge a flat monthly fee so that narrowing your ICP, which usually reduces meeting count and increases pipeline, costs us nothing to recommend.

How long do clients usually stay?

It varies, which is the point. Some take the system in-house inside a year, which is what the documentation and the handover are for. Our longest engagement is in its second year. Both are the model working, and we would rather you plan for the first than drift into the second.