SDR Marketplace vs. In-House SDR Team: The Cost-Per-Meeting Breakdown

Take a two-person SDR team in a Western market. Base salaries of $55,000 to $65,000 plus on-target commission bring each rep to roughly $80,000 to $100,000. Add the tooling stack of a sequencing tool, data provider, dialler and CRM seats at $8,000 to $15,000 per rep per year. Add a share of a manager's time, recruiting costs, and equipment. The realistic fully loaded figure is $90,000 to $120,000 per rep.

Now the uncomfortable part. New SDRs take three to six months to reach quota, and average tenure in the role is around fourteen to eighteen months. That means a meaningful share of every year is ramp time, during which the cost is full and the output is a fraction. Over twelve months, a two-person team costing $200,000 that produces fifteen qualified meetings a month at full productivity will realistically deliver 250 to 300 qualified meetings once ramp and turnover are counted.

Cost per qualified meeting: $650 to $800. And that assumes your reps hit numbers that many teams never reach in the current outbound climate.

Agencies charge retainers of $5,000 to $15,000 a month, sometimes with a per-meeting fee layered on top. The pitch is speed: no hiring, no ramp, a team that starts calling next week. The reality is that retainers are paid regardless of results, and the agency's reps are usually working several clients at once with generic cold outreach.

A mid-tier agency at $8,000 a month delivering eight to twelve meetings gives you a cost per meeting of $650 to $1,000, and that is before you filter for quality. Agency meetings are notorious for the no-show problem: the prospect agreed to a call to end a persistent sequence, not because they wanted the conversation. Filter to meetings that actually happened with the right title and the effective cost often climbs above $1,200.

On a marketplace the company sets the bounty, and the bounty is the cost of the meeting. Bountii's platform data and hunter feedback point to clearing prices of $300 to $500 for mid-market decision-makers and $500 to $1,500 for enterprise executives. On top of that sits a flat plan for the accounts listed: $199 a month for ten target accounts or $499 for thirty.

Model a company that lists thirty accounts and books eight qualified meetings a month at an average bounty of $450. Monthly spend is $3,600 in bounties plus $499 for the plan, or roughly $510 per qualified meeting. Because the meetings arrive through warm introductions from people the prospect already trusts, show rates run far higher than cold-booked calls, so the cost per meeting that actually happened stays close to the headline figure.

There is one more line item that rarely appears in these comparisons: the cost of meetings you did not pay for. On a marketplace, a month with zero meetings costs you the plan fee and nothing else. In-house and agency models charge you the full amount for that same month.

In-house SDR team: $650 to $800 per qualified meeting, with a six-figure fixed commitment and three to six months before the first results. Outsourced agency: $650 to $1,200 per meeting after quality filtering, with a monthly retainer paid regardless of output. SDR marketplace: roughly $350 to $600 per qualified, verified meeting, with a low flat plan and results possible within days of posting.

The marketplace wins on cost, on time to first meeting, and on downside risk. Where it does not win is on control and volume ceiling. If you want reps who follow your exact script and can be pointed at a new segment on Monday morning, an in-house team gives you that. If you need two hundred meetings a month at any account that fits a broad profile, a marketplace built on warm introductions will not produce that volume.

Use an SDR marketplace when you have a named target list, when you are entering a new market, or when you need to prove pipeline economics before committing headcount. Use an in-house team once you know the playbook that works and need to run it at scale with full control. Use an agency when speed matters more than cost and you have the bandwidth to police meeting quality.

Many companies end up with a hybrid: an in-house team working inbound and expansion, and a marketplace opening doors at the enterprise accounts that never reply to cold outreach. That combination tends to produce the lowest blended cost per meeting of all.