The alternatives to hiring us aren’t only other agencies. There are five real options, one of them is doing nothing, and for some contractors that’s the right answer. Here is what each actually costs and where each one breaks.
A commercial contractor deciding how to get more appointments has a short list of genuine choices. Most comparison articles only cover one of them, which is other companies that do what we do, because that’s the comparison the article’s author wants you to have.
The more useful version includes the options that have nothing to do with hiring an agency at all.
Competitor pricing below was checked against each company’s own published pages in September 2026, and links go to the source. Wage figures come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In short
- Another agency, an in-house hire, your existing reps, an inbound agency, or referrals. Five options and all five are legitimate.
- The in-house comparison isn’t salary against retainer. It’s salary plus everything around it, against a retainer.
- Asking your existing salespeople to prospect is the most common choice and the one that quietly fails most often.
Another outbound agency
Several companies do roughly what we do, and two of them publish real numbers, which makes them straightforward to compare.
SalesRoads publishes a full price ladder: $11,950 per SDR per four weeks for one rep, falling to $8,375 each at two and $7,192 each at six. Their model is a dedicated SDR team that gets cheaper per head as it grows, with data, coaching and strategy included in the program.
SalesHive sells a flat monthly fee covering the team, platform and data, quoted case by case, on month-to-month terms with no setup fee. Belkins sells retainer tiers defined by appointments per year, from 30 or more up through Growth and Growth Plus, with no prices published.
For comparison, our own packages are $5,250, $7,250 and $9,250 a month, with the dial counts and letter volumes stated on the page.
Where it breaks: agency fit is about market, not price. An agency built for software companies calling technology buyers won’t open doors with facility managers, and the reverse is equally true.
Hiring a salesperson in house
The comparison contractors usually make is salary against retainer, and it’s the wrong one, because salary is the smallest part of the number.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median annual wage for sales representatives in wholesale and manufacturing, outside technical and scientific products, at $72,080 in May 2025. That’s the base before employer taxes and benefits, before a phone system and a data subscription, and before anybody manages the person.
The costs that get forgotten are the ones without invoices. Somebody senior has to build the call list, write the opening, listen to calls, and coach. Ramp is real, and a first hire who leaves at month seven takes the learning with them.
Where it works: when you have somebody who genuinely wants to manage an SDR and has the time. An in-house rep who is coached daily will beat any outside team, because they live in your business. One who is hired and left alone will quit inside a year.
Asking your existing salespeople
This is the most common choice in the trades and it deserves a careful look, because it appears to cost nothing.
An estimator who prospects two hours a day isn’t doing estimating for two hours a day. That’s the real price, and it’s usually larger than any retainer, because the hours come out of the highest-value work in the company. It also puts the best-paid technical person in the building on the task they’re least suited to.
Where it breaks: prospecting loses every scheduling contest against real work. A quote that has to go out today beats a call list every single time, so the calling happens in bursts and then stops, which is the pattern that produces no results and convinces the owner that outbound doesn’t work.
Compare us properly
Our packages, dial counts and letter volumes are on a public page. Put them beside an in-house hire fully loaded, or beside another agency, and see which one fits the market you actually sell into.
An inbound or local marketing agency
A different shape of answer. Website, search, paid ads, content, and waiting for the phone to ring. For some commercial trades this works genuinely well, particularly where buyers search when something fails.
The limit is control over timing and account selection. Inbound brings you whoever is searching this month. It won’t put you in front of the twenty specific buildings you want, and it doesn’t reach a facility manager who is writing a budget and hasn’t started searching for anything yet.
Where it works: emergency and replacement work with clear search demand. Roof leaks, lockouts, breakdowns. It works much less well for planned capital work decided months ahead.
Carrying on with referrals
This is a real option and it deserves to be on the list without condescension. Plenty of profitable commercial contractors have run on referrals for decades.
What referrals can’t do is let you choose. The work arrives on somebody else’s timing, in whatever trade mix happens to come, and it’s nearly impossible to forecast. In a good year that’s comfortable. In a slow one you find out late, with no list to fall back on.
Where it breaks: when you need to grow in a specific direction, enter a new market, or fill a crew you have already hired. Referrals won’t aim.
How to pick between them
| If this is true | Look at |
|---|---|
| You have somebody who will coach an SDR daily | Hiring in-house |
| Your buyers search when something breaks | An inbound agency |
| You need specific buildings, in a specific market | An outbound agency built for your trade |
| You want to test without a term commitment | A month-to-month provider |
| You’re busy, profitable, and not trying to grow | Referrals, honestly |
Where we are biased
We sell one of these five things, so read the section about us with that in mind. What we have tried to do is give the other four a fair hearing and link the competitor claims to their own pages so you can check them.
The test we would apply in your position is simple. Ask any provider, us included, to name the titles they reach and describe how they open that call. A company that can’t do that for commercial property and facility buyers should not be shortlisted for this work, whatever the price is.
How to compare contractor lead generation companies
If you are weighing agencies against each other rather than against the other routes, the questions change.
Contractor lead generation companies do not all sell the same thing. Some buy and resell shared leads, so the same contact goes to several contractors. Some run advertising and pass on form fills. Some make outbound calls on your behalf and book meetings. The word leads covers all three, and the economics are completely different.
So ask whether anything is exclusive to you, who makes the calls and where they sit, what happens in the first ninety days before anything is booked, and exactly how a booked meeting is counted. Get that last one in writing.
Ask us the same questions. If the answers do not suit how your business runs, one of the other routes above probably fits better.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you compare contractor lead generation companies?
Establish what you are actually buying. Shared lead resale, advertising and outbound appointment setting are three different products sold under the same word. Then ask about exclusivity, who makes the calls, the first ninety days, and how a meeting is counted in writing.
Are contractor lead generation services worth the money?
It depends on the alternative. The honest comparison is against hiring in house, which is salary plus payroll taxes, benefits, software, ramp time and management, and against asking your existing closers to prospect, which is the most common choice and the one that most often falls apart.
What is the cheapest way for a contractor to get more leads?
Referrals, when they are flowing. The problem is predictability rather than cost, since referral timing is outside your control. Most contractors who grow steadily run something alongside them.
Keep going
- Abstrakt outbound pricing packages
- Abstrakt vs. Belkins vs. Callbox vs. SalesHive
- What a qualified appointment should mean in your contract
- Outsourced SDR services
- Lead generation vs. appointment setting
About this article
Jeff Winters is Chief Executive Officer at Abstrakt. Reviewed by Neil Erker, Chief Marketing Officer. Abstrakt sells one of the five options described here, and competitor details link to those companies’ own published pages.
Jeff Winters is the CEO of Abstrakt Marketing Group, a U.S.-based B2B lead generation and appointment-setting company that books qualified sales meetings for clients across the commercial trades, IT and managed services, manufacturing, and B2B services. He has spent his career building and running outbound sales programs at scale, and he breaks down what actually works in sales and lead generation on Abstrakt's podcast, The Grow Show.
