Enter the meetings you want, your deal size and your close rate. See the program cost, cost per meeting, your return and the in-house alternative as you type. The full pricing guide follows.
Abstrakt starting price for Outbound BDR, published October 2026. Your quote depends on scope.
At 98 dials per appointment for Commercial HVAC & Mechanical (Abstrakt sales center, Performance Intelligence, national, through October 2026).
$124,700 in year one, all costs in
Same engine and starting values as the SDR cost calculator: $15,000 commission, 25% taxes and benefits, tools, hiring, 35% turnover, manager time, a 3-month ramp and 60 dials a day, all examples. Change any of them there.
At $5,000 a month for 8 qualified meetings, each meeting costs $625. At your 20% close rate, that is about 1.6 deals and $40,000 in revenue a month, 8x the program cost. The program pays for itself at 0.2 deals a month. One in-house SDR on the same assumptions costs $10,392 a month and about $1,048 per meeting.
Estimates for planning, not a quote, a forecast or a guarantee. Program expectations and commitments are defined in your agreement. Commercial sales cycles are long: meetings booked this month often close months later, and a new program builds its list and messaging before meetings reach a steady pace.
This page prices an outsourced appointment setting program against the meetings you want. To cost one in-house SDR line by line (pay, tools, hiring, turnover, coaching and ramp), use the SDR cost calculator. To turn a revenue goal into a meeting target first, start with the growth calculator.
By Jeff WintersChief Executive Officer, Abstrakt
Revenue bands are a starting point, not a rule. What decides the tier is how many accounts need working, how often, and through which channels.
Foundation fits a company that sells in a single service territory and already has someone who can run a sales meeting and close. Half of an SDR team's capacity is enough to work a 1,500-account list by phone, email and LinkedIn when the ICP is tight.
It is the wrong tier if your list is much bigger than that, or if your buyers only respond after months of follow-up. That is a capacity problem, and half a seat cannot solve it.
Growth gives you a full-time SDR, so the program can cover a larger territory, a second vertical or a new market. Direct mail and intent data help reach buyers who ignore cold email.
The part owners underrate is nurture. Commercial buyers often say "not now" because a contract runs another year. Growth keeps those accounts warm for up to 18 months, which is how deals like the $595K MSS HVAC agreement happen.
Enterprise is for multi-site operators, platforms and companies selling across several states or verticals at once. A team of 2 to 6 specialists works the program, with a dedicated account director and executive reviews.
Pricing is custom because the scope is: how many territories, how many programs, how much data integration. Expect a scoped proposal, not a rate card.
Most providers use one of three models: a monthly retainer, a fee per appointment, or a hybrid of a smaller retainer plus a per-meeting fee. Each one moves risk to a different side of the table, and none of them is automatically cheaper. What matters is what you pay for each meeting that actually fits your business.
How it works. You pay a fixed fee for a defined amount of SDR time, data, tools and management. Abstrakt uses this model.
Where it helps. Predictable budgeting, and the provider has no reason to book weak meetings just to bill for them.
Where it hurts. You carry more of the risk in the first months while the program ramps. If the provider does not report activity and outcomes clearly, you can pay for months without knowing why meetings are light.
How it works. You pay only when a meeting is booked, sometimes only when it is held.
Where it helps. Low upfront commitment, and the cost per meeting is visible on every invoice.
Where it hurts. The provider is paid for volume, so the definition of a meeting becomes the whole contract. Expect disputes over who counts as a decision-maker, and expect hard, valuable accounts and year-long nurture to get skipped.
How it works. A lower base retainer plus a fee for each qualified meeting.
Where it helps. It shares risk, and it can work well when both sides agree on a tight, written qualification standard.
Where it hurts. It inherits the definition problem of pay-per-appointment and adds invoice complexity. Read the qualification and dispute clauses before you compare base fees.
Whatever the model, get the qualification standard in writing before you compare prices. A cheap meeting with someone who cannot sign, or with a company outside your service area, is not cheap. Our page on what counts as a qualified appointment lays out the standard we use and how to write your own.
Cost follows workload. The more accounts that need working, the more channels it takes to reach them, and the longer they take to buy, the more SDR capacity the program needs.
If a quote seems far below the others, ask which of these drivers it leaves out. It is usually the list work, the nurture or the management.
An in-house SDR costs far more than the salary on the job post. Every category below is real money or real time, and several of them recur every time a rep leaves. Fill in your own figures; local pay and tool contracts vary too much for a single national number to be honest.
| Cost category | In-house SDR | Abstrakt program | What to budget for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Salary and commission | You pay | Included | Base pay plus a variable plan tied to meetings or pipeline. Price it at your local market rate for an outbound rep, not an inside customer service rate. |
| Payroll taxes | You pay | Included | Employer-side payroll taxes and unemployment insurance on top of cash pay. |
| Benefits | You pay | Included | Health coverage, retirement match, paid time off and the hours the seat is paid but not dialing. |
| Recruiting | You pay | Included | Job ads, recruiter fees or the hours your managers spend screening and interviewing. |
| Training | You pay | Included | Trade knowledge, call coaching, objection handling and your CRM process. |
| Management time | You pay | Reduced | Call reviews, one-on-ones, list decisions and reporting. You still attend program reviews with us, but you are not running the floor. |
| Contact data | You pay | Included | Company and contact data, verification and refreshes. Data decays, so this is an ongoing subscription. |
| Dialer | You pay | Included | A dialer license and phone numbers, kept from being flagged as spam. |
| CRM | You pay | Included | Seat licenses and admin time. Abstrakt configures and manages the CRM for the program and integrates with yours. |
| Email infrastructure | You pay | Included | Sending domains, inbox warming, sequencing software and deliverability monitoring so outreach does not land in spam. |
| Turnover | You carry | Abstrakt staffs the seat | When a rep quits, you pay recruiting, training and ramp again, and the conversations in their head leave with them. |
In fairness to building: an in-house SDR is yours, learns your business deeply and can grow into a closing role, and if you already have a strong sales manager and a working outbound process, hiring can make sense. Our post on in-house SDR vs. outsourced appointment setting walks through the decision, and the outsourced BDR and SDR page explains what you get when you buy the function instead.
When we hear the build-or-buy question from owners, it usually follows a rep leaving. That was the situation at Century Facility Services, which chose to outsource and went on to book 58 appointments and close 7 deals worth $415,000 in year one.
Work backward from revenue. Divide the new revenue you want by your average deal size to get the customers you need, divide that by your close rate to get the meetings you need, then compare the gross profit on those deals to the program cost. Use your numbers, not ours.
Customers needed = New revenue goal ÷ Average deal size. Use first-year contract value, or the lifetime value of a recurring agreement if you track it.
Held meetings needed = Customers needed ÷ Close rate from held meetings. Booked meetings needed = Held meetings ÷ Your show rate.
Monthly meetings = Booked meetings needed ÷ Months in the plan. This is the number to discuss with any provider.
Gross profit from the program = Deals closed × Average deal size × Your gross margin. Revenue alone overstates the return.
ROI = (Gross profit from the program − Program cost) ÷ Program cost. Program cost = Monthly fee × Months.
Break-even deals = Program cost ÷ (Average deal size × Gross margin). Know this number before you sign.
The growth calculator runs the first three steps for you, and the pipeline math guide has worksheets for the full chain from revenue goal to weekly activity.
Mind the timing. Commercial sales cycles are long, so the first months of a program build pipeline that closes later. Judge a program on qualified meetings held and pipeline created during the ramp, and on closed revenue over a full sales cycle. Sometimes one deal changes the whole calculation: a design-build GC landed a $900,000 project by month three, which by the client's math covered two years of program cost.
Ask what the fee buys, what counts as a qualified meeting, what you can see, and how you get out. If a provider answers any of these vaguely, treat it as an answer.
For the full evaluation, including red flags and a scorecard, read how to choose an appointment setting company. To see what happens after you sign, start with our process or the appointment setting service page.
Want to see how specific providers line up against these criteria? Read our side-by-side look at appointment setting companies, built from each company's own published information.
Foundation gives you a U.S.-based SDR team at 50% capacity working email, phone and LinkedIn against a 1,500-account list. Growth gives you the SDR at 100% capacity and adds cold direct mail, intent and trigger data, bi-weekly reviews, quarterly strategy, nurture for up to 18 months and A/B testing.
Enterprise is built for companies around $50M in revenue and up, usually multi-site or multi-state, that need a team of 2 to 6 specialists and 25+ qualified meetings per month. Pricing is scoped to the program.
Not necessarily. The per-meeting price can look lower, but the provider is paid for volume, so the qualification definition decides what you really get. Compare the cost of meetings that fit your business, not the cost of meetings booked.
It often is once you count every category: salary, payroll taxes, benefits, recruiting, training, management time, data, dialer, CRM, email infrastructure, ramp and turnover. Put your own figures against each line and compare them to a flat program fee.
Divide your revenue goal by your average deal size, then by your close rate and show rate to get the meetings you need. ROI is gross profit from closed deals minus program cost, divided by program cost. The growth calculator does the first part for you.
It depends on your deal size, margin and sales cycle. Calculate break-even deals as program cost divided by gross profit per deal, and judge the program on a full sales cycle, not the first month.
Yes. Every program carries an appointment guarantee based on your industry; the exact number is in your agreement. If we miss it by the end of the year, we work for free until we hit it.
Individually powerful. Better together. Our four solutions work together to find your buyers, book meetings with them and help your team close more of them.
All three together: Get Outbound BDR, Inbound SDR and Brand Boost together, starting at $6,500 per month ($5,000 + $1,000 + $500 = $6,500). Enterprise SDR/BDR is custom.Build my program
Photos on this page: Vitaly Gariev (opens in a new tab) (Unsplash License (opens in a new tab)); Tim van der Kuip (opens in a new tab) (Unsplash License (opens in a new tab)); Annie Spratt (opens in a new tab) (Unsplash License (opens in a new tab)); Austin Distel (opens in a new tab) (Unsplash License (opens in a new tab)).
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