Most comparisons of an in-house SDR against an outsourced team put a salary next to a monthly fee and call it done. That comparison flatters whichever side wrote it, because neither number is what you actually pay for. What you pay for is held meetings with the right people. So the question worth answering is: what does one of those cost, each way?
We will not hand you an answer with numbers already in it. Salaries, tool prices and ramp times vary too much by market and seniority, and a model built on somebody else's averages tells you about their business, not yours. What follows is the model, line by line, so you can fill it in with your own.
The in-house line items
Salary and on-costs. Base, commission, and the employer costs on top: superannuation or pension contributions, payroll tax, insurance, leave. Use the fully loaded figure, not the advertised salary.
Ramp time. A new SDR does not book at full rate in the first month. Count the months before they reach a steady rate, and the cost of those months, as part of what the role costs. If the role turns over, you pay ramp again.
Tools and data. A sending platform, a data or enrichment provider, email verification, a LinkedIn seat, and the CRM seat they need. Each is a separate subscription, and most bill per seat.
Sending infrastructure. Secondary domains and inboxes, warmed before use. Someone has to set them up, monitor them and replace them when one degrades.
Management time. Somebody coaches the SDR, reviews their lists and copy, and reads the numbers every week. That is hours from a founder or a sales lead, and those hours have a cost even if nobody invoices them.
Turnover. SDR roles turn over. When one does, you pay recruitment, another ramp period, and the gap in between where nothing is sent.
Add the monthly cost of all of that, divide by the held meetings the role produces in a steady month, and you have your in-house cost per held meeting.
The outsourced line items
With a Results as a Service plan the cost has two parts: a fixed base fee for the engine, and a fee for each qualified meeting that actually takes place. Both are published on our pricing page, along with the one-time setup fee.
To compare like with like:
- Take the monthly base fee.
- Add the result fee multiplied by the held meetings in a month.
- Add the setup fee spread over the months you expect to run the plan.
- Add your own time: approving lists and sequences, taking the meetings, and a monthly review.
Divide by the same number of held meetings. That is the outsourced cost per held meeting.
The parts the arithmetic does not catch
Who carries the slow month. With an in-house SDR, a month with few meetings costs the same as a good one. On a results plan, a slow month costs the base fee and nothing more. That is a real difference in risk, and it belongs in the comparison even though it is not a line item.
What you keep. An in-house SDR builds knowledge inside your company. An outsourced engine builds assets you should insist on keeping: the sending domains, the lists, the sequences and the suppression list. If an agency will not let you keep those, count that against them.
What a meeting is worth to you. None of this matters until you know the value of a held meeting. Take your average deal value and multiply by the share of qualified meetings that eventually close. If that number is not comfortably above your cost per held meeting, the problem is upstream of outbound, and no channel choice will fix it.
Doing the sums
Our calculators do the arithmetic for both sides, with your own numbers and nothing stored. If the in-house number comes out lower for your business, hire the SDR. The model is only useful if it is allowed to give the answer you did not want.