Outsourced SDR services sell you a person's hours on someone else's system. This page compares the three ways to get sales development done, what each costs, and why the install treats the SDR as a job to be automated and owned rather than a seat to be rented.
An SDR agency gives you a rep, or a fraction of one, working from the agency's playbook and tools. A fractional SDR is the same idea sold by an individual: a share of an experienced rep's week, typically a few thousand dollars a month. An in-house SDR is the full version, and in the US it costs six figures once you count salary, tools, ramp and management, with three months before they are productive.
All three are buying the same thing: someone to research accounts, build lists, write and send outreach, follow up, and hand warm conversations to whoever closes. It is a real job. It is also, in 2026, a job where most of the hours are spent on work that software now does better: finding the people, checking the addresses, spotting who changed jobs last week, drafting the first email, sending the follow-ups on time.
What a good human SDR adds is judgement about who to write to and what to say. The install puts that judgement into the system once, as your company brain, and then lets the machine do the hours.
| Line item | SDR agency / outsourced SDR | Fractional SDR | The Outbound Install |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | Monthly fee per rep or per seat, usually a term | Monthly fee for a share of one person | One fee, paid once, plus about $500 a month in tools paid to providers |
| Capacity | Limited by the rep's hours | Limited by the fraction you bought | 10,000 to 100,000 emails a month, plus LinkedIn, cost rising slowly with volume |
| Ramp | Weeks to learn your offer | Weeks to learn your offer | 30 days to build, then it already knows your offer because you wrote it down once |
| Tools and domains | The agency's | Usually theirs | Yours, in your name |
| Knowledge when they leave | Leaves with them | Leaves with them | Stays in your repo, sheet and CRM |
| What your closer gets | Handoffs | Handoffs | A full calendar and replies sorted in Slack |
None of this makes a good SDR worthless. It changes what they should be doing. The install does not replace a good salesperson, it gives them a full calendar instead of a list to work through. If you do hire an SDR later, they start on top of a working system instead of building one from a blank spreadsheet.
Stage one writes your company brain: positioning, ideal customer, offer and voice, stored in your own Claude Code, GitHub and Notion setup. This is the part a new SDR spends their first month absorbing, and here it is written once. Stage two connects the tools your team already uses, so lists live in your sheet, deals in Attio or HubSpot, and replies in Slack.
Stage three does the list building an SDR would do by hand: accounts, named people, deduped against your CRM, every email and mobile verified through MillionVerifier and BounceBan before anything sends. Stage four does the research: job changes, funding rounds, hiring, LinkedIn engagement and ninety more signals decide who is worth writing to this week. Stage five sends by email through Smartlead and by LinkedIn through HeyReach, in your voice, from warmed domains, and sorts what comes back.
Your team learns to run it in two sixty-minute sessions, launching the first campaign with me watching, and has a direct line on Slack for ninety days afterwards. The live campaign results are on the does-it-work page →
Hire an SDR agency or a fractional SDR if your sale needs a phone conversation before anyone will take a meeting, if your buyers cannot be identified from public data, or if you want a person to blame when the pipeline is quiet. Those are real situations and a system does not solve them.
Take the install if your buyers can be found and written to, if you would rather own the machinery than rent the hours, and if you want the person you eventually hire to walk into a working system. It suits founders doing their own selling, small sales teams without an SDR, and companies that have tried outsourced SDR services and kept nothing when the contract ended.
The guarantee applies in full: no qualified meetings in ninety days from launch, full refund, and you keep the domains, the accounts and the system.
Commonly a monthly fee per rep or seat in the low-to-mid thousands with a minimum term, and the fee continues for as long as you want outreach. A fractional SDR is priced similarly for a share of one person. The install is a one-off fee, plus about $500 a month in tool costs paid straight to providers.
It does the SDR hours: list building, verification, research, first drafts and follow-ups. It does not replace judgement or a good salesperson. Most clients use it to give their closer a full calendar, and any SDR they hire later starts on a working system.
A fractional SDR is usually one experienced individual selling a share of their week. An outsourced SDR service or SDR agency is a firm with several reps working from a shared playbook. Both rent you hours on infrastructure that stays with them.
Replies are sorted automatically into your Slack. Your team reads the good ones and books the meetings, which the two training sessions cover. If you would rather I keep running it, that is an option too.
Then the install is not the right fit and I will say so on the call. It is built for markets where buyers can be identified from public data and reached by email and LinkedIn.
Thirty days to install. Ninety days to prove it. If it doesn't generate qualified meetings, full refund.
One fee, paid once, in exchange for a case study. Tool costs go directly to the providers, and nothing recurring comes from us.