Four questions that separate outbound agencies

Every agency says they will bring you customers. The differences show up in the answers to four fairly dull questions.

The four questions

Ask these before anything else:

How is the list built?

This is where campaigns are won or lost. You want to hear about your ICP, real sources and verification. If the answer is vague, or involves a large bought database, the rest of the process does not matter much.

How is deliverability handled?

Separate domains, authentication, warm-up, volume limits. If an agency cannot explain how they keep mail out of spam, they are either not doing it or not thinking about it, and either way your domain may pay for it.

What counts as a result?

The answer reveals where the risk sits. Emails sent is an effort metric. Interested replies or arranged conversations are outcome metrics.

Vague definitions here are how disappointment gets built into a contract before it starts.

Warning signs

Three that should give you pause:

• Guaranteed meeting numbers, nobody can promise that honestly.
• Process secrecy, usually hides bought lists or aggressive sending.
• Unusually low prices, which normally mean generic mail to a poor list.

Compare on cost per meeting

Hourly rates are not comparable across agencies, because two providers at the same rate can produce wildly different results. The only fair comparison is what a single genuine conversation ends up costing, and how quickly it arrives.

Ask about timelines honestly

A straight answer is roughly four to six weeks before the first real conversations, because domains need warming and sequences need to run. Anyone promising results next week is describing something other than outbound.