omnikom pricing explained
the cost structure
what you are really paying for.
outbound calling costs what it costs because of five things: data quality, list depth, the qualification bar, routing complexity, and reporting cadence. across the market the range runs from roughly $95 a month for a metered ai answering line to about $140,000 a year for one fully loaded in-house sdr.
the definition
cost structure is not a rate card.
outbound calling cost is the total price of producing one qualified conversation, counting data, dialing labour, qualification, crm delivery, and reporting together rather than pricing any one of them alone.
a rate card tells you what a seat, a minute, or a lead is billed at. it does not tell you how many of those units you have to buy before one real opportunity reaches your calendar. that ratio is the whole question, and it is set by the five drivers below.
what the market charges
five numbers, plainly labelled.
these are market figures for the alternatives, not omnikom figures. each one says what kind of number it is: a vendor list price, or a benchmark estimate.
- 01 $699 to $4,050 a month - va staffing a managed virtual-assistant seat, billed monthly by tier. published vendor list pricing.
- 02 $95 to $650 a month - ai answering metered per minute or per call on top of the plan, so the bill moves with volume. published vendor list pricing.
- 03 $2,500 to $6,000 a month - outsourced bdc a shared business-development centre running your calls alongside other accounts. published vendor list pricing.
- 04 about $140,000 a year - one in-house sdr salary plus payroll taxes, tools, and management time. a benchmark estimate from fully loaded compensation modelling, not a price anyone publishes. on the same modelling it works out to roughly $821 to $1,150 per meeting produced.
- 05 $8 to $15 an hour - offshore vas the floor of the market, priced per hour of dialing with nothing else included. published vendor list pricing.
the cost drivers
five things move the number. everything else is packaging.
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01
data quality
bad records are paid for twice: once to buy them, once in the dial time spent on disconnected numbers and wrong contacts. clean, enriched, permission-checked data costs more up front and less per conversation.
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02
list depth
a shallow list in a small territory gets exhausted, and the cost per conversation climbs as you re-dial the same names. depth buys you room to keep a cadence running without burning the market.
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03
the qualification bar
a name and a phone number is cheap. a decision-maker with a real need, a timeline, and an agreed next step takes far more conversations to produce. raising the bar raises the unit cost and lowers the wasted calendar time.
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04
routing complexity
one inbox and one owner is simple. multiple branches, service areas, languages, or handoff rules each add logic, testing, and failure modes that someone has to build and keep working.
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05
reporting cadence
a monthly summary is close to free. call-level records, recordings, summaries, and attribution you can audit weekly is a standing operational cost, and it is the only way you can check any of the above is true.
why the unit matters
what you buy decides what you get more of.
per-seat pricing pays for hours, so more hours is the win, whether or not those hours produced anything. per-minute pricing pays for talk time, so longer calls and more calls are the win. per-lead pricing pays for volume at the lowest bar that still counts as a lead, so the bar drifts down. none of these are dishonest on their own. they just reward a thing that is not the thing you actually want, which is a qualified conversation your team can work.
- per seat: you carry the risk that the seat is busy but unproductive.
- per minute: your bill grows fastest on the calls that were going nowhere.
- per lead: the definition of a lead is the whole deal, and it is rarely written down.
- per qualified opportunity: the bar has to be written down before anything is billed.
the four alternatives
same six questions, asked of every option.
unit of sale, what you keep, cost driver, ramp time, who qualifies, who reports. a managed lane is the fifth column, and it is described the same way as the rest.
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01
va staffing
unit of sale: a seat, monthly.
what you keep: the person's hours while they are contracted.
cost driver: seniority and hours.
ramp time: days to place, weeks to be useful.
who qualifies: you, by training them.
who reports: you, from your own crm.
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02
ai answering
unit of sale: a plan plus metered minutes or calls.
what you keep: the transcripts and the coverage.
cost driver: call volume and length.
ramp time: hours to days.
who qualifies: a script, within the limits you configure.
who reports: the vendor dashboard.
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03
outsourced bdc
unit of sale: a monthly retainer for shared floor time.
what you keep: the appointments booked.
cost driver: how much of the floor your account holds.
ramp time: two to six weeks.
who qualifies: the centre, to its own bar unless you set one.
who reports: the centre, on its own cadence.
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04
in-house sdr
unit of sale: a salary plus tools and management.
what you keep: the person, the relationships, and the institutional knowledge.
cost driver: total compensation and ramp.
ramp time: one to two quarters.
who qualifies: your employee.
who reports: your sales manager.
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05
a managed revenue lane
unit of sale: a qualified opportunity against a written bar.
what you keep: the opportunities, the call records, and the crm data.
cost driver: the five drivers on this page.
ramp time: a build window, then a 30-day calibration.
who qualifies: us, against criteria agreed with you first.
who reports: us, at call level into your crm.
the vendor ranges above are market list prices, not quotes we obtained, and the sdr and per-meeting figures are benchmark estimates rather than anyone's published rate. prices move - budget against the vendor's own current page, not against this one.
the honest part
when a cheap seat is genuinely enough.
plenty of operators do not need a managed lane, and paying for one would be waste. here is where the cheaper option is the correct answer.
- your list is small and local: a few hundred records you know personally, and one seat can work it in weeks.
- the job is confirmations, reminders, or reactivating known customers, rather than qualifying strangers at volume.
- you or a partner will coach and check the calls yourself, and a managed seat beats an unmanaged system every time.
- volume is genuinely low and lumpy, and a metered ai line costs less than any staffed hour would.
- the offer is not settled yet: spend the money finding out what sells before you industrialise selling it.
- you want the relationships in-house for good, and an sdr you hire is yours where an outsourced one is not.
if two or more of those describe you, do not buy a lane yet.
questions people actually ask
the cost questions, answered plainly.
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01
how much does outbound calling cost per month?
vendor list pricing runs from $95 to $650 a month plus metering for ai answering, $699 to $4,050 for va staffing, and $2,500 to $6,000 for an outsourced bdc. one in-house sdr is the top of the range at about $140,000 a year fully loaded, which is roughly $11,700 a month once you divide that across twelve.
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02
what does a qualified appointment actually cost?
for an in-house sdr, benchmark modelling of fully loaded cost puts it at roughly $821 to $1,150 per meeting. no vendor publishes that number. every other option's per-meeting cost depends on how many dials it takes to clear your qualification bar, which is why the bar has to be written down first.
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03
why do you not publish a price list?
because the same lane costs different amounts depending on data quality, list depth, your qualification bar, routing complexity, and reporting cadence. a published number would be too high for a simple single-territory lane and too low for a multi-branch one, so we scope it on a call instead.
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04
is a cheap offshore va worth it for cold calling?
sometimes, yes. vendor list pricing puts offshore vas at $8 to $15 an hour, which is hard to beat for confirmations, reminders, and working a small known list. it gets expensive when nobody coaches the calls or checks the data, because you then pay for hours that produce nothing.
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05
is per-lead pricing cheaper than a monthly retainer?
on paper often yes, in practice it depends entirely on how a lead is defined. per-lead billing rewards volume at the lowest bar that still counts, so without a written definition the bar drifts down and your team absorbs the cost in wasted follow-up time. read the definition before you compare the rates.
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06
how long before outbound calling pays for itself?
it depends far more on ramp than on rate. an ai line runs in hours, a va seat is useful in weeks, an outsourced bdc takes two to six weeks, and an in-house sdr typically takes one to two quarters. a managed lane adds a build window plus a 30-day calibration before the number is trustworthy.
read next
the same drivers, seen from your trade.
if you want to see how the qualification bar and list depth play out in a specific trade, the hvac lane and the wider industries pages spell out what counts as a qualified opportunity in each one. if you would rather test the numbers before committing budget, the validation lane exists for exactly that. our data, consent and calling-conduct boundaries are set out on the compliance page.
the next step
get your cost structure scoped, not guessed.
one call maps your data, your list depth, and your qualification bar against the five drivers on this page - and tells you which of the alternatives is actually the right buy.
no commitment. we will tell you honestly if this is not a fit.
last updated: july 2026