One of the conversations I have all the time with founders and sales leaders is about pipeline.

They’re growing, they want more sales conversations happening every week and they’re trying to figure out the best way to get there. Should they hire someone internally to focus on outreach? Or should they bring in an outside team to help generate leads?

I’ve seen companies take both paths. Sometimes outsourcing works really well. Other times it ends up being frustrating or expensive.

If you’re trying to decide what makes sense for your business, it helps to understand how lead generation agencies actually operate and what you should expect from them.

What is a lead generation agency?

A lead generation agency helps companies identify potential buyers and create opportunities for their sales team.

At the most basic level, that usually means researching prospects, starting conversations and helping move interested companies into the sales pipeline.

But the way agencies approach this work varies quite a bit. Some agencies focus almost entirely on outreach: cold email, LinkedIn messaging or phone calls designed to schedule meetings for sales teams.

Others take a broader approach and build full demand generation programs that combine marketing campaigns, advertising and content designed to attract buyers.

Because those approaches are so different, the experience of working with a lead generation agency can vary just as widely.

Different types of lead generation agencies

When companies start researching lead generation agencies, they usually discover that the category includes several very different types of providers.

Understanding the differences can make the decision process much easier.

Appointment setting services

Appointment-setting companies focus primarily on outreach and scheduling meetings for sales teams. Most of these programs rely on email outreach, cold calling or LinkedIn prospecting to start conversations with potential buyers.

Many measure success through activity metrics such as calls made or emails sent rather than qualified opportunities. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re ineffective, but it does mean you should understand how success will actually be measured before signing a contract.

Outbound lead generation programs

Outbound lead generation programs typically include deeper prospect research, list building and messaging development along with multi-channel outreach.

Because these programs involve more planning and targeting, they often produce more relevant conversations than basic appointment-setting services.

Demand generation programs

Demand generation programs focus on attracting prospects rather than only reaching out to them.

These programs usually involve marketing campaigns, advertising, content marketing and SEO designed to bring potential buyers to your company.

Demand generation often takes longer to build momentum, but it tends to produce warmer leads who are already researching solutions.

Full-service marketing agencies

Some agencies take an even broader approach and focus on building a long-term growth engine rather than generating meetings.

These programs combine marketing strategy, demand generation, digital marketing and analytics to help companies build a consistent pipeline over time.

Instead of focusing only on activity or appointments, the goal is to build a repeatable system that continuously attracts new opportunities.

Outsourcing lead generation versus building internally

When companies evaluate a lead generation agency, the real decision is usually this:

Do we outsource pipeline generation, or build it ourselves?

In my experience, there are real pros and cons to both approaches.

How lead generation agencies structure pricing

One thing that surprises many companies is how difficult it is to find pricing information for lead generation agencies.

When I first researched this topic years ago, I reviewed dozens of providers. Very few published clear pricing ranges. That tells you something about how varied these programs can be.

Still, most lead generation agencies structure pricing in one of a few common ways.

• Cost per lead: Companies pay for each qualified lead delivered to their sales team. Pricing typically reflects how qualified the prospect is before reaching sales.
• Cost per appointment: Pricing is based on scheduled meetings with potential buyers and can vary widely depending on industry, deal size and qualification criteria.
• Monthly retainer: A fixed monthly fee covers ongoing outreach, strategy and campaign management. This model is common for broader demand generation programs.
• Activity-based pricing: Some providers charge based on activity metrics such as emails sent or calls made rather than guaranteed outcomes.

If you’re evaluating a lead generation agency, it’s important to understand which model they’re using and what success actually looks like.

How much is a lead actually worth?

One mistake I see companies make all the time is focusing solely on the cost of a lead.

The more useful question is:

What is a lead actually worth to your business?

Two metrics usually answer that question.

• Customer acquisition cost (CAC): The total amount a company spends to acquire a new customer, including marketing, sales efforts, advertising and related expenses. CAC helps businesses understand how much investment is required to generate one new customer.
• Customer lifetime value (LTV): The total revenue a company expects to earn from a customer over the entire relationship. LTV helps businesses estimate the long-term value of each customer and determine how much they can reasonably invest to acquire one.

For example, if your average deal size is $30,000 and about one out of ten leads becomes a customer, you may be able to spend several hundred dollars per lead while still maintaining healthy margins.

Understanding this relationship makes it much easier to evaluate whether a lead generation program is worth the investment.

Key takeaways when evaluating a lead generation agency

After researching and working with companies that use lead generation agencies, a few themes show up consistently.

→ Many providers measure activity instead of outcomes.
Make sure you understand exactly how success will be measured before committing to a program.

→ The most successful companies know what a lead is worth.
Understanding CAC and LTV helps determine how much you can reasonably spend on pipeline generation.

→ Outsourcing isn’t always the right answer.
Some companies benefit from external expertise. Others are better off building the capability internally as they grow.

Final recommendations

If you’re considering working with a lead generation agency, take the time to do your research.

Don’t be dazzled by an amazing salesperson. Lead generation agencies often tell a compelling story, but it’s important to dig into the details of how their programs actually work.

The companies that build the strongest pipelines aren’t the ones chasing the cheapest leads. They’re the ones who understand what a lead is worth and build a system for consistently generating new opportunities.

If you want to explore a few lead generation approaches that work well today, start with our 10 quick tips for lead generation that actually work. 

Or, check out what a full-service marketing agency actually costs on our pricing page.

Accelity spent thousands of dollars outsourcing lead generation without really knowing what worked. The engagement didn’t work for a number of reasons, but it raised an important question: how do you really call prospects effectively?

At the same time, there was a strong belief that cold calling was dead. As an inbound-focused team, calling felt like it contradicted the methodology behind the work.

After making hundreds of prospect calls, it became clear that both assumptions were wrong.

Calling isn’t dead. Fear is.

The resistance to calling rarely came from data or experience. It came from the stories people told themselves about what would happen on the other end of the line.

“It’s a waste of time.”
“No one wants to talk on the phone anymore.”
“I don’t want to bother people.”

In reality, those stories were never true. Fear was the real reason calling felt uncomfortable. As Daniel Pink says, today, everyone is in sales. Avoiding direct conversations doesn’t eliminate selling; it just delays learning.

What calling actually reveals

Calling is more personal. When you pick up the phone, prospects can hear your voice, your tone and get a sense of your personality. People buy from those they like and trust, and that relationship is easier to build when you talk directly.

It also gives you better information. Time and again, phone conversations revealed details that never surfaced over email. Silence didn’t mean disinterest. More often, it meant something simple:

“I remember our call last year and would love to work together in the future.”
“I took a full-time role and am not working in the business anymore.”
“We’re still thinking about it. Please follow up next month.”

Hearing that directly changes the entire conversation.

Every answer is a good answer

One of the most surprising parts of calling lost and cold opportunities was how often people responded positively. Many had intended to reply, lost track of emails or preferred talking on the phone altogether.

When working a pipeline, the goal isn’t just to sell. It’s to keep deals moving. Stalled opportunities clutter data and create false confidence. Getting an answer, yes or no, clears the path forward and makes the pipeline more accurate. 

Even a no brings clarity and keeps momentum moving forward.

Helping instead of selling

The most effective calls weren’t transactional. The focus was on helping, not pitching. In consultative sales, showing up and immediately launching into a pitch rarely works. Listening does.

Offering help with nothing required in return builds trust before a prospect is ready to buy. That might mean reviewing a website, sharing a competitive insight or offering guidance that’s useful right now. This approach plants seeds long before there’s a budget or timeline in place.

It turns out this mirrors how strong relationships are built face-to-face. Calling simply extends that mindset.

Why leaders still need to sell

Calling isn’t just a sales activity. It’s a leadership one. Making a handful of calls each week is a manageable time commitment and provides insight that no report or dashboard can replace.

Leaders who sell understand the process deeply. That understanding shapes how they hire, train and support teams. Some lessons can only be learned by doing the work firsthand.

Calling isn’t as scary as it seems

Once the first call of the day is made, it gets easier. Planning calls ahead of time, setting aside focused time and simply starting removes most of the friction. People are far more receptive than expected.

Calling doesn’t have to feel outdated or aggressive. When approached as a way to learn, help and gain clarity, it remains one of the most effective ways to move work forward.

If you’re rethinking how marketing and sales work together, explore how Accelity helps teams build strategies rooted in clarity, momentum and real conversations.

A lot of people think sales sucks.
(I used to be one of them.)

When you think about sales, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?
A pushy salesperson? A flood of LinkedIn DMs asking for “15 minutes of your time”? The classic stereotype of the used car salesman?

Sales has a stigma for a lot of us. But here’s the thing: sales isn’t just about closing deals or hitting quotas. It’s one of the most valuable skills you can build—in business and in life.

Why everyone should learn to sell

No matter what you do for work, you sell every single day.

You might not call it “sales,” but you’re constantly pitching ideas, influencing decisions, and getting buy-in.

• If you’re a creative, you’re selling your ideas to clients or your boss.
• If you’re a founder, you’re selling your vision to your team and investors.
• If you’re a teacher, you’re selling the value of learning to a room full of distracted students.
• If you’re an orthodontist, you’re selling your approach to nervous parents (trust me, I’ve been there).

And even outside of work, we sell. Convincing your friends to try your favorite brunch spot? Sales. Negotiating bedtime with your kids? Sales.

The truth is, selling is just communicating with confidence and empathy. The better you get at it, the more effective you become in almost everything else you do.

The fear that keeps people from selling

Learning to sell is really about getting over your own fears.
Fear of rejection. Fear of being pushy. Fear of hearing no.

According to psychology studies, rejection activates the same regions in the brain as physical pain—which explains why so many people avoid situations where they might hear “no.” But that avoidance can also limit your growth.

When I started Accelity, I relied on my instincts and referrals for years. Most of our new clients came through word of mouth. That worked fine… until I realized it would only take us so far.

If you have big goals—the kind that require scaling, expansion, or major career growth—you have to get comfortable selling. Sitting back and waiting for new business (or new opportunities) to appear isn’t a growth strategy.

How to start learning sales (without feeling slimy)

Here are a few easy ways to build your sales skills—no sleazy tactics required.

1. Take an online course.

Platforms like Coursera or HubSpot Academy offer free or affordable classes that teach modern, human-centered sales techniques.

2. Find an accountability partner.

Pair up with a friend or colleague who also wants to level up. Meet weekly, read books together, and practice role-playing scenarios.

3. Read To Sell Is Human by Daniel Pink.

It’s a classic for a reason. Pink reframes sales as something we all do every day, and shows how persuasion and service go hand in hand.

4. Practice “selling” in low-stakes situations.

Pitch a new idea at work. Negotiate a deadline. Offer feedback with confidence. Small reps build the muscle for bigger conversations later.

5. Master inbound marketing to make selling easier.

The best salespeople know the job starts long before a conversation ever happens. When your brand is already attracting and nurturing the right audience, you’re not “convincing” people to buy—they’re coming to you ready to say yes. Inbound marketing funnels ready, qualified leads right to you.

Selling well means serving well

When done right, sales isn’t manipulation, it’s motivation. It’s about helping people make decisions that solve real problems.

If you can listen deeply, communicate clearly, and show genuine care for the outcome, you’re already better at sales than most people who do it professionally.

So whether you’re trying to close a client, inspire a team, or convince your family to watch something other than Paw Patrol tonight, remember: you’re selling every day.

And if you can learn to do it well, you can achieve almost anything.

P.S. I cover this topic in depth on my podcast, The Art of Entrepreneurship! Here are some of my favorite episodes to help you get started:

• Episode 246. Why you should learn to love selling w/ Mark Cox, author of Learn to Love Selling
• Episode 283. 6 ways to persuade your prospects to buy (revisited)
• Episode 218. Marketing & sales strategies to fill your pipeline

For CMOs driving growth in competitive markets, the real threat isn’t just a tight budget or a noisy market—it’s internal chaos. When brand, performance (demand) and sales operate in silos, it leads to duplicated work, wasted spend, fractured customer experiences and slower revenue growth. 

Fact: Improving your marketing operations isn’t just about cleaner dashboards. It can unlock as much as 20% of your budget. Imagine what that reclaimed spend could do if it fueled growth instead of inefficiency. 

Here’s what misalignment is really costing you, what the data shows and how to get your teams working together so results climb faster.

What “chaos” looks like (and why you should care)

Here are some of the most common failure points that quietly drain ROI—and the business symptoms that signal misalignment.

Conflicting messaging and brand friction

When brand and sales aren’t telling the same story, customers notice. A campaign might promise one thing, but the sales conversation heads in another direction, leaving prospects unsure about what your company actually delivers. When brand and performance teams work in isolation, both lose impact because audiences experience the full journey, not the departments behind it.

Attribution black holes

If your data lives across multiple platforms that don’t connect, you’re flying blind. Disconnected reporting and long buying cycles make it nearly impossible to see what’s really driving results. That uncertainty leads to wasted spend as teams over-invest in some areas and miss opportunities in others.

The leaky funnel between marketing and sales

This is one of the most common and costly issues. When “qualified lead” means something different to marketing than it does to sales, the handoff falls apart. Sales ends up chasing low-quality leads while marketing optimizes for metrics that don’t move revenue. Teams that align definitions and goals see faster follow-up, higher close rates and stronger morale.

Duplicated work and wasted spend

Without coordination, teams often target the same audiences or create similar content without realizing it. The result is duplicated costs and a fragmented customer experience. When planning happens together, budgets stretch further, messaging stays consistent and every touchpoint feels more intentional.

How Alignment Translates to Revenue

Companies that align sales and marketing are more than twice as likely to exceed their revenue goals. That’s not just about better teamwork: it’s a direct lift in performance that shows up on the balance sheet.

Stronger alignment and smarter measurement can also unlock 15–20% of existing marketing spend. For many mid-market and enterprise companies, that’s a six- or seven-figure opportunity—just by improving attribution and tightening cross-functional processes.

When brand and performance plans are built together, the return grows even faster. Research shows that balancing long-term brand investment with short-term performance activity delivers higher ROI than focusing on one side alone. Teams that treat them as partners, not rivals, see the compounding benefits.

It’s no wonder boards and CFOs are asking CMOs to connect marketing spend directly to business outcomes. The opportunity is too big to ignore.

Why alignment generates outsized ROI

Alignment drives results through three main levers:

1. Efficiency of spend: When teams plan together, you avoid duplicate audience buys and fragmented campaigns. Instead of three separate media plans working at cross purposes, you get one coordinated strategy that stretches every marketing dollar further.
2. Higher conversion quality: Creative that’s designed for both sales and performance and guided by data-driven optimization helps move leads through the funnel faster. Aligned teams consistently close more of the right deals and see stronger win rates.
3. Better measurement and decision-making: Sharing data and agreed-upon measurement frameworks make budgeting and channel decisions much clearer. Using marketing mix modeling and multi-touch attribution helps teams act on evidence, not assumption, and keeps reporting accurate and consistent.

The CMO playbook for scalable alignment

Below are practical moves CMOs can deploy immediately—and over the next 90 to 180 days.

1. Executive alignment: set one north-star metric

Pick a single business-level north star that brand, performance and sales map to. Shared incentives and an executive sign-off make alignment real. 

There many ways to measure marketing ROI; here are some examples:

• Revenue influenced: The total amount of revenue that marketing efforts help drive, whether directly or indirectly. It shows how marketing contributes to deals that close.
• Pipeline creation rate: The speed or volume at which marketing generates new opportunities or leads ready for the sales team to pursue.
• LTV:CAC (customer lifetime value to customer acquisition cost): A ratio comparing how much value a customer brings over their lifetime to how much it costs to acquire them. Higher ratios mean more efficient marketing and sales efforts.

2. Define handoffs between teams

Document lead definitions, content handoff processes and acceptable lead quality. Capture them in a one-page go-to-market playbook and review monthly. This eliminates the “he said/she said” handoff problem fast.

3. Create a single source of truth for data

Bring all your data together—CRM, ad platforms, analytics and CDP outputs—into a unified source of truth (our agency uses Databox for this). Make sure everyone agrees on campaign naming and experiment labels so reporting stays consistent. 

When everyone looks at the same numbers, budget and strategy discussions stop being political. Experts recommend using centralized modeling, like marketing mix modeling and multi-touch attribution, to make smarter, evidence-based investment decisions.

4. Establish a joint planning cadence and shared creative briefs

Hold quarterly GTM planning where brand narratives, performance audiences and sales plays are planned together. Use a single creative brief with clear outcomes and measurement tags so every asset supports both demand and sales channels.

5. Treat sales enablement as a core responsibility of marketing

Marketing owns the content and signals that make sales faster. Make enablement part of marketing’s KPIs—such as enablement score, content usage rate and pipeline influenced. This kind of coordination consistently links to stronger sales performance.

6. Keep alignment simple

Designate a lean team to manage the processes that keep everyone on the same page. They ensure data hygiene, consistent metrics and alignment meetings that move work forward instead of eating up time.

From alignment to advantage

Boards and CEOs expect marketing to prove impact. The fastest path to predictable marketing ROI isn’t adding another tool or hiring another agency—it’s building operational alignment. Shared goals, clean data and a culture that treats brand, performance and sales are all parts of the same story. When you fix the operating model, your spend works smarter, not harder.

Keep the momentum going—explore how small marketing shifts lead to big inbound wins in From Mistakes to Mastery: Your Blueprint for Inbound Marketing Success.