Done-for-you lead generation means an outside team runs your outbound from start to finish, and your job is to take the sales calls it books. Done-with-you means someone who has run outbound designs the system and coaches your own people, and your people do the daily work.
Choose done-for-you when you need meetings this quarter and nobody inside has run outbound before. Choose done-with-you when a person on your team has real weekly hours for it and you want the skill to stay in the company.
A third model gets left out of most comparisons: data only. Your team and your sending setup already work, so you buy a targeted list and keep running it yourself.
Price is not what decides between them. Your calendar is. Done-for-you breaks when nobody is free to take the calls. Done-with-you breaks when the team stops following the process.
Read what follows knowing I sell all three.
Smirnov Consulting Group is a Prague-based B2B outbound lead generation agency that runs cold email and LinkedIn campaigns for founder-led B2B companies and books qualified sales calls.
Most of our work is done-for-you. For some companies my team and I coach instead, one-on-one or in a group, and for a few we only build the list.
Three ways to buy outbound help, side by side
When I described my own offer on LinkedIn, I split it into three ways to work together.
Done-for-you: "You just show up to the sales calls." Custom lead lists, for companies where "you already have the infrastructure and just need the fuel." And strategic consulting, where we "build the blueprint and train your internal team to execute."
Most articles on this question still frame it as agency versus do-it-yourself. That merges two very different buyers: the founder who wants a coach next to their team, and the founder whose team is fine and only needs more people to contact.
| Done-for-you | Done-with-you | Data only | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who does the daily work | The provider's team | Your people, coached | Your people |
| What the provider owns | Targeting, list, sending setup, copy, follow-ups, replies, booking | The plan, the training and regular reviews of your team's work | The list: targeting, research, verification |
| What stays your job | Proof, fast approvals, taking and closing the calls | Every task the provider does not do, every working day | Everything except finding the contacts |
| How it is usually priced | A monthly fee to the provider | A coaching fee, plus your team's pay, tools and data | Per list or per batch of contacts |
| Speed to first meetings | Fastest, because the process already exists | Slower, because your team learns while it sends | Only as fast as the setup you already run |
| What you keep at the end | Meetings, plus whatever the contract lets you keep | The skill, the process and the assets, inside your company | The contacts |
| What it takes from your calendar | Hours for sales calls, every week | Hours for calls, plus hours to run the work | Hours to run the work and take the calls |
| How it breaks | Nobody takes the calls, or you pause it | Your team runs it their own way | The setup it feeds is already broken |
If you have no sending domains yet, done-for-you and done-with-you both start with setup. New domains need a warm-up period before real volume, whoever owns them, and I put the published estimates side by side in how long a new cold email domain needs to warm up.
Pure do-it-yourself with a software subscription is a fourth route. It is done-with-you minus the person who has done it before, and it suits a founder with hours to learn by trial.
What do you still do when an agency runs it?
"You just show up to the sales calls" is accurate. The word "just" is carrying a lot.
Under done-for-you, the provider takes the work that eats hours: deciding who to contact, setting up domains and mailboxes, writing and testing messages, sending follow-ups, answering replies and putting calls on your calendar. What no provider can take from you:
- The proof a prospect checks after the first email: your case studies, your profile and your website
- Quick sign-off on the offer, the targeting and the first messages
- The sales calls themselves, and the follow-up after each one
- Closing the deal
A campaign produces conversations at the pace it was built for. Your week has no say in that pace. If the founder is buried in delivery, booked calls get moved twice, the lead who was warm on Tuesday is lukewarm by the next Monday, and the campaign gets blamed for what the calendar did.
What does done-with-you ask of your team?
Done-with-you goes by several names: outbound coaching, consulting, training. The model is the same. The expert decides the targeting, the offer, the sequence and the sending setup together with you, trains the people who will run it, and then reviews their work: the lists, the messages, the replies, the weekly numbers.
Your people press send, answer replies and book the calls.
The upside: when the engagement ends, the skill and the process stay in your company.
The price of that upside is time. Someone inside needs protected hours every week, and whatever is left of Friday afternoon does not count.
There is a second condition, and I put it in plain words in 2020: "If I coach you your way, all you'll get is the same results you have right now." I told the whole conversation in a post about the founders outbound suits and the ones it does not.
Coaching only works when the team runs the process as given, instead of editing it back into its old habits.
The edits look harmless one at a time. A follow-up gets dropped because it "feels pushy". The list gets widened because the narrow one "feels small". The opening line turns back into a pitch. Put three of those together and you have rebuilt the campaign you were running before you paid for help.
So before you buy coaching, ask one honest question inside the team: will the person running this follow a process they did not design, for a full test period, without rewriting it along the way?
When is a lead list alone enough?
Custom lead lists are a side offer for us, and they fit the narrowest group of buyers: companies that already run outbound well and simply need more fuel for it.
You are probably there if all of these are true:
- You have been sending from warmed domains for months without deliverability trouble
- You track bounce and reply rates and can say what they were last month
- Someone on the team answers replies and books calls without the founder chasing them
- The one real complaint is that good-fit contacts keep running out
If any of those is missing, a better list only feeds a setup that burns through it. Before any list goes into a sequence, whoever built it, take it apart the way I check a B2B lead list before anyone writes the first email.
The honest limit of data only: nobody reviews your copy, your replies or your numbers. It is for teams that already know why their campaigns work.
Which two questions decide it before price does?
Before my team takes on a client, I run a few checks. Two of them have nothing to do with budget.
First, does the founder actually have the hours to jump on sales calls? A client who cannot take the calls cannot make the system work, whoever runs it.
Second, will they pause the campaign the first time they get busy? I have told founders on LinkedIn that if that is how they work, they should not message me at all. I still mean it.
Both questions apply to all three models. Pausing costs more than the paused weeks: people halfway through a sequence stop hearing from you, the prospects who said "try me next month" get no next month, and the restart begins with a list that has aged in the meantime.
Run this before you talk to any provider:
- Name the person who will take the booked calls, and write down the hours per week they can give, starting next month.
- Look at your last busy season. If selling stopped while you delivered, plan now for how the calls get taken next time.
- For done-with-you, name the person who will run the daily work and the weekly hours they will protect for it.
- Ask whether that person will follow a process they did not design for a full test period.
- For data only, pull your last three months of sending. If you cannot say what your bounce and reply rates were, you are not ready for it.
- Check the proof a prospect will find after your first email: case studies that carry real numbers, and a profile that says what you sell.
If 1 or 2 fails, no model will work yet. If 3 or 4 fails, done-with-you is the wrong buy and done-for-you is the fit. If all six pass, data only may be all you need.
What does each model cost once you count your own people?
Comparing fees alone makes coaching look cheap and data look cheaper. The real comparison adds the people each model needs from your side.
Done-for-you. Monthly fees for hiring an agency span $1,000 to $25,000, according to the pricing guide for lead generation on Clutch (page updated March 2025, checked September 2026).
Most B2B firms, the guide says, quote each job rather than list a price. Ask what a quote covers: the people, the tools and the data, or only some of them.
Done-with-you. You pay the coach, and you pay whoever does the work. If nobody on the team has the hours, that means a hire.
Payscale's US salary data puts total yearly pay for a sales development rep in a $36,000 to $77,000 band, with bonus, commission and profit sharing counted. The sample is 324 salary profiles, last updated September 2026. That is $3,000 to about $6,400 a month before employer taxes, tools and data.
A new rep also needs roughly a quarter to reach full speed, based on the survey data in my SDR ramp and turnover roundup.
Data only. You pay for the list. The team, the tools and the sending setup are costs you already carry, which is why this model only makes sense when they are already working.
One more line belongs in every column: your own hours. If the founder runs the daily work under done-with-you, put a price on that hour before you call the model cheap.
A worked example: three founders, three different answers
These three founders are made up. The inputs are round, which makes it easy to replace them with yours. I add one assumption: count about one hour of the closer's week per booked call, prep and notes included. Change it if your calls run longer.
Founder A runs a 12-person IT services company. First contracts average $25,000. Every client so far came from referrals. The founder closes every deal and can free 5 hours a week. Nobody inside has run outbound.
- Calls: 5 hours a week leaves room for about 5 booked calls a week. Passes.
- Daily work under done-with-you: nobody has the hours, and the founder's 5 go to calls. Done-with-you here means hiring a rep at $3,000 to $6,400 a month in pay, before the coach, the tools and the data, and waiting about a quarter for that rep to ramp.
- Money: take a made-up agency fee of $5,000 a month, inside Clutch's range and not a quote from anyone. 1 new contract x $25,000 = 5 months of that fee. The same contract covers only about 4 to 8 months of the new rep's pay, with nothing else included.
- Answer: done-for-you now. After two quarters, once the founder knows which segment and which message work, done-with-you becomes the way to bring the program inside.
Founder B runs a 30-person software development company. Two salespeople have sent cold email from warmed domains for a year. Deals average $15,000. They track bounce and reply rates every month. Their problem: good-fit contacts run out.
- Calls: the salespeople take them. Passes.
- Daily work: already happening. Passes.
- Answer: data only. If their replies had dropped and nobody could say why, the answer would switch to done-with-you, with a coach finding what broke while the team keeps sending.
Founder C runs a consultancy and delivers most of the work personally. Deals average $8,000. From spring to autumn the calendar is full, and outreach is the first thing dropped every year.
- Calls: fails in the busy months.
- Pausing: fails, by his own track record.
- Answer: nothing yet. Any of the three would produce calls in exactly the months he cannot take them. The first fix is delivery capacity, so that selling can continue while client work runs.
| Founder A | Founder B | Founder C | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average deal | $25,000 | $15,000 | $8,000 |
| Who takes the calls | Founder, 5 hours a week | Two salespeople | Founder, quiet months only |
| Someone to run the daily work | No | Yes | No |
| Working sending setup today | No | Yes | No |
| Best fit | Done-for-you | Data only | None until capacity is fixed |
Notice what deal size did in this example. It set how few deals each model needs to pay for itself: at $8,000 a contract, a $5,000 monthly fee needs a signed deal roughly every 7 weeks. The choice of model came from the calendar and the people.
How does each model fail from the client's side?
Most comparisons list what providers get wrong. This table covers the client side, which is the side you control.
| Model | How it fails | Early sign | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Done-for-you | Calls get rescheduled while the founder delivers | The same prospect moved twice | Block fixed call slots every week before launch |
| Done-for-you | Approvals stall | Lists or copy wait more than a few days for sign-off | Name one approver with a deadline |
| Done-for-you | A pause in the busy month | "Let's hold off until things calm down" | Decide in advance who takes calls when you cannot |
| Done-with-you | The owner gets pulled into other work | Outbound slides to Friday afternoons | Protect the hours in writing, like a client commitment |
| Done-with-you | The team rewrites the process | Shorter sequences, wider lists, pitchy openers | Freeze the process for the whole test period |
| Done-with-you | Coaching turns into status chats | The same issues come back every session | Every session ends with one change and an owner |
| Data only | The list feeds a broken setup | Bounces or spam complaints rise after a new batch | Fix sending before buying more contacts |
| Data only | The list sits unused while it ages | Contacts loaded weeks after delivery | Buy in batches you will send within the month |
Can you switch from one model to another later?
Yes. The order that usually makes sense runs from more help to less.
Done-for-you comes first, while you learn which segment and which message produce calls. Done-with-you comes next, once you have a person who can own the work and a process that is already proven. Data only comes last, when that team runs without supervision and only needs fresh contacts.
The reverse move makes sense too. A team that tried done-with-you and simply never finds the hours is better off handing the daily work to someone who will do it.
Any switch goes smoothly only if the assets move with you: the domains, the mailboxes, the lists, the sequences and the reply history. Settle who keeps them before you sign, along with the rest of what I would ask a provider before hiring one.
Questions founders ask about done-for-you and done-with-you
Is done-for-you lead generation worth it? It is worth it when one new client pays for several months of the fee and someone can take the calls it books. Run it with your own deal size: at $25,000 a contract, one extra client covers five months of an example $5,000 monthly fee. If nobody can take the calls, it is not worth it at any price.
Is outbound coaching cheaper than hiring an agency? The coaching fee on its own can look cheaper. The full cost adds the person who does the work, plus tools and data. Payscale's US range for a sales development rep is $36,000 to $77,000 in yearly total pay. Compare the totals, including your own hours, before you compare fees.
Should I do LinkedIn outreach myself or pay someone to run it? The same test applies. Doing it yourself fits a founder with hours to learn and a narrow list. Paying someone fits when your hours are worth more on calls. LinkedIn adds one thing: outreach goes out under a personal profile, so under any model that profile is what prospects check first.
What should a done-with-you engagement leave behind? A written process your team follows without the coach, people who have run it themselves for weeks, sending assets registered to your company, and weekly numbers your team can read and act on. If the coaching ends and only a slide deck remains, you bought advice.