What does a qualified B2B meeting cost?

There is no single market price for a qualified B2B meeting: the cost depends on the target, the decision level and the billing model. What is comparable is the arithmetic, and on OnQuota, observed prices run from €50 to €210, averaging around €70 for a setter.

Alexandre Berthon · 2026-08-09

The question always arrives in that form, and it has no direct answer. A meeting with the CFO of a 2,000-person group and a meeting with the founder of a 20-person company do not cost the same to book, and are not worth the same. What can be done is to set out the calculation, then redo it with your numbers.

The short answer

The all-in cost of a qualified B2B meeting is everything the period cost (loaded salaries, external fees, tools, data) divided by the number of meetings that actually met your criteria. Not by the number of meetings delivered. Depending on the model, that cost is either known in advance (pay-per-meeting) or observed afterwards (retainer, in-house SDR), and it is that difference, more than the amount, that shapes the decision.

The three ways to pay

1. The monthly retainer

The agency and outsourced-SDR model. You pay a fixed amount per month for a team or a fraction of one. The cost per meeting is only known at the end of the month, and it moves: a weak month costs the same as a strong one.

2. Hiring in-house

A salaried SDR. It is the most economical model at high and steady volume, and the heaviest to set up, for cost reasons that never appear on the payslip. The next section itemises them.

3. Paying per meeting

A price per qualified meeting, agreed before prospecting starts. The cost per meeting is known up front and does not move with volume. In exchange, the unit price is higher than the marginal cost of an in-house SDR who is performing well: you are paying for certainty and for the transfer of risk.

What a meeting costs on OnQuota

OnQuota does not set the prices: the salesperson proposes theirs, the company accepts it or does not, campaign by campaign. What follows is therefore what is observed on the platform rather than a rate card, but it is a checkable order of magnitude, which is what most answers to this question lack.

A meeting booked by a setter is paid between €50 and €210, averaging around €70, and the price most frequently settled on is €55. The average therefore sits well below the middle of the range: the high prices are real, but they belong to hard targets rather than to the ordinary case.

A closer sits in a comparable range with a higher average, around €100: they come in later in the cycle, on deals that are already qualified, and their time per deal is longer. A meeting handled end to end (a setter to book it, a closer to run it) averages €160.

Averages observed across beta campaigns, French-speaking market. The three do not add up: not every campaign uses both roles, and €160 is the average of those that use both rather than the sum of the other two.

What moves a price inside that range is the pair of variables listed further down this article: the decision level being targeted and how narrow the target is. A niche market with a hard-to-reach decision maker is paid towards the top of the range; a broad market with an accessible contact is paid towards the bottom.

These numbers describe one platform’s campaigns in one French-speaking market at one point in time, and they will move. They are here to help you set up your own calculation and to tell whether a quote is in the right order of magnitude, not to argue a market price at a provider.

Why the cost of an in-house SDR is almost always underestimated

The instinct is to compare an external price with an SDR’s gross salary. That is the wrong comparison: salary is the most visible line, not the only one. What has to be added up to get a full annual cost:

• Gross salary, plus variable pay actually earned, not the theoretical plan.
• Employer contributions, which in France are calculated on the gross and weigh heavily in the total.
• The workstation: hardware, licences, telephony.
• Prospecting tools and the database, billed per seat.
• Management time: the hours a sales lead spends steering, valued at their own hourly cost.
• Recruitment, amortised over how long the person actually stays in the seat.
• Ramp-up: the first months produce little, and that shortfall is part of the cost.

None of these can be guessed: they are read out of your accounts and your tool contracts. A full cost obtained any other way is not a cost, it is an estimate that will flatter whoever produced it.

Take a simplified example, on assumptions you should replace with your own. An SDR whose full annual cost comes to €75,000 and who produces 12 conforming meetings a month once settled costs 75,000 ÷ 144, or roughly €520 per meeting. The same SDR at 8 meetings a month costs €780. The deciding variable is not the salary, it is the output, and output is only stable once ramp-up is over.

Working out the real cost, and the denominator trap

To compare two options you have to bring both to the same denominator. The all-in cost per qualified meeting is:

(total cost for the period + tools and data) ÷ the number of meetings that actually met your criteria

The denominator is the trap. Divide by meetings delivered rather than meetings that conformed and you get a flattering number that corresponds to nothing. A provider who delivers 20 meetings of which 8 are off-target has not delivered 20 meetings: they delivered 12, and your real unit cost is 67% higher than their dashboard says.

Which is why one quote cannot be compared with another until both rest on the same definition of "qualified". Two per-meeting prices that look 30% apart can turn out to be identical, or reversed, once the criteria are aligned.

What moves the price

• Decision level: the more senior the function, the lower the reply rate and the more the meeting costs to book.
• How narrow the target is: a market of 300 eligible companies is not worked like a market of 30,000.
• Your brand recognition: a company unknown to its target pays part of the price in credibility-building.
• The length of the criteria list: each additional criterion shrinks the addressable volume, so raises the unit cost.
• Season: August and December cost more everywhere.
• A mandated channel: requiring phone only, or ruling phone out, moves the cost in both directions.

The question that comes before price

Before asking for a rate, it is more useful to work out what a meeting is worth to you. Take your average deal size, multiply by your conversion rate from a first meeting, and you have the value of a meeting.

A simplified example, to redo with your own numbers: an average deal of €12,000 and a 10% conversion rate from a first meeting put the value of a meeting at €1,200. At €400 a unit, the purchase returns three times its cost; at €1,100, the margin disappears the moment the conversion rate drops a point. It is that ratio, not the headline price, that says whether a meeting is expensive.

That calculation also tells you when to stop buying meetings and start hiring: at high and steady volume, the marginal cost of an in-house SDR eventually drops below the external unit price. Where the threshold sits depends entirely on your full cost and your output: the two numbers from the section above.

Key points

• No price per meeting means anything without the definition of "qualified" attached to it.
• Always divide by conforming meetings, never by delivered meetings.
• An in-house SDR does not cost their salary: add contributions, tools, management, recruitment and ramp-up.
• Work out what a meeting is worth before negotiating what it costs.
• A retainer puts the volume risk on you; paying per meeting puts it on the provider.

Frequently asked

What is the average price of a qualified B2B meeting?

There is no single market price: a price means nothing without the definition of "qualified" attached to it or the decision level being targeted. As an order of magnitude, across OnQuota campaigns: a meeting booked by a setter is paid between €50 and €210, averaging around €70 with €55 the most frequently settled price; a closer averages around €100; a meeting handled end to end by both averages €160. These are one platform’s observations in a French-speaking market, not a rate card.

How do I work out my cost per meeting today?

Add up everything the period cost (loaded salaries, external fees, tools, data) and divide by the number of meetings that actually met your criteria over the same period. The result is almost always higher than people expect, because the usual denominator is meetings delivered rather than meetings that conformed.

At what point does an in-house SDR become cheaper?

When their full annual cost divided by their annual conforming meetings drops below the external unit price, and the volume is steady enough for that output to hold. Both conditions matter: an under-used SDR is expensive per meeting whatever their salary.

Why is pay-per-meeting more expensive per unit?

Because the price contains the risk. Under a retainer, a quiet month is paid at full price by the client; under pay-per-outcome, that quiet month is not invoiced and the loss sits with the provider. That transfer has a cost, and it is built into the unit price.

Should no-shows be paid for?

That is a clause to write before, not a point to argue after. The most common rule: a meeting that does not happen is not invoiced, but can be rescheduled once at no extra cost. With no written rule, every no-show becomes a discussion, and those discussions cost more than the clause would have.

Redo the calculation on your own target: on OnQuota the price per meeting is set before the first call, against written criteria, and payment is only released for meetings that conform. See how a price per meeting is set