The difference in one table
| Retainer | Pay per meeting | |
|---|---|---|
| What you pay for | Time and activity | Qualified meetings that take place |
| When you pay | Every month, in advance | When a meeting happens, plus a tech fee at cost |
| Cost of a month with no meetings | The full retainer | The tech fee |
| Who carries the risk | You | The agency |
| What the agency is rewarded for | Keeping the account | Meetings that meet your criteria |
| What reporting shows | Emails sent, opens, replies | Meetings booked and attended |
When a retainer is the better choice
A retainer buys capacity you direct. That's the right thing to buy when:
- You want work that doesn't end in a meeting — content, brand, events, account-based marketing.
- You're still working out who your buyer is, and want an agency to test several markets before committing to one.
- You want someone embedded in your team, working your CRM and your existing pipeline.
- A single meeting isn't worth much to you, so a per-meeting fee would outweigh its value.
When pay per meeting is the better choice
- You know who your buyer is and can write it down.
- A meeting with the right buyer is worth real money to you — typically because deals are large or clients stay for years.
- You've paid a retainer before and got activity reports instead of meetings.
- You want your cost per sales conversation to be known in advance.
The catch with pay per meeting
It isn't free risk-transfer, and it's worth knowing the trade-offs:
- The criteria have to be tight. Vague criteria produce disputes. Our guide to qualified sales meeting criteria covers how to avoid that.
- Agencies are selective. An agency paid per meeting can't afford campaigns that won't produce them, so it may turn down a market where the buyers are too few or too hard to reach.
- Each meeting costs more than a retainer's implied cost per meeting when a retainer goes well. You're paying the agency to carry the risk of it not going well.
Questions to ask either kind of agency
Whichever model you choose, ask what counts as a meeting, whose domain they send from, who handles replies and what you're out of pocket if it doesn't work. The full list is in how to choose a lead generation agency.