Most teams that talk to us are also pricing a lead-gen agency, a production shop, another SDR or an in-house show. Here is how each answers the same five questions, including where we are the wrong pick.
| asset | lead_gen | prod_shop | sdr_team | diy_show | podcastgtm |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| sending domains | built, vendor keeps it | not built | built, yours | not built | built, yours |
| mailboxes | built, vendor keeps it | not built | built, yours | not built | built, yours |
| buyer list | built, yours | not built | built, yours | not built | built, yours |
| episodes + clips | not built | built, yours | not built | built, yours | built, yours |
| crm notes | built, yours | not built | built, yours | not built | built, yours |
| guest relationships | not built | not built | not built | built, yours | built, yours |
| kept / built | 2/4 | 1/1 | 4/4 | 2/2 | 6/6 |
✓ built, yours– not built× built, vendor keeps it
Typical setups; contracts vary.
If you are weighing a B2B podcast agency against a lead-gen agency, an in-house SDR team or an in-house podcast, the questions that matter are what you pay for, what gets measured and who owns the infrastructure.
A lead-gen agency sells meetings. A production agency sells episodes. We sell recorded conversations with buyers, reported through to revenue.
They sell sending capacity and a team to run sequences, priced per meeting or on retainer. Good ones move fast, but every meeting starts with discovery from zero.
| question | lead-gen agency | podcastgtm |
|---|---|---|
| what you pay for | Meetings set, or a monthly sending retainer | A recorded-guest target: 4–6, 8–10 or 12–16 a month by tier |
| what's measured | Sends, replies, meetings booked | Recorded guests, opportunities, revenue |
| who owns infrastructure | Often the agency: its domains, its mailboxes | You: separate domains and mailboxes in your name |
| time from founder | Low, until the calls: each is discovery from zero | ~2 hrs / week. Guests arrive pre-interviewed |
| what's left when you stop | A contacted list and a thread history | Domains, mailboxes, episodes, guest list, CRM notes, referrals |
They make a show sound good: editing, artwork, show notes, publishing, usually paid per episode. Guest research, booking and everything after the recording stay with you.
| question | production agency | podcastgtm |
|---|---|---|
| what you pay for | Editing, artwork, show notes, publishing | Production plus the guest engine: research, invitations, pre-interviews, CRM handoff |
| what's measured | Downloads, subscribers, chart position | Not downloads. Guests, opportunities, revenue |
| who owns infrastructure | Your feed. No outreach infrastructure at all | Feed, episodes and invitation infrastructure, all yours |
| time from founder | Hosting, plus finding and booking every guest | ~2 hrs / week: hosting and approvals |
| what's left when you stop | A back catalog of episodes | A back catalog of buyers, each with CRM notes |
Both in-house routes give you full ownership, which is the right instinct.
Full control and full ownership, plus the hiring, ramp, tooling, coaching and turnover. Our cost-per-meeting model puts one SDR plus tools at about $7,500 a month.
Rather run a show yourselves? The Launch Sprint builds it in 14 days for $4,500 and hands it over.
| question | in-house SDRs | podcastgtm |
|---|---|---|
| what you pay for | Salary, commission, data and sequencing tools, a manager's time | $3,900–$11,500 / month, software and infrastructure included |
| what's measured | Dials, sends, meetings set | Recorded guests → opportunities → signed |
| who owns infrastructure | You own it, and you build and maintain it | You own it; we build and run it |
| time from founder | Hiring, coaching, pipeline reviews, then the discovery calls | ~2 hrs / week, hosting |
| what's left when you stop | Tools and data. The know-how leaves with each hire | All assets, plus episodes and a relationship with every guest |
What breaks is the guest engine: research, invitations, pre-interviews and follow-up fall to whoever has a free afternoon. Doing it well takes roughly 25 team hours a week.
Already running one? Host Coaching is $1,800 a month: you send, we coach.
| question | in-house show | podcastgtm |
|---|---|---|
| what you pay for | Recording tools, a freelance editor, your team's hours | One monthly program: tools, editing and infrastructure included |
| what's measured | Usually downloads: the hosting dashboard's default | Guest → opportunity rate and revenue |
| who owns infrastructure | You do | You do. Same answer |
| time from founder | Hosting, plus guest chasing, briefs and follow-up | ~2 hrs / week |
| what's left when you stop | Everything you built | Everything, plus pre-interview notes and fit scores on every guest |
If one of these describes you, we are not the right buy. Saying so up front saves both sides a quarter.
Cold email can be cheaper per meeting: about $625 a meeting against $841 per recorded conversation, in our own model. We win per opportunity. Model assumptions
Thirty minutes of an executive's time per buyer rarely pays back below $15k, and never under $5k. Volume outbound or paid acquisition will.
If downloads, rankings and sponsors are the goal, hire a shop that optimizes for them. We don't report downloads.
If booking already works and you only need editing and publishing, a per-episode shop costs less than a full program.
Senior people accept platforms, not pitches. For managers and end users, SDR volume reaches more of them per dollar.
If no founder or exec will spend about two hours a week on mic, no vendor fixes that. Don't buy a show yet.
Three things in writing: a target, a weekly report, and a remedy when we miss.
Every tier carries a recorded-guest target: 4–6, 8–10 or 12–16 a month. At the day-60 review we add an opportunity target, set from your real data.
Invited, accepted, qualified, recorded, opportunities, signed. Same format in a bad week. A miss arrives with its cause and the change we are making.
From month 2 on, if we miss your recorded-guest target, we keep booking at no charge until we hit it. The target is the low end of your tier's range: 4, 8 or 12.
"We need results this quarter."
A lead-gen agency can send in week one. We warm new domains first: invitations go live on day 18, first recordings land around day 25, and many guests become conversations before their episode is published.
"We already publish a show."
Then we plug the guest engine into it, or run a second, buyer-focused format beside it.
"Outbound is burned in our market."
Cold email asks for a favor. An invitation grants one. Same deliverability discipline, opposite request.
"Won't guests feel baited into a sales process?"
Nothing gets sold on the record. Guests are invited because their view is worth publishing, get real exposure, and choose whether to keep talking. If both sides don't benefit, it doesn't work, so we design for both.
Apply with your ICP, ACV and what you spend today on agencies or SDRs; you get a guest forecast within 72 hours of the fit call.