A founder asked us last week why we don't charge a retainer like everybody else. It's a fair question, and the answer is more interesting than "we just don't". The honest version is: pay-per-meeting and retainer are different shapes of risk. We deliberately took the shape that loses us money when campaigns are slow — because it's the only one that makes sense for the kind of clients we want to work with.
This is the maths and the structural argument behind that choice, and the two scenarios where, if I were on the other side of the table, I'd choose a retainer over our model.
The retainer model in plain terms
A retainer agency charges a fixed monthly fee — typically £4,000 to £12,000 in the UK market — in exchange for "running outbound" for you. The contract is usually three or six months. Some retainers include a soft commitment to a meetings target, but the agency gets paid the same whether they hit it or not.
The unspoken contract is: the agency takes the risk of finding good clients, not the risk of producing good results. If a campaign is slow, the agency keeps invoicing. If a campaign is hot, the agency keeps invoicing — which is fine for them, less fine for you, especially if your unit economics aren't great.
The pay-per-meeting model in plain terms
Pay-per-meeting agencies charge a fee per qualified meeting that takes place. The price ranges roughly £350 to £900 depending on ICP difficulty, ACV and exclusivity. There is usually a small set-up fee or a domain reimbursement charge, but the bulk of the cost only happens when meetings happen.
The unspoken contract is the inverse: the agency takes most of the operational risk. If campaigns are slow, the agency loses money. If campaigns are hot, the agency makes money proportionally. This forces the agency to be selective about who they take on.
The maths
Let's work an example. Imagine an engagement that produces 25 qualified meetings per month, with an average price-per-meeting of £550 and an average set-up fee amortised over the first three months.
- Pay-per-meeting cost in month one: ~£3,500 (set-up plus first weeks of meetings ramping up).
- Pay-per-meeting cost in month three: ~£14,000 (steady state, 25 meetings × £550).
- Comparable retainer cost: ~£8,000 per month, flat.
Reading those numbers, the retainer looks cheaper. And in this scenario it is — at steady state. The pay-per-meeting model is more expensive for clients whose campaigns work well.
The thing that doesn't show up in the headline maths is what happens when campaigns don't work well.
- If a retainer agency produces only 4 qualified meetings in a month, you still pay £8,000. Your cost per meeting is £2,000.
- If a pay-per-meeting agency produces only 4 qualified meetings, you pay roughly £2,200. Your cost per meeting is £550.
The retainer is cheap when things work and ruinous when they don't. The pay-per-meeting model is the inverse — more expensive in steady-state, but with a built-in floor.
You're not paying for emails. You're paying for outcomes. The pricing model should reflect which one you actually want.
Why we chose pay-per-meeting
The structural reason is that we don't want to take clients who won't work. The retainer model removes the agency's incentive to be honest about fit, because the agency gets paid either way. We've all seen the version of this where an agency takes on a client they know is borderline, runs them for six months, and quietly hopes they don't renew. That's not a business we want to operate.
The financial reason is that pay-per-meeting forces us to focus. Every minute we spend on a marginal client is a minute we don't spend on a client who's working. We can't afford to be sloppy because the bill literally doesn't get paid if we're sloppy. That discipline produces a better service, full stop.
The cultural reason is that we like our clients. Most of the founders we work with are bootstrapped or recently funded — they're spending their own money, sometimes their own savings. The retainer model takes that money whether the work is producing pipeline or not. We didn't want to be on that side of the relationship.
When a retainer is actually the better fit
I'd be lying if I said pay-per-meeting was right for every business. Two scenarios where I'd actively recommend a retainer:
1. You're an enterprise with a tight ICP and big deals
If your ACV is north of £200K, your TAM is small, and your sales cycle is six to eighteen months, the cost of any one meeting is enormous. A retainer makes sense because you're paying for sustained, careful, low-volume targeting on a list of accounts that may produce one to three meetings per month. Pay-per-meeting prices that highly enough that the cost would be similar — but the friction of negotiating each meeting's qualification gets exhausting at low volumes.
2. You want the agency embedded in your team
If you want the outbound agency to also help with sales-ops, content, RevOps tooling, or to attend internal pipeline reviews, that's a retainer engagement. We don't do that — we run the outbound and that's it. If you want a more embedded relationship, a retainer agency is structurally a better fit.
What we say on the call
When a founder pushes back on our model, we walk through the numbers above. About a third of the time, they decide a retainer agency is the better fit and we cheerfully refer them to one we like. About two-thirds of the time, they sit with the maths for a moment and conclude that the asymmetry of pay-per-meeting is exactly what they want. Either outcome is fine — we just don't want them choosing on vibes alone.
If you'd like to walk through the maths for your specific situation, book a discovery call. Bring your TAM, your ACV, and your current pipeline number. We'll tell you which model fits.
Pricing chapter (chapter ten) of the Cold Email Playbook 2026 includes the full per-meeting pricing matrix we use across different ICP difficulties.