How to check an outsourced SDR agency before you sign.

Check four things before you sign with an outsourced SDR agency: the work, by listening to real calls and reading real emails; the people, meaning who will call and who manages them; the clients, by speaking to one yourself; and the company, on Companies House, the ICO register and independent reviews. It takes an afternoon, which is less than the three months it takes to find out the other way.

Listen to the work

• Ask for recorded calls from a live campaign, anonymised if need be. How the first ten seconds sound tells you more than any deck.
• Ask for a sequence they wrote for a client: the emails and the LinkedIn messages, in order.
• Ask to see the reporting you would get, live on screen, not as a sample PDF.
• Ask what they would say to your buyer. A good agency will have a view after one conversation and will say what it does not know yet.

Meet the people

• Who will make the calls: names, how long they have done it, and whether they work one market or several.
• Who manages them, and how many calls that person listens to in a day.
• What happens when a rep leaves - who takes over, and how quickly.

Speak to a client

• Ask for a reference who has been with them for six months or more, and ask whether you can speak to one who has left.
• Check that the case studies name real companies and real people, and that the client mentions the work on its own site or LinkedIn.
• Ask the reference three things: how many booked meetings were held, how quickly problems were fixed, and whether they would sign again.

Check the company

• Companies House: when it was incorporated, who the directors are, and whether its accounts are filed on time. Free.
• The ICO register of fee payers: an agency handling contact data should normally be on it. Free.
• Independent reviews on Clutch, G2, Trustpilot or Google. Read the middling ones; they describe the work.
• Who owns the domains, the mailboxes and the data when you stop - in writing, before you sign.

Check the compliance

• How call lists are screened against the TPS and CTPS, and when.
• Where the contact data comes from, and the lawful basis for using it.
• Whether email goes from domains set up for you or from shared infrastructure whose reputation you do not control.

The red flags

• A guaranteed number of meetings before they have looked at your market.
• No calls you can listen to and no reps they can name.
• A long minimum term with no break point.
• A per-meeting price with a loose definition of a meeting.

The questions to ask on the first call are in how to choose an outsourced sales provider, and the clauses to read in the outsourced SDR contract. To check us, our case studies name the client, the team page names the people, and anything on this list can be asked on the first call.