If you already outsource telesales, or run an in-house team, you know the monthly number by heart: so many agents, at so much per seat or per hour, plus management, plus tooling. What you may not have calculated is what that number turns into when it is divided by the results the team actually produced. For most companies, the answer is uncomfortable, and it is the reason performance-based telesales has moved from a niche offer to the model serious buyers now ask for first.
This article walks through the economics of the two models, shows where the risk sits in each, and explains why pay-for-performance only works, and works extremely well, for companies with genuine volume.
Under a per-seat or per-hour model you buy capacity. A typical arrangement in Europe might be a fixed monthly fee per full-time agent, with a setup fee and a minimum term. The agency's revenue is secured the moment the contract is signed. Whether those agents close ten deals or a hundred in a month, the invoice is the same.
This has three consequences. First, the agency is structurally incentivised to keep seats filled, not to raise conversion. Second, performance management becomes your job: you read the activity reports, you chase the dips, you decide when to cut. Third, every slow month is pure cost. Sales is seasonal and campaigns fatigue, and under a seat model those dips are absorbed entirely by the client.
The hidden line item is cost per result. Take a team of eight agents at €4,500 per seat per month, or €36,000. If they deliver 120 qualified sales, the cost per sale is €300. If a data issue or a weak script drops that to 60, the cost per sale doubles to €600 overnight, and nothing in the contract changes.
Under a pay-for-performance model you buy outcomes. Before the campaign starts, both sides agree on what a result is: a validated order, an installed customer, a booked appointment that shows, or a sales-qualified opportunity meeting defined criteria. The price is per result. There are no seats, no hours and no retainer.
The risk moves. If the campaign underperforms, the agency absorbs the cost of the capacity it deployed. If it outperforms, both sides earn more. Cost per sale is fixed and known before the first call, which is why finance teams like the model as much as sales teams do.
It also changes agency behaviour. An agency paid per result invests in the things that raise conversion: better data, sector-trained callers, reachability engineering, real-time call analysis. ganira's clients see an average revenue increase of 65% within six months of switching, and clients moving from per-agent pricing typically report cost-per-acquisition reductions of around 40% in the first quarter. Those numbers are not the product of harder-working agents; they are the product of aligned incentives.
Consider a B2B connectivity provider running outbound into a defined footprint. Under a seat model, ten agents cost €45,000 a month and produce, in a good month, 150 validated orders: €300 per order. In an average month they produce 100: €450 per order. In a poor month, 60: €750 per order.
Under a performance model, the provider agrees €350 per validated order. In the good month the invoice is €52,500; in the average month, €35,000; in the poor month, €21,000. The cost per order never moves, and the poor month, the one that used to hurt most, is now the cheapest. The provider's total spend across the three months is €108,500 against €135,000 under the seat model, for exactly the same output, with none of the management overhead.
Over a year, and at the volumes larger telesales users run, the difference is not a rounding error. It is the budget for an additional market.
Performance pricing is not a discount scheme, and it is not suitable for every company. An agency that carries the risk of capacity needs enough throughput to make the economics work on its side too. That means a defined addressable market, a product with a known conversion profile, and enough volume that a campaign can be optimised over weeks rather than guessed at over days.
This is why ganira's best-fit clients are companies that already run telesales at scale, whether in-house or with a seat-based agency. They have a baseline. They know their current cost per sale. They can compare like for like. Companies that have never run outbound, or that want a small trial to see if the phone works at all, are usually better served by a different model first.
Ask any performance-based agency five things:
1. How exactly is a result defined and validated, and who signs it off?
2. What happens to leads that are disputed?
3. What visibility do you get into calls, pipeline and weekly performance?
4. Which markets and languages are covered, so the model can scale beyond one country?
5. And what proof do they have that they have carried this risk before, at your kind of volume?
ganira answers these with a written outcome definition, call recordings and full pipeline visibility, weekly reviews, coverage of 10 markets across Europe and North America in six languages, and a track record of more than 150,000 sales generated per year and over €80 million in annual client revenue.
Per-seat pricing pays for effort. Pay-for-performance pays for outcomes. If you already run outbound and know your numbers, the second model is almost always cheaper per result and always cheaper in a bad month. The only question is whether your volume is large enough for a partner to carry the risk, and if it is, ganira will show you the side-by-side comparison before you commit to anything.
Is performance-based telesales more expensive per result than per-seat?
The price per result is often similar to a good month under a seat model, but it is fixed. You never pay more per sale in a bad month, and you pay nothing for capacity that did not convert.
What counts as a result?
Whatever both sides agree in writing before the campaign: validated orders, installs, sales-qualified opportunities or attended appointments. Definitions are specific to your sales process.
Can we run performance-based alongside our in-house team?
Yes. Many ganira clients use the model for overflow, new markets or new segments while keeping their core team in place, and compare the results side by side.
Interested in exploring the move from pay per seat telesales to pay based on results? Contact us today.