Define a qualified meeting before you sign, or argue about it in week six

Most disputes between a company and its lead generation agency come from the same place: nobody defined a qualified meeting in writing before the work started. Six weeks later one side is counting calls and the other is counting opportunities, and both believe they are right.

The contract decides more about the outcome than the agency does. Here is how to structure one.

The three pricing models, and what each one buys

Per-meeting pricing looks safest and behaves worst. It reads as pure performance risk, and it converts the agency's incentive into booking anybody who will accept an invitation. You end up paying €400 each for meetings with curious people who have no budget, and the agency is within its rights because the contract said meeting.

Retainers are honest about what you are buying, which is capacity and expertise, and they fail only through inattention. Set a monthly review with numbers attached and the failure mode disappears.

For a first market, the pilot structure fits best, because the real deliverable of a first campaign is a decision about the market rather than a calendar.

Define qualified before you sign

Write the definition into the contract. Four conditions, all of them checkable.

Company fits the agreed ICP. Reference the list definition document rather than a description. Activity code, size band, country, and the disqualifiers.

Person holds the agreed function. Named by accountability rather than by title, because titles vary across languages.

They attended. A no-show is not a meeting. Agree whether one reschedule counts.

They confirmed a relevant problem or interest on the call. The softest of the four and the one worth the most argument at signature.

Then agree the credit rule: a meeting that fails any condition is replaced rather than refunded, and it does not count toward the monthly number.

If an agency resists writing the qualification criteria into the agreement, that is the whole answer. The criteria cost them nothing when they intend to meet them.

What the agency owns and what you own

The split that works, and the two lines that cause trouble when left vague.

The infrastructure line matters at the end of the engagement. Agency-owned domains protect your main domain while the campaign runs and leave with the agency when it stops, which means starting a three-week warm-up again if you bring the work in house. Client-owned domains, administered by the agency, cost the same and stay with you. Ask for the second one.

The data line matters legally. Agree in writing who is controller and who is processor, and get a data processing agreement in place. In practice the agency acts as processor for the sending and often as joint controller for the list building, and pretending otherwise leaves you exposed if a recipient complains to a supervisory authority.

Term and exit

Three months minimum, and refuse anything longer at the start. Warm-up eats the first three weeks and the first readable numbers arrive at week eight, so a one-month trial tests nothing and a twelve-month lock-in tests your patience.

Thirty days notice after the initial term. On exit you should receive, without negotiating for it: the account list with sources, the suppression list, every message variant with its performance, the reply data coded by category, and administrative access to any client-owned domains.

Put that list in the contract. Requesting it after you have given notice is a worse position than requesting it before you sign.

What to review each month

Five numbers, per segment rather than blended, and one qualitative item.

Delivery rate, total reply rate, positive reply rate, meetings held, and meetings that became opportunities. Blended numbers hide the segment that is carrying the campaign and the segment that is wasting it.

The qualitative item is the negative replies. About a third of replies are no's and half of those carry a reason. An agency that reports only the meetings is reporting the flattering half and throwing away the market research you paid for.

Realistic expectations by month

An agency promising 20 meetings in month one is either buying a list it has not researched or counting something other than meetings. Ask which, and the answer usually ends the conversation before you sign.