#26: Competing in Lead Generation—How to Treat and Win Against the Competition

How lead generation agencies can strategically compete—by differentiating where it truly matters, refining their strengths, and outpacing competitors.

Mar 18, 2025

During the gold rush, it wasn’t the gold diggers who made the most money—it was the shovel makers.

The same holds true in the outsourced lead generation space—companies like Apollo and Instantly (the modern-day shovel makers) generate more revenue than most lead gen agencies combined.

There’s no shortage of gold diggers in this industry—lead gen agencies hungry for success. But the reality is:

Margins are razor-thin—typically between 5% and 15%.
Operating costs and customer acquisition costs are rising every year.
Only the most desperate agencies are making any real money—and even then, barely.

I’ll be honest—Belkins is one of the “desperate” ones.

We’re pushing hard, scaling aggressively, and yet—we still don’t make as much as we eventually will.

We just need to get a little bit bigger.

Our Position in the Industry

From the beginning, our approach has been to both build the shovels and search for gold ourselves.

That’s why:

We’ll never pivot into a product-only company. (It’s too late for that now.)
We don’t consider any competitor "hostile." (Because tomorrow, we could be partners.)
We collaborate with both lead generation agencies and companies in need of lead gen services.

As long as these companies embody the best aspects of the industry—innovation, excellence, client-centricity, people-first culture, and strong partnerships—we’re open to working together.

The Other Kind of Agencies

Then, there are the agencies that don’t compete on innovation, service quality, or results.

Instead, they reduce the hard work of others to a single, irrelevant factor—where the company is based.

“Oh, they’re from Ukraine, India, Poland, or Argentina—so their service must be lower quality.”

This mindset is outdated, ignorant, and frankly—bad for the industry.

And just like the elves leaving Middle Earth at the end of the Third Age, these agencies should fade away—because they don’t belong in the future of lead generation.

My Philosophy on Competitors

My approach to competition is simple—I’ve never:

Created “competitor comparison” pages.
Trained my sales team to speak negatively about competitors.
Built our value proposition around what competitors do wrong.

Instead, my focus has always been on maximizing our own value to clients by leveraging the capabilities we have at our disposal.

And this approach has made a real impact—especially in the area that matters most: client service.

Several things have always been non-negotiable for us at Belkins:

✅ Retaining a top-tier client management team.
✅ Designing our processes to accommodate all types of clients.
✅ Handling difficult situations in a way that prioritizes the client experience.

Some examples of how we apply this in real life:

Expanding onboarding time free of charge when needed to ensure clients are fully set up for success.
Offering refunds when our team refuses to work with a disrespectful client (always support your team, even if it costs the business money).
Providing extra work at no additional cost if we just need a little more time to deliver real value.

These things are incredibly difficult to maintain when scaling to hundreds of clients—but because it’s in our DNA, it stayed.

These are just a few examples of things you can control when building your competitive edge. And here’s the key takeaway:

Your competitors have nothing to do with it.

The Wrong Way to Compete

Some of Belkins’ competitors have taken strange approaches to differentiate themselves.

For example, one lead generation agency, Martal, included the following statement in their collateral:

"Martal has senior SDRs, while Belkins pays Eastern Europeans $500."

From Martal’s collaterals available on their website

Seeing something like this, I can’t help but think about the immense amount of work our people put in every day—the technology, processes, and expertise that drive our success. The reality? Belkins invests heavily in its team; our costs are much higher than the market average, and our input-output ratio reflects that.

So, when a competitor reduces all of that to a lazy, baseless claim about pay rates, it’s laughable—and frankly, an example of what not to do.

💡 Other agencies should learn from this—don’t compete like this.

A Poorly Thought-Out Differentiation Strategy

In Martal’s case, they tried to differentiate themselves by implying that:

We don’t pay our SDR team enough.
We cut costs by hiring offshore teams.

The problem?

Neither is true.
Neither actually matters.
And this type of messaging makes the industry more hostile rather than more innovative.

Instead of focusing on their own strengths, they spent time and effort trying to tear someone else down—which only highlights a poor understanding of their competitors.

A Shift in the Industry: Competition vs. Collaboration

Amir Reiter, CEO of CloudTask, who has been in this industry for over 15 years, made a great point under my last newsletter:

"Agencies think that other agencies are their enemies."

And honestly? I used to feel the same way during Belkins’ early years.

But here’s the positive shift I’m seeing now:
✅ More agencies are moving toward collaboration instead of hostility.
✅ New lead gen agencies are carving their own paths—by pushing their own limits, not by degrading others.

So here’s a shoutout to those agencies: the ones innovating, improving, and competing the right way!

Because winning in this industry isn’t about taking shots at competitors—it’s about building something worth standing behind.

Competing in Professional Services: Finding the Right Differentiation

During my last competitor analysis cycle, as we transitioned to omnichannel appointment setting, I came to a clear realization:

The top five agencies we compete with all have:

Similar offerings
Comparable experience
Close pricing models
Nearly identical processes in some ways
Even the same language on their websites to describe what we all do

So, I made a comment to my sales team:

“We should acknowledge these similarities to clients and shift the conversation to what actually differentiates us. Don’t waste time talking about the same points every other agency focuses on—things like ‘our SDRs are great,’ ‘we make this many calls,’ or ‘our tools are top-notch.’

Because guess what? In 2025, every serious agency has all of that.

The market has equalized the playing field.

What Actually Drives Success for Clients?

Instead of competing on the usual talking points, I identified several real factors that truly impact client success:

✅ Time to market (How quickly we deliver the first results)
✅ Ramp-up capabilities (How fast we scale campaigns)
✅ Handling engagement drop-offs (Fixing challenging moments in the pipeline)
✅ Solving roadblocks (When something isn’t working, how fast do we fix it?)
✅ Expanding and integrating channels (Adding new ones or integrating existing ones for maximum impact)

By shifting our focus, we pinpointed the areas where we could outperform competitors and win more deals:

1️⃣ Guarantees (How many appointments we commit to delivering)
2️⃣ Cost per appointment (Providing a competitive and predictable cost structure)
3️⃣ Investment vs. ROI (Ensuring the money spent translates into measurable returns)
4️⃣ Time to market (How quickly clients see tangible results)
5️⃣ Long-term optimization (How costs decrease over time as we refine performance)
6️⃣ Sales quality metrics we influence (Closing cycle, sales velocity, and overall conversion rates)

For us to offer higher guarantees, it’s not as simple as just saying, “Let’s do it.”

We have to balance promises with reality—because failing to deliver kills credibility.

So, instead, we built a data-driven framework:

Measuring client KPI completion rates by industry and offering
Tiering clients based on their likelihood to meet our guarantee thresholds
Building real-time dashboards for the sales team to access accurate guarantee levels

This way, we don’t overpromise and underdeliver—we match commitments to reality.

Again, this is just one example of how you can build competitive leverage based on your own capabilities, rather than focusing on your competitors' weaknesses.

The Takeaway: Compete by Elevating, Not Undermining

The main message in this edition is simple:

📌 Set a baseline offering that matches the top players in the industry.
📌 Then, focus on differentiation in tangible areas that align with your strengths.
📌 Push from within to create new industry standards—rather than dragging competitors down just to stand out.

Other agencies are not your enemies.