What to Ask a Lead Generation Agency Before You Sign

Most lead generation pitches survive the first meeting because the buyer has no list of questions that are hard to answer well. Cresco sits on the other side of these conversations, so here are the twelve that separate a provider who has done the work from one who has a deck, with what a weak answer sounds like.

About the leads themselves

1. What is your written definition of a qualified lead?

Ask for it in the contract, with named criteria. Company size, role, stated need, timeline. A definition that lives only in a deck is not a definition, and it is the single most common source of a dispute three months in.

Weak answer: "Someone genuinely interested." That is unmeasurable, which means the provider decides after the fact whether they hit the target.

1a. Who decides whether a lead met that definition?

A definition is only as good as the person applying it. Ask whether disputed leads are reviewed, by whom, and what happens when you disagree. A provider who has run this has a process. One who has not will say it rarely comes up.

Weak answer: "We would discuss it." That is not a process, and it puts the burden on you to raise every borderline case.

2. What happens when a booked meeting does not happen?

Some proportion of cold-booked meetings never take place. A provider who has run this before has a stated position: rebooked, replaced, or not counted. A provider who has not will tell you it rarely happens.

Weak answer: Anything that counts meetings booked rather than meetings held, without saying so plainly.

3. Do you guarantee a volume?

Treat a guaranteed number as a warning rather than reassurance. A volume commitment has to be met, and the easiest way to meet it is a loose definition of what counts. The risk moves to you without appearing in the contract.

About the list

List questions get skipped more than any other group, because the list feels like the provider's problem. It is not. The obligations attach to the sender, and in most arrangements the sender on the envelope is you.

4. Where does each record come from, and is that recorded?

Under the GDPR, where data was not collected from the person directly you have to be able to tell them its source. That obligation reaches you as the sender, not only the provider.

Weak answer: "We use a data provider." Ask which, and ask whether source is recorded per record or per campaign. Per campaign is not an answer you can give a recipient.

5. Which markets will you refuse to email?

This is the fastest compliance test there is. Seven European markets require consent before you can email a business. A provider who says they cover all of Europe has not read the national laws.

Weak answer: "We are fully GDPR compliant." The GDPR is not the law that decides whether you may send, which we cover in more detail here.

6. Who owns the list and the domains at the end?

If the sending domains and the data leave with the provider, you have rented a pipeline rather than built one. Neither is wrong; knowing which you bought is.

About the work

7. Who writes the copy, and who runs the sending?

Ask for names and whether they are the people in the room. A pitch delivered by a founder and run by a junior pod is a common shape, and it is only a problem when nobody said so.

Two follow-ups make the answer concrete. How many other accounts does that person carry, and what happens to your campaign in the week they are on holiday. A provider with real capacity planning answers both without hesitating.

Weak answer: "Our team handles it." Teams do not write copy. People do, and you are entitled to know which.

8. What is the first thing you would change about our current approach?

A provider who has looked at your site, your positioning and your market will have an answer before you ask. One who has not will reach for a general observation about messaging.

9. What have you declined to do for a client, and why?

Every provider with real standards has turned something down. The answer tells you where their line is, and whether they have one.

The useful version is specific: a market they would not send into, a claim they would not publish, a target list they thought was too broad to work. Our own answer is the seven markets we route to LinkedIn, which costs us revenue and is published rather than mentioned.

Weak answer: "We work with everyone." That is not open-mindedness. It means nothing has ever been worth refusing, which is unlikely in any business old enough to pitch you.

About the reporting

10. What exactly lands in my inbox each month?

Ask to see a real report with the client details removed. Look for whether it reports what the work produced or how much activity occurred. Impressions and emails sent are activity. Enquiries and meetings held are outcomes.

Weak answer: A dashboard login. A dashboard is not a report; it moves the work of interpretation to you.

11. What is the source behind each number you have shown me?

Ask about the figures in the pitch, not the ones in the future. Search Console, GA4 and a client's own records are checkable. A percentage with no source and no date is a claim, and the provider who cannot source it in a sales conversation will not source it in a report either.

12. What does month three look like if this is going badly?

A provider who has run many of these knows the failure shapes and will describe one. A provider who answers only with the success case either has not seen enough engagements or is managing you.

There are only a few real failure shapes in outbound, and a practitioner can name them: the list was too broad and replies are irrelevant, deliverability degraded and nothing is landing, the offer does not match the role being written to, or meetings are booking and not holding. Each has a different fix and a different timeline.

Weak answer: "We would optimise the campaign." That is a word for all four problems, which means they have not separated them.

A note on how to run the conversation

Ask these in one sitting rather than across a sales process. The pattern you are listening for is not twelve good answers; it is whether the answers stay consistent when the questions get specific, and whether anything is offered in writing without being asked for twice.

How we answer these

We publish the ones that can be published rather than holding them for a call. Our per-market sending position is a live tool, not a paragraph. We report clicks and enquiries and decline to report impressions or average position, because those measure how often a page was seen rather than what it produced. We do not publish pricing, because it depends on markets, list size and the state of your existing content, and a price list would be a guess.

The figures we publish trace to a client's Search Console, GA4 or their own records, and the one engagement we show in full is on the Ziva case study. If a question above does not have a published answer, ask it and we will answer in writing.

One pattern worth naming: the providers who answer these well tend to answer them quickly, because the answers already exist. The ones who struggle are usually not hiding anything. They have simply never been asked, which tells you something about who they normally sell to.

If you are weighing inbound against outbound rather than choosing between providers, both services are scoped and bought separately, and neither waits on the other.