The Targeting Layer Is Where Lead Gen Retainers Get Their Margin

Lead generation tools have collapsed to commodity infrastructure: contact databases, enrichment, and export now cost a few hundred dollars a month and are available to any agency and any client. The margin sits in the targeting hypothesis (which account, which trigger, which week) and the qualification scoring that decides who gets a human follow-up. Agencies that resell tool access get priced like a software reseller; agencies that own the targeting framework get priced like a partner.