Belkins vs Martal Group: Which One Fits Your Outbound Plan

The conflict I need to disclose

I'm Hlib Storchak. I build outbound systems for B2B founders and sales teams, and I have booked 2000+ meetings for B2B clients running exactly this kind of engine. That also means I compete with both Belkins and Martal Group. I run done-for-you outbound and fractional GTM for clients, some of whom priced out agencies like these two before choosing me, and I have taken over at least one account that came from an agency in this category. I am not a neutral party.

What I can offer is an honest read. Everything below comes from each company's own website, which I checked directly against its current pages, plus verified ratings on Clutch, which ties a review to a confirmed client engagement rather than a self-submitted testimonial. I did not use any dollar figure quoted by a third-party comparison site, since a lot of that content is itself marketing. Where cost comes up, I describe the pricing model and tell you to check current pricing directly with each company.

Belkins vs Martal Group at a glance

Ratings pulled from each company's public Belkins Clutch profile and Martal Group Clutch profile, checked in October 2026.

How Belkins positions itself

Belkins positions itself as a full-service B2B appointment setting agency built around a dedicated team assigned per client, which its own site describes as acting "as an extension of your own." The playbook leans on email as the primary channel, with LinkedIn and broader omnichannel outbound layered on for clients who want it. Its own marketing states it delivers "100-400+ qualified appointments in a year through tailored omnichannel strategies," and the company presents itself as a long-tenured, award-referenced agency aimed squarely at the US market.

What is notably absent from Belkins' own site is any published pilot structure or trial period. You are buying straight into a managed monthly programme, which is simpler to evaluate but gives you less of a built-in off-ramp if the first few weeks do not go well. I cover that pricing and contract tradeoff in more depth against CIENCE, another agency with a very different model to Belkins.

How Martal Group positions itself

Martal Group positions itself less as a pure appointment setting shop and more as an outsourced sales team, built around onshore mid and senior-level reps rather than offshore juniors, with higher tiers adding a fractional sales executive to the account. Its own site calls itself "the #1 AI-powered outbound engine for B2B companies" and publishes an unusually specific geographic breakdown of its rep base: "200+ TOP-RATED ONSHORE Sales Reps" split US 60%, Canada 20%, EU 10%, LATAM 10%, including Spanish-speaking reps based in Mexico.

The structural difference that matters most is the entry point. Every engagement starts with a paid pilot, three months at the entry tier and four months at the higher ones, before you move to the ongoing arrangement. That is a real commitment of time and budget before you get a fair read on results, and it is worth weighing against Belkins' more straightforward month-one-is-real-work model.

Pricing: a retainer vs a paid pilot

Neither company publishes a figure, and I am not going to hand you one, including a number you might see quoted confidently elsewhere in the same search results as this page. What is stable enough to describe is the shape of each model, and here the two genuinely diverge.

Belkins runs a monthly retainer from day one. You are paying for the managed programme as soon as it starts, which means the first invoice is already buying real outreach, not a trial phase. Martal Group runs a paid pilot first, three months at the entry tier and four at the higher ones, before the relationship moves to a flat monthly fee with commission layered in at the higher tiers. That pilot is not free, and it is not a short trial either, it is a quarter or more of real spend before you are into the "normal" phase of the engagement.

If you want one formula to compare the two on your own numbers regardless of which agency you are quoting: (pilot or setup cost + monthly fees over the full contract term) ÷ meetings actually held gives you a real cost per meeting. Ask each agency for their number, plug in your own assumed contract length, and compare the two outputs directly instead of comparing headline monthly fees, which are not measuring the same thing when one of them includes a multi-month pilot and the other does not.

Who actually does the talking

This is the difference I would weigh most heavily if I were choosing between these two. Belkins' model is built around a dedicated team that runs outreach and books the meeting, which is a clean appointment setting function: the team's job ends roughly where your sales process begins. Martal Group's pitch is explicitly different, onshore mid and senior reps who can "take the conversation past the booked meeting," meaning the same person doing outreach may also be qualifying and advancing the deal rather than handing it off cold.

Which one is right depends on whether your own sales process has a strong receiving end. If you have an AE team ready to pick up a qualified meeting and run with it, a pure appointment setting function like Belkins' is a clean handoff. If you do not yet have that AE capacity built out, or your deal cycle benefits from continuity between the person who opened the conversation and the person who advances it, Martal Group's model is solving a problem Belkins' model assumes you have already solved elsewhere. This is close to the distinction I walk through in more detail when comparing an appointment setter to a full SDR role, the short version is that "books the meeting" and "can carry the deal" are two different jobs, and it matters which one you are actually buying.

Channel mix

Belkins leans email-first, with LinkedIn and broader omnichannel outbound available as part of the programme. That tends to suit a narrower ICP where carefully written copy does most of the work. Martal Group runs a wider channel set by default: email, LinkedIn, cold calling, inbound and SEO support, paid ads including LinkedIn Sponsored Messaging on its inbound tiers, and trade show appointment setting as a named add-on at extra cost.

A wider channel mix is not automatically better. It gives you more surface area, but it also means you are paying for and coordinating more moving parts, and the trade show option specifically is scoped as an add-on rather than included, so check what is actually bundled into your tier versus billed separately before you assume the full channel list applies to your contract.

Markets and coverage

Belkins positions itself plainly as a US-market agency on its own site, and I could not find a published list of other markets or languages it has run campaigns in. If your buyers sit outside the US, that is a direct question to ask on the sales call rather than assume.

Martal Group is more specific here and publishes an actual geographic split of its rep base covering the US, Canada, the EU and LATAM, with Spanish-speaking reps named explicitly. For a European or LATAM-facing B2B company, that published coverage is a real, checkable reason to put Martal Group on the shortlist where Belkins' site gives you nothing to go on.

What the Clutch numbers say

Clutch is the one third-party source I trust for either of these, since its reviews are tied to a verified client engagement rather than a self-submitted testimonial. Checked in October 2026, Belkins carries a 4.9 out of 5 rating across 234 reviews, and Martal Group carries a 4.8 out of 5 rating across 109. Both numbers are strong and both sit in the same tier of agency, the main practical difference is that Belkins' rating rests on roughly twice the review volume.

The mistake I see most often when I take over an account from an agency, either of these or others in the category, is that the client signed off the sales call and never asked to see anonymized results from a client with a similar ICP and deal size. A 4-star-plus average across hundreds of reviews still leaves room for a meaningful share of clients who had a worse experience than the headline number suggests. Ask for a reference call with someone who looks like you before you sign, not after.

Questions worth asking before you sign

• What exactly counts as a qualified meeting, in writing, not just "appointment."
• For Martal Group specifically: what the pilot costs, what counts as a pass, and what changes once you move past it.
• Whether you will be put on a reference call with a client in a similar industry and deal size before you commit.
• Who owns the domains, mailboxes and lead list once the engagement ends, a question that trips up more buyers than it should, and one I've written about directly because most contracts in this category never answer it in writing.
• What the minimum term is, and what it costs to exit early if the ICP or messaging turns out to need rework.

These apply to Belkins, Martal Group and every other agency in this category. I keep a longer version of this list in a 12-point outbound agency vetting checklist, worth running through either vendor before a contract is in front of you.

When Belkins is the right call

Belkins tends to make sense for a mid-market, US-facing team with a defined ICP that wants a dedicated team running email-first outreach starting immediately, without a multi-month pilot phase first. If your own sales team is ready to take a qualified meeting and run with it, a clean appointment setting handoff like this is a reasonable default.

When Martal Group is the right call

Martal Group tends to make more sense when you are selling into North America, the EU or LATAM specifically, want onshore reps who can carry a conversation past the first meeting rather than hand it off cold, and can afford to treat the first quarter as a paid pilot rather than full-speed execution. It is a better fit for teams without an AE bench ready to receive meetings than for teams that already have one.

The option most people skip

Before signing with either, it is worth asking whether an agency is even the right shape of solution. The mistake I see most often, across both pilot-based and retainer-based agencies, is that a founder buys the bundle, team, process and tooling in one purchase, without pricing out what building the same function in-house, or hiring a fractional lead to run it, would actually cost. An agency rents you a team and a process. A fractional lead or a done-for-you build that hands the system back to you afterward costs differently and leaves you owning it once it is running. Neither Belkins nor Martal Group is wrong for selling the bundled version, that is a legitimate model, it is just not the only one.

Which I'd pick, and when

If a client had a defined US ICP, an AE team ready to receive meetings, and wanted to start a managed programme without a quarter-long pilot, I would lean Belkins. If a client was selling into North America, the EU or LATAM, did not yet have a strong AE bench, and could stomach paying for a three or four month pilot in exchange for reps who can carry the conversation further, I would lean Martal Group.

But the honest answer, the one I give on actual calls, is to first ask why the comparison is Belkins versus Martal Group specifically, rather than also pricing a fractional GTM lead or a done-for-you build against both. Agencies are a legitimate model. They are also not the only one, and for a lot of the founders I talk to, the real decision is not which agency to hire, it is agency versus a leaner, owned alternative.

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