How contractor lead services actually work — and what to check before you pay

Ask ten contractors about lead services and you will get ten grievances. The quote that went nowhere. The homeowner who had already hired someone. The five companies that called the same person within a minute of each other. Underneath the complaints there is usually a structural cause, and it is worth understanding before you spend money on another one.

Shared leads: the default, and the reason for the reputation

In a shared model the same homeowner request is sold to several contractors at once — commonly three to six, sometimes more. Everyone pays full price for the same request. The economics are excellent for the platform and hostile to you: your close rate is divided by the number of competitors, but your cost per lead is not. Worse, it turns speed into the primary competitive advantage. The contractor who answers in ninety seconds wins more often than the contractor who does better work, which is not a filter anyone should be proud of building.

Exclusive leads: better incentives, higher headline price

An exclusive lead goes to one contractor. The sticker price is higher — often two to four times a shared lead — and that scares people off. But compare on cost per signed job rather than cost per lead. A shared lead at $40 with a one-in-six chance of even being first to call can easily cost more per won project than an exclusive lead at $120. Ask any provider quoting you a price how many other businesses receive the same request. If the answer is vague, assume it is shared.

Pay-per-call and pay-per-appointment

Some services charge only when a call connects or an appointment is booked. This sounds like a cleaner alignment, and sometimes it is. Read the qualifying rules closely: what counts as a billable call, how long it has to last, and whether a wrong number or a tyre-kicker still triggers a charge. A thirty-second call from someone shopping a price they will never accept is not a lead, but under some contracts you will be billed for it.

The questions that actually reveal quality

Four questions separate a serious service from a list broker. How many contractors receive this request? Where did the request come from — search, paid ads, or a purchased list? Is the homeowner's contact information verified before it reaches me? And what is your refund policy for a disconnected number or a request outside my trade? A provider confident in its supply will answer all four plainly. Evasion on any of them tells you what you need to know.

The refund policy is the honest signal

Every lead service produces some bad requests — wrong numbers, duplicate submissions, people who changed their minds. What separates them is what happens next. A service that credits a genuinely bad lead without an argument is a service that believes its own supply is good. One that makes you file a claim within twenty-four hours, in writing, with a recording, is telling you it expects a high volume of complaints and has built a process to absorb them.

Territory and trade fit matter more than volume

A tempting pitch is a large number of leads per month. Volume is the wrong metric. If you install cabinets and half your requests are for roof repairs forty miles away, the number is meaningless. Before signing, ask precisely how the service filters by trade and by geography, and whether you control those filters yourself or a salesperson sets them for you. If you cannot narrow your own territory, you will be paying to say no.

What we do differently, plainly stated

We route each homeowner request to a small number of licensed contractors who work that area and take jobs of that size — not to everyone on a list. We verify each contractor's Oregon CCB licence against the state registry ourselves before any request reaches them, and we check bond and complaint history at the same time. Contractors define the cities they serve, and we respect that boundary. We would rather send you four requests you can genuinely win than forty you cannot.

How to evaluate any service in one month

Do not judge on the first week. Track three numbers over thirty days: how many requests were genuinely reachable, how many turned into a quoted job, and what you spent in total. Divide spend by signed jobs. Compare that number against what you would happily pay a referral partner for the same work. If the service does not beat your referral cost, it is not earning its place, no matter how good the dashboard looks.