Exclusive vs shared leads, and the math that matters

How shared lead sites work

The big national lead sites like Angi, HomeAdvisor, and Thumbtack run an auction. A customer fills out a form, and that one inquiry gets sold to a handful of contractors in the area at the same time. Everyone who bought it gets the name and number. Then it is a race. The customer's phone rings four or five times in the next hour, and they go with whoever called first, quoted lowest, or simply sounded least desperate.

So the leads close worse for two reasons. First, you are one of several, so even a perfect callback only wins some of the time. Second, the customer knows they are being shopped, so they hold out for the lowest price. You are not having a conversation. You are bidding against people you cannot see, on a job you might not get, for a customer who is already annoyed by the third call. That is a bad spot to sell from.

The cost-per-booked-job math

Here is where it gets clear. Say a shared site charges $20 a lead and sells each one five ways. You buy 10 leads, so you spend $200. Because you are racing four other crews, you book one of them. That one job cost you the whole $200.

Now say an exclusive lead costs $40, double the price. You buy 10 of those for $400. But nobody else got the call, so you book four of them. That is $400 for four jobs, which works out to $100 a job.

The shared lead looked half the price and cost you twice as much per job. $200 a job against $100 a job. The sticker price told you the opposite of the truth. This is the single most expensive mistake contractors make with lead buying, and it happens because the price you see is the price per lead, while the price that hits your bank account is the price per job.

• Shared: 10 leads at $20 = $200, sold 5 ways, 1 booked = $200 per job.
• Exclusive: 10 leads at $40 = $400, sold to you only, 4 booked = $100 per job.

Run your own trade through it. The numbers move, but the shape does not. A lead you win one time in five is not a bargain, no matter what the price tag says.

Speed to lead, and why the only caller wins

Speed to lead is the other thing nobody tells you. The contractor who calls back first books a big share of jobs, and on a shared lead you are fighting four other people to be that contractor. Even if you are fast, the customer has already heard from two crews by the time you dial.

When the lead is exclusive, speed to lead still matters, but you are not competing for it. You are the only number the customer expects to hear from. You call back, the job is still open, and the conversation is about the work instead of the price. That is a far easier sale, and it is why the same person closes at a much higher rate when they are not also being sold to your competition.

Why exclusivity is the whole point of Bold Coast Leads

We do not run an auction. We build and rank the local site for your trade and your town, and every call and form from it goes to one business. That is you. We do not resell the lead, we do not sign a second crew in your market, and there is no bidding. When the phone rings, you are the only one it rings for.

That is also why we can be honest about the billing. A real inquiry that does not close is still a billable lead, because we did our job and sent you a genuine customer. But spam, repeats inside 30 days, wrong numbers, and out-of-area calls never get billed. Every call is recorded, and you get five business days to dispute anything that slipped through. You are not taking our word for it. The recording is right there in your report.

You can buy these leads pay-per-lead, or rent the whole ranked site for a flat monthly rate and keep every call. Either way the leads are yours alone. You can switch between the two month to month, no contract, no penalty. The exclusivity does not change. It is the product.