Shared leads or leads sent to one contractor?

How shared leads work

A homeowner fills out a form. The company that collected it sells the request to several contractors near the homeowner, often up to three or four. Each one gets a text or an email at the same moment. Each one calls.

The homeowner's phone rings again and again. By the time you call, they may already have an appointment with someone else, or they may be tired of the calls and stop answering.

How leads sent to one contractor work

The same homeowner request goes to one contractor only. No one else is calling. You can take the time to ask good questions, set an inspection and explain the work. The homeowner hears one friendly voice and not a chorus of salespeople.

What it does to your day

• Shared: more dials, more voicemails, more homeowners who say they already booked someone.
• One contractor: fewer calls, and the ones you make reach a homeowner who is expecting you.

Time is the real cost. A crew lead who spends the evening dialing homeowners that five others also dialed is not building the business.

What it does to price

Shared leads usually look cheaper on paper because the seller sells the same request several times. Leads sent to one contractor usually cost more each. The honest way to compare is the cost of a booked job, not the cost of a lead. Our job math tool does that arithmetic with your own numbers.

How to check what you are buying

Ask the seller in writing whether a homeowner is ever sent to anyone else. Ask what happens if you find out later that they were. Then read the contract for minimums and cancellation. We cover the other questions in our foundation repair leads guide.

At LaCo Media every homeowner goes to one contractor only. We do not reserve an area for you, and we do not make promises about how many become jobs. Read how pay per lead works with us.

A simple way to compare the two

Pick a week and write down what you did with each lead: how many calls it took to reach the homeowner, how many said they had already booked someone, how many became inspections and how many became jobs. Do it for shared leads and for leads sent to you alone. The numbers are yours, and they settle the argument better than any sales page.

If you do not yet have leads of the second kind, ask any seller to start you small so you can run the same test.

What the homeowner experiences

It is easy to forget the homeowner in this. Someone worried about their house asks for help once and then gets four calls and six texts in ten minutes. Some will pick the first contractor just to make it stop. Others stop answering all of them. A homeowner who hears from one company, once, in a calm way, is more likely to talk to you and to trust what you say.