Why Pay For A Lead?

I read an article today posted by a contractor on a contractor forum. Basically the contractor was saying that paying internet lead generation companies like us for leads is crazy and that you shouldn't pay for leads period.

Well, do I got news for this guy! If you pay for an ad in the yellow pages, you pay for leads. If you have your own website, you pay for leads, if you canvas neighborhoods for leads, you are paying for leads, even if all you do is drive around hanging up fliers that you made on your home computer, YOU ARE PAYING FOR LEADS!! You are paying for the yellow pages ad, you are paying for the canvas crew and the gas, you are paying for the hosting and upkeep of the website, or you are spending your own time doing the upkeep on the site which is paying for leads, I mean after all isn't your time worth something to you? If you do your own fliers you are paying for the paper, the ink the electricity to run the computer and your gas to go drop these fliers off, as well as again, you time. NEWS FLASH!! YOU ARE PAYING FOR LEADS! So no matter how you get the word of your company out there it is costing you something.

I do however, understand that some of the Internet lead companies are not quite playing fair by right of the contractors. Selling leads as many times as possible thus making a ton of money but not really giving the contractor a fair chance at landing the deal because there are 8 other people out there with the same lead, as well as not being fair to the consumer. The homeowner signs up for an estimate and is now being bombarded by phone calls from 8 different companies and really maybe they only wanted 2 or 3 estimates, so now they just start hanging up on the contractors as they are calling, thus making it unfair and down right impossible for the contractor to even have a fair shake at landing the deal much less just getting his foot in the door to show the homeowner what he's got to offer.

Our solution is selling the lead up to 3 times and no more as well as calling each and every homeowner to let them know that a couple of contractors will be contacting them to give set up an appointment to give them a free estimate. We hope that by doing this we can help the contractors on our service get a better average of "getting in the door" with the customer as well as not harass the customer by phone with too many unnecessary phone calls.

We have also tried a preview system where contractors can look at some of the details of the lead before they purchase them. We have found this method to be unsuccessful, the contractors have had too many bad experiences with lead companies that they just sit on the program and buy nothing. Then are surprised and angered by the monthly fee that they are charged after 60 days of being on the service. We no longer offer the preview program for this reason.

We have some contractors that want us to schedule the appointment for them and get the spending limit of the consumer, we refused to do that because of the time and labor it would take the leads would no longer be cost effective. We would have to charge over $100.00 a lead and even if you get an appointment that doesn't mean you are going to get the sale so I can just imagine the credit requests we would get back on something like that! Not to mention we are providing a lead, that means a person wanting to "possibly" purchase a product. We truly feel that it is up to the contractor to sell the consumer on why their product is the one that will fit the home owner's need or desire.

So, just a little blurp from the Home Improvement Guru, if you run a business and attract customer's in anyway you are paying for those leads. Don't be fooled into beliving you're not by a disgruntled contractor that most probably has an issue with his sales staff and is unable to close as many deals as he would like due to such short comings.