What is shared leads?

Why it matters for a contractor.

You race competitors to the phone, win on speed rather than fit, then discount to close. The margin lost to that race is the real price of the lead.

The advertised price is the smallest part of the cost. A lead sold four ways means four contractors bidding on one project, and price becomes the only lever any of them has left. The lead was cheap; the discount it took to win it came out of the margin that pays your crew.

There is a second cost that shows up later. Five calls in ten minutes reads to a homeowner as desperation, not service, and by the third pitch they have stopped evaluating fit and started sorting on price. Shared leads train your own market to shop your trade like a commodity, and that habit outlives the campaign.

None of which makes them useless. They can fill a slow week, and a slow week has a real cost too. The mistake is treating them as a growth channel rather than as overflow capacity, because nothing about them compounds: you rent access to homeowners on a platform that owns the relationship.

What to ask a vendor about it.

• How many other contractors receive this same lead?
• What is my close rate on this source versus my own generated demand?
• What discount am I averaging to win these, and is that in the cost per job?
• If I stopped buying these tomorrow, what would still be producing?