By Mark Hurson · 2026-06-14 · WeProvideLeads
When a lead generation company says they sell “leads,” the most important question you can ask is: how many contractors receive the same lead? The difference between exclusive and shared leads is the difference between a warm referral and a cold auction.
A homeowner goes to a lead marketplace — HomeStars, Thumbtack, or a similar platform — and submits a request for, say, a fence quote. Within seconds, that homeowner’s information is sold to three, four, or five contractors in their area. All five receive the same lead simultaneously. All five call within minutes of each other.
From the homeowner’s perspective: five contractors call them in the first hour. Most homeowners find this annoying. They end up talking to whichever contractor called fastest and sounded most trustworthy in a 90-second cold call — not necessarily the best person for the job.
From the contractor’s perspective: you’re not responding to interest in your business specifically. You’re competing against four people for a lead you just paid for.
Industry close rates on shared leads typically run 10–20%. That means if you buy 10 shared leads at $30 each ($300), you close 1–2 jobs. Your effective cost per acquired customer is $150–$300 before you’ve done any work. For a $600 fence repair, that’s a brutal margin. For a $12,000 deck build, it’s more manageable — but you’re still competing on price and speed, not on your quality.
An exclusive lead is one where the homeowner contacts one business. Only you receive that inquiry. The homeowner chose to reach out to you specifically (or to a site representing you exclusively) — they’re not comparing you against a list.
Close rates on exclusive, inbound leads from specific service websites typically run 40–60%. The homeowner already did their research, found the site, and decided to reach out. You’re not cold-calling them back — you’re returning a call from someone who wants to hire someone for the specific thing you do.
We don’t buy ad traffic and resell it. We own local websites that rank organically in Google for searches like “fence installation Guelph.” When a homeowner finds the site and submits a form or calls the number, that inquiry goes to one fencing contractor — our partner for that trade. There’s no simultaneous sale to competitors, because there’s only one contractor in that slot.
Exclusive leads cost more per lead than shared leads in the short term. If a shared lead from a broker costs $25, an exclusive lead can look more expensive up front. But you’re not paying for the lead itself — you only pay when a job actually closes, as a percentage of the completed job value. If nothing closes, you owe nothing, so your effective cost per acquired customer is often lower than per-lead broker pricing.
The question to ask isn’t “what’s the cheapest lead?” It’s “what’s the cheapest job?” A $25 shared lead that closes 15% of the time costs more per job than an exclusive model where you pay a percentage of each job only when it closes — with a 50% close rate on 4–6 leads a month, nearly everything you pay is tied directly to revenue you actually collected.
At WeProvideLeads, the answer to all three is structural: one slot per trade per area. When our roofing site has a partner, that’s it. The site has one phone number and one form destination. There’s no mechanism to sell the lead twice.
If your trade is still open in Guelph, get in touch to check availability.
Check if your trade is still available — we work with one contractor per category.