Though I am completely against purchasing leads, there are many contractors out there that continue to use this method as a form of their marketing budget. This article is written, for contractors who decide to purchase leads. Be careful and follow some of the advice below:

Make sure you are 100% confident that the lead company you are dealing with has a fair return policy. Most lead companies have software in place, or verify the lead before they sell it to weed out any fake, or bogus leads. But even with these barriers in place, it is not unusual for one to slip through the cracks. If you receive a bogus lead, there is no reason why you shouldn’t get your money back. There should be a rock solid return policy in place. This includes, no contact, bad phone number, etc.

If you have no interest in sharing leads with anyone else, you may want to consider buying them exclusively. A majority leads that you purchase will be sold to a minimum of 4 other contractors. Some lead services don’t do any background checks of their clients, so someone can receive leads from a major lead company and then sell that lead again. If you have ever experienced a rude response from a homeowner when calling a lead this may be the case. There have been many cases in the lead generation industry where a single lead has been sold up to 20x times. Think about it? You go online, looking for a kitchen remodeling contractor, and then when you are eating dinner, you receive 20 phone calls? It happens.

If you decide to buy your leads exclusively, you can plan on paying a bit more for them. As opposed to buying old or recycled leads in bulk or at two dollars a lead.

An exclusive contractor lead should not only be exclusive to you and you only, it should be sold to you in real time.

A real time exclusive contractor lead is one that is delivered to you within seconds of the applicant filling out the form on the internet.

If a real time contractor lead is any older than a couple of hours, it can hardly be called real time, let alone exclusive.

My suggestion to you if you are considering buying exclusive contractor leads would be to take your time and research the lead companies you are thinking about investing your money in.

Remember, you work hard for your money, so make sure the lead company you invest in will get you a return on your investment.

Be sure to call the lead company and speak with a live person.

Ask the customer service representative where they obtain their leads, and how they are delivered. Also, ask what the time frame is between the potential customer filling out the online form and you receiving it.

Ask for an actual website where potential clients are submitting their information. You will not believe how many lead companies survive by simply purchasing leads from one company and reselling them.

If the answers do not live up to your expectations of what real time exclusive leads should be, than move onto the next lead company.

Keep searching until you find the lead company that guarantees they will sell the lead to only you, and that they will deliver it promptly. If they can’t have it at your e-mails door step within seconds of receiving it, than keep searching until you find the company that will. Your time and money will be well spent, trust me.

Even better eliminate this form of money-spending and put your marketing dollars into a way to generate your own leads. Online lead generation is not difficult and can be managed with one person. Educate yourself on this, and you won’t have to buy leads from any lead service company.

Lead Purchasing Tip: The larger the lead company, the worse the lead will be. Large corporate lead generation companies need to make a profit. They do that by getting more clients, which means for every lead generated, needs to be sold "X" number of times. If you can find a small lead generation company that fills all the requirements above, you are more likely to get exclusive leads first. Even though they may take those same leads and sell them to the larger lead service company after you receive them.

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