Lead gen site caught in the act - Contractor Talk - Professional Construction and Remodeling Forum

mark the coach · 04-04-2009, 04:52 PM

Lead gen sites claim to only give the leads to 3 or 4 contractors. Well read this post from linkedin NARI group about a contractor who posed as a homeowner.
It is time for a reputable lead gen site to emerge and stop this pilfering of our industry. Maybe we should let Angies list know about this injustice!

Group: National Association of the Remodeling Industry (NARI)
Subject: New comment (3) on "Online Lead Generation Companies"

"Recent experience - we were contacted by one of the on line lead generators and when we told them about our bad experiences with several different programs, they of course said that they were different. They sold addition leads in the $50 to $75 range. They said that they never gave out the lead to more than 4 contractors (ussually 2-3) and always phone verified that it was a valid lead before forwarding the contact information... So I decided to test it out. I went to their website and filled out information as someone looking to do a second story 500 sq foot turnkey addition with bedrooms and a bath and that I had $30K to spend. In about an hour I got a call from the lead generator that I chose not to answer but they left a voice mail over the next day I recieved inbound calls from at least 2 different construction companies (before I was phone verified). On the third day I got another verification call from the lead gen. company and I answered it and told them that I was just trying to get some preliminary budgets and was not likely to do the project but needed an idea of costs as someone was looking to buy my home and wanted to know what to tell the prospective buyer. They just said "fine" and thanked me for my submission. Over the next week I got calls from at least another 4 additional company's vying for my business - 6 total. 2 weeks after the last call from the lead gen. company I got another followup call upon which I told them that the quotes that I got over the phone were too high and that I could not afford to do the project. Over the 2 weeks following that I got calls from at least 2 additional companies from the previous calls. I didn't start tracking the companies formally from the beginnning as I would listen/or talk to the person calling and didn't record them all, but I did recieve over 25 phone calls about the lead, some companies up to 3-4 times ea.(which I would expect of most of were voice mails left on my home phone answer machine) from at least 8 different contractors but it might have been as many as 10-12 contractors as I had some on caller ID but some marked "private" - When I did talk to a contractor on the phone, I told them that I had already got some budget numbers and that I was not doing the project as I couldn't afford it. Maybe one of the trade magazines might do an comparision shopping experience and submit projects to track the results."
Posted by John Murphy

silvertree · 04-04-2009, 05:43 PM

Interesting and thanks for sharing. Few people here will be surprised about your results.

tutran4 · 04-04-2009, 09:08 PM

Interesting find. Thanks for sharing.

handyhands · 04-06-2009, 08:20 AM

Same old song and dance!!!

I'd love to see these guys get exposed on dateline.

**ProWallGuy** · 04-06-2009, 08:41 AM

Well surprise surprise.

Mike Finley · 04-06-2009, 08:47 AM

I've been saying this for years. Who was the latest jack ass on here that was defending lead services to me and telling me how great they are and how they don't do this?

I've said it a million times, the online lead service business is broken, it can't function without doing this. It's a broken business model. They can't cover the high overhead of lead aquisition without selling a lead 20 times. The system doesn't work.

carlsore · 04-06-2009, 10:39 AM

What the lead gen companies won't tell you....

When a lead is generated and then sold, after the 3rd, 4th, 5th whatever sale the lead is usually run through what's called a "Cool Down" period.

In the arena my experience is in the "cool down" period is about two weeks. At this point, they may phone the lead again to see if they'd taken any action yet. If the answer is no, then they are back in the pool to be sold again, and again, and again.

Learning to generate your own sales leads is an incredible asset to any small business owner.

Carl Sorensen

A W Smith · 04-06-2009, 10:39 AM

lead generation sites have been saturating craigslist lately. sometimes five posts in a row under skilled trade services playing both sides trying to recruit leads and contractors alike. In response ive posted the article above. ive also been reporting such posts as spam/overposts but it does no good unless others report them as well.

WindowDepotStL · 04-17-2009, 07:12 PM

I recently did a similar test with a company called quinstreet. I put my info in and automatically 4 "approved contractors" names were provided to me. One of the approved contractors was another lead generation site called "Reliable Remodeler" he buys leads from this site and resells on his site thereby exponentially increasing the number of contractors bidding for the jobs. Until the lead gen sites are able to filter out this remora group the value of leads provided will continue to diminish.

UnitedMA · 07-03-2009, 10:25 AM

I have been told by several leads that they signed up on one site and then suddenly received 6 calls from 6 other contractors. It is incredibly frustrating when every lead source denies it and there is no getting around it. We still use online lead sources as some of them do bring in more money than it takes to use them. But we are learning how to generate more and more of our leads and half of our leads come from referrals or past customers.