The short answer
Buying solar leads is worth it when you answer within five minutes, follow up at least eight times, and can measure cost per sat appointment. Without all three, bought leads lose money reliably, because you are usually one of several installers who purchased the same homeowner and the slowest one gets nothing.
- 01A bought lead is a race. If you are not the first call, you are subsidising whoever is.
- 02Test with a fixed budget, a fixed window and one channel, never as a rolling top-up.
- 03Exclusive costs more per lead and is usually cheaper per job. Verify exclusivity in writing.
- 04Bought leads are a bridge, not a business. Build owned channels underneath them.
The case against buying leads is usually made by people selling something else, and the case for is made by people selling leads. Neither is much use when you have twelve crews idle in February.
So here is the neutral version. Bought leads are a legitimate instrument with a narrow set of conditions. Meet them and the channel works. Miss one and it does not, no matter how good the vendor is.
When are bought solar leads worth it?
- 01
You answer in minutes
A shared lead is sold to three or four installers at once. The one who calls first has an enormous advantage, and the 2007 Lead Response Management research is blunt about it: roughly 78% of buyers go with whoever responds first. If your median response is an hour, you are buying the right to be second.
- 02
You follow up eight times or more
Most bought leads do not answer the first attempt. Companies that stop at two attempts write off leads they already paid for. See how many times to follow up with a solar lead.
- 03
You can measure cost per sat appointment
Not cost per lead. If you cannot tell which vendor produced the appointments that actually held, you cannot tell which vendor to keep, and you will end up keeping the cheapest one.
What are you actually buying?
| What the vendor says | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| Qualified lead | Somebody filled in a form. Nothing has been verified. |
| Exclusive lead | Sold to you once. Confirm in the contract, not the sales call. |
| Homeowner verified | An address matched a record. It does not mean they own the roof. |
| Live transfer | A call routed to you. Quality varies wildly by vendor. |
| Appointment | A slot in a calendar. Ask for the sat rate, not the set rate. |
The single most useful question to ask a vendor is what percentage of their appointments sit. Anyone who does not track it is not the partner you want, and anyone quoting above 80% should be asked how it is measured.
How do you test a lead vendor in 30 days?
- 01Pick one vendor and one lead type. Testing three at once produces noise, not data.
- 02Set a fixed budget you are willing to lose, sized at roughly 40 to 60 leads. Fewer than 40 and a run of bad luck looks like a verdict.
- 03Route every lead into the same follow-up sequence your own leads get. Different treatment invalidates the comparison.
- 04Tag the source so it survives into the appointment record. If it does not reach your calendar, you cannot measure it.
- 05Judge on cost per sat appointment and close rate, side by side with your own channels.
- 06Only then decide whether to scale, renegotiate or stop.
When buying leads is the wrong answer
- You have under 25 Google reviews. Bought leads will compare you to installers with hundreds and you will lose on the same call.
- Nobody owns follow-up. Bought leads need more follow-up than inbound, not less.
- You are buying to cover a sales problem. A channel cannot fix a close rate.
- You have never run a reactivation campaign on your own database. That is free and you are skipping it. See how to reactivate old solar leads.
The strategic problem with buying leads forever
A bought lead is rented demand. The month you stop paying, it stops arriving, and the price only ever moves in one direction because the vendor sells to your competitors too. Owned channels behave the opposite way: a Business Profile that ranks, a review count that compounds and a database that grows all get cheaper per lead over time.
Use bought leads to bridge a gap or to test a new territory. Build the owned side underneath so the bridge is not load-bearing.
If you decide to buy, read this before you sign
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Common questions
- What is a good close rate on bought solar leads?
- Meaningfully lower than inbound. Installers with fast response and real follow-up commonly report 5% to 10% on shared leads and better on exclusive. If you are under 3%, the problem is usually response time rather than the vendor.
- How do I know if a solar lead vendor is reselling my leads?
- Ask for exclusivity in the contract with a stated resale window, then test it. Submit a controlled enquiry and see how many installers contact that number. Vendors who are honest about sharing are safer than vendors who claim exclusivity vaguely.
- Can I get a refund for bad solar leads?
- Most vendors offer credits for provably invalid leads such as disconnected numbers or wrong service areas. Read the window, it is often 24 to 72 hours, and build the disputing into someone's job rather than leaving it to whoever remembers.
