The short answer
Solar lead generation companies sell either marketplace leads, exclusive leads, or appointments, and the business models pay them differently from you. Judge them on eight things: exclusivity in writing, lead source transparency, return policy, contact data quality, sat rate, contract length, attribution support and how they handle disputes.
- 01A lead company is paid on volume. You are paid on installs. Align that with terms, not trust.
- 02Ask where the leads come from. If the answer is vague, the traffic is usually incentivised.
- 03Short contracts and clear return windows tell you more than any case study.
- 04The best vendors will hand you data. The worst ones will hand you a dashboard you cannot export.
Lead generation companies are not villains and they are not partners. They are suppliers with a different incentive from yours, and the whole job is writing terms that line those incentives up.
How do solar lead generation companies make their money?
| Model | How they get paid | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Marketplace | Sells the same lead to several installers | Cheap per lead, a race to respond, quality varies by source |
| Exclusive generator | Runs ads and sells each lead once | Higher price, better contact rate, watch the resale window |
| Appointment setter | Paid per booked appointment | Highest price, and the sat rate is the only number that matters |
The appointment model is where the incentive gap is widest. A setter paid per booking is rewarded for booking, not for booking well, which is why you ask for sat rate and not set rate.
What should you ask before you sign?
- 01Where do the leads come from? Search, paid social, native ads, comparison sites, or incentivised surveys. An installer buying incentivised survey traffic without knowing it will conclude that bought leads do not work.
- 02Is exclusivity in the contract, and what is the resale window? Not the sales call. The contract.
- 03What is your return or credit policy, and what is the window? 24 hours is tight, 72 is workable, none is a red flag.
- 04What contact data comes with the lead? Phone, email, address and consent record. Missing consent records are a liability, not a bargain.
- 05What is your average sat rate, and how do you measure it? For appointment sellers this is the whole deal.
- 06How long is the minimum term? Anything over three months before you have data is asking you to bet blind.
- 07Can I export raw lead data? If it only lives in their dashboard, you cannot calculate cost per sat appointment, which is the point.
- 08Who handles disputes and how fast? A named person and a stated turnaround, or expect to be arguing by email in week three.
The trial that protects you
- 01
Cap the exposure
Fixed budget, 40 to 60 leads, one lead type, one territory. Enough volume for the average to mean something, small enough that a bad vendor costs you a fortnight rather than a quarter.
- 02
Treat them exactly like your own leads
Same response time, same sequence, same rep. Any special handling makes the comparison worthless.
- 03
Measure four numbers
Contact rate, appointment set rate, sat rate and close rate. Then compute cost per sat appointment and put it next to your other channels.
When should you not hire one at all?
If your Business Profile is unoptimised, your review count is under 25 and nobody has ever messaged your old database, a lead vendor is an expensive way to avoid work that is free. Those three things also make every bought lead convert better, so doing them first is not a delay, it is preparation.
- Start with local SEO for solar contractors, which is the channel you keep.
- Then how to get more reviews for solar installers, which raises conversion everywhere at once.
- Then how to reactivate old solar leads, which is free and usually surprising.
Buying leads to avoid building a pipeline is like hiring a taxi every day because you have not bought a van.
Reading a vendor's numbers without being fooled
Every vendor arrives with a deck. Three habits keep you out of trouble when you read it.
- Ask for the median, not the average. One installer closing a huge commercial job drags an average close rate somewhere it has never been for anybody else.
- Ask for the date range and the territory. Performance from a different state in a different incentive regime tells you nothing about yours.
- Ask what happened to the installers who stopped. Churn is the number vendors present least and it explains the most.
None of this is adversarial. A good vendor has these numbers, is comfortable sharing them, and would rather you buy with clear expectations than churn out in month four. The ones who bristle are the ones telling you something.
Write down before you start what result would make you continue and what result would make you stop. Deciding that in advance is the only reliable defence against the sunk-cost conversation you will otherwise have in week six, and it takes ten minutes.
Stop reading, start booking
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Common questions
- Which solar lead generation company is best?
- There is no single best, because quality varies by territory and month even within one vendor. The reliable approach is a capped trial with defined metrics, run the same way against two vendors in sequence rather than in parallel.
- Do lead generation companies work for commercial solar?
- Far less well. Commercial solar has a longer cycle, a committee of decision makers and far lower search volume, so bought leads are thin and expensive. Outbound and relationships do more. See how to get commercial solar leads.
- What is a fair contract length for a solar lead vendor?
- Month to month, or a defined trial with an exit. Anything longer should come with pricing or exclusivity concessions that justify the commitment, in writing.
