You have closers with open calendars, or you're a rep whose company leads dried up, and a lead company just quoted you a price per lead. Before you send the money, you want to know if it's going to turn into deals or into a week of voicemails.
I sold over 250 residential solar deals as a rep before I moved into marketing. Since then we've managed more than $500K in solar ad spend and generated over 25,000 homeowner leads for more than 50 solar companies. My short answer: buying solar leads can work, but only when you know exactly what you're paying for and you have people ready to call.
What are you really buying when you buy solar leads?
You're buying a name and a phone number. Everything that decides whether that number turns into a deal is set by the seller: how old the lead is, how many other companies got it, and what the homeowner thought they were signing up for.
Age matters most. A homeowner who asked about solar a few minutes ago still remembers doing it. One who filled out a form last week has either talked to someone else or forgotten the whole thing.
Then there's the number of buyers. A shared lead goes to several companies at once, so you're in a race the second it lands. An exclusive lead goes to you alone, and it costs more for that reason. I wrote up the difference in exclusive vs shared solar leads.
The last part is what the homeowner was promised. Some asked for a savings estimate. Some clicked an ad about a program they think is free. Some believe they asked one company for a quote and now five are calling. You inherit whatever the ad said, even though you never saw it.
That's why the price per lead tells you so little. A cheap lead nobody answers is expensive. The number to watch is what you pay per appointment that shows, and I break down real numbers in how much solar leads cost.
What should you ask a solar lead company before you pay?
Ask five questions and don't pay until all five get a straight answer. A good seller can answer them in one email.
- Is the lead exclusive or shared, and if it's shared, with how many buyers?
- How old is the lead when it reaches me?
- How did the homeowner opt in, and whose name was on the form?
- What's the return policy for wrong numbers and people who never asked about solar?
- Will you show me the ad or the page the homeowner saw?
The last one is where weak sellers go quiet. If they won't show you the ad, assume it promised something you can't deliver, and expect to hear about it on every call.
The opt-in question protects you. There are consent rules for calling and texting homeowners, and you're the one doing the dialing. So ask how the homeowner opted in before you load a list into your phone system.
Take the return policy seriously too. Every batch has some bad numbers in it. What you need to know is whether you get credit for them or eat them.
When is buying solar leads the right call?
Buying leads makes sense when you need activity this week and you have people with free hours to dial. Nothing else puts names in front of a team that fast.
A new team is the clearest case. New reps get better by talking to homeowners, and a batch of leads gives them conversations on day one while you sort out everything else.
A call team with open hours is the other one. Bought leads reward speed and persistence. A room that calls within minutes and keeps calling will pull more appointments out of the same list than a closer squeezing in dials between sits.
If it's just you, selling during the day and calling a shared list at night, be careful. As a rep I learned what a bad lead costs: a drive and an evening with a homeowner who was never going to buy.
When does running your own ads beat buying leads?
Your own ads win once you can commit a steady monthly budget and you want leads nobody else is calling. Every lead is exclusive, seconds old, and came from an offer you wrote.
Here's what that has looked like for us. Our cost per lead on Meta has ranged from about $7 to $25, and a new campaign built around a solar calculator usually runs $18 to $25 depending on the area. About 15% of those leads book an appointment, and about 65% of virtual appointments show. So 100 leads at $20 is $2,000, which books around 15 appointments and puts you in roughly 10 of them. That's about $200 per appointment that showed, and our most recent solar campaign came in just under that. It's a past result, not a promise.
The catch is the work. Someone has to write the ads, build the pages, and call every lead within minutes, every day. Skip that last part and your own leads go cold the same way bought ones do. The cheapest version of your own ads has a trap in it as well: instant forms can bring in leads for $3 or $4, but contact rates run around 5%, and all that unanswered dialing hurts your phone number's reputation. More on that in Facebook ads for solar companies.
Is there a middle option between buying leads and doing it yourself?
Yes. You can pay a company to run your ads and work the leads for you, so you get exclusive leads without building a marketing department.
That's what we do at Solarfunnels. It's a flat monthly fee starting at $750, month to month, with no setup fee. You pay for the ad spend separately and we never mark it up. The leads are exclusive to you and never resold, every one gets a call and a text within minutes, and the ads can run under your brand or ours.
It isn't for everyone. We don't sell leads by the lead or by the appointment, so if you want a stack of names by Friday, a lead company is the better fit. We only work real-time leads, never aged lists, for compliance. We only do residential solar. And we don't guarantee a number, because results depend on your market, your price and your budget.
| Buy leads | Run your own ads | Done for you | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who else gets the lead | Often several buyers | Nobody | Nobody |
| Lead age at first call | Depends on the seller | Minutes, if you're fast | Minutes |
| Who does the work | You dial | You build and you dial | The service does both |
| How you pay | Per lead | Ad spend plus your time | Flat fee plus ad spend |
How do you test a lead company without getting burned?
Start with the smallest batch they'll sell and work it the way you'd work your best leads. Call each one within minutes of delivery, keep calling for several days, and write down three numbers: how many you reached, how many booked, and how many showed.
Then divide what you spent by the appointments that showed. That one figure lets you compare a lead company, your own ads and a done-for-you service on equal terms. If the seller's leads hold up, buy more. If they don't, you've lost a small batch and you know what to ask the next seller.
If you'd like to see how your own campaign would stack up against that, book a 15-minute call and I'll tell you straight whether we can help.