You bought a batch of leads the vendor called exclusive. You call the first one, and the homeowner tells you they already talked to a solar company yesterday.
By the vendor's definition, that lead may still have been exclusive. The word covers less than most buyers assume.
I sold 250+ residential solar deals as a rep before I got into marketing. This is how I'd think about the choice now.
What are exclusive leads?
An exclusive lead is a homeowner's inquiry that is sold or delivered to one solar company and nobody else. A shared lead is the same inquiry sold to several companies at once.
That's the whole definition, and it leaves a lot out. It tells you who the vendor sent the lead to today. It says nothing about where the homeowner came from, how long ago they filled out the form, what the page told them they'd get, or whether the same record gets sold again later.
What is the difference between exclusive and shared solar leads?
The difference is how many companies call the homeowner. With a shared lead you're in a race from the first minute, and with an exclusive lead you should be the only one calling.
Shared leads are cheaper per lead because the vendor gets paid several times for the same homeowner. The homeowner's phone lights up with calls from companies they've never heard of. Whoever reaches them first usually sets the price expectation, and everyone after that is arguing against it. Plenty of homeowners stop answering altogether.
Exclusive leads cost more per lead. In return you get a homeowner who isn't being chased by your competitors off that same form. I say "off that same form" on purpose, and the next section is why.
Why do exclusive solar leads sometimes act like shared ones?
Because exclusive describes the sale, and the homeowner is free to do whatever they want. There are a few common ways an exclusive lead ends up crowded or cold.
The homeowner filled out more than one form. Someone shopping for solar on a weeknight doesn't stop at one website. Your vendor sold their record only to you, and another vendor sold a different record of the same person to someone else.
The lead is exclusive now and resold later. Some sellers give you a window, then sell the record again as an aged lead. That may not hurt you on day one. It does tell you how the vendor thinks about the homeowner's information.
The lead is exclusive and slow. It was collected on a generic comparison page, and it reaches you hours later or in a spreadsheet the next morning. By then the homeowner has forgotten the form. Nobody else is calling, and they still won't pick up for you.
The form made it too easy. If all the homeowner did was tap twice on a pre-filled form, you own a phone number and not much else. On our own campaigns, instant form leads cost $3 or $4 and contact rates run around 5%. Calling the lead exclusive doesn't fix that.
What should you ask a lead vendor before you buy?
Ask how the lead was created and how fast it gets to you. Those two answers tell you more than the word exclusive does.
- Can I see the ad and the form the homeowner filled out?
- What did the page say would happen next, and did it name my company?
- Is this record sold to anyone else, today or later as an aged lead?
- How long is it between the homeowner hitting submit and the lead reaching me?
- What happens with wrong numbers, renters and duplicates?
A good vendor answers all of those without getting defensive. If you're still deciding whether to buy at all, I cover that in should you buy solar leads.
When do shared solar leads still make sense?
Shared leads can work for a team that's built to win the race. That means someone dialing within the first minutes of every lead arriving, all day, and enough closers to work the volume.
If you have a call floor, a dialer and a pitch that holds up when the homeowner has already heard from other companies, cheap shared leads can pencil out. You'll burn through a lot of them, and you need to be fine with that.
They're a poor fit for a solo consultant or a small crew. If you're in appointments all afternoon, you'll call that lead at dinner time, and you'll be the last company to reach them. The last rep through the door spends the whole appointment undoing what the first one said.
Either way, don't judge on cost per lead. Count what it costs you to get one appointment that shows, per source. I walk through that math in how much solar leads cost.
Are exclusive solar leads worth the higher price?
Usually yes, if the lead is fresh, the homeowner did some work to become a lead, and somebody calls them within minutes. Take away any one of those and the label stops mattering.
With our numbers it looks like this. A new calculator-funnel campaign, where the homeowner answers a few questions to see how many panels they'd need, usually runs $18 to $25 per lead. About 15% of those leads book an appointment, and about 65% of virtual and 80% of in-person appointments show. Our most recent solar campaign came out just under $200 per appointment that showed. That's a past result and I'm not promising it.
Those leads cost several times what an instant form lead costs. They've still been the better buy for us, because the people answer the phone.
Where do truly exclusive solar leads come from?
From ads that run only for you. The one lead you can be sure nobody else bought is the one that came from your own campaign, on a form that belongs to you.
You can build that in house. I laid out the options in how to get solar leads. Or you can have someone run it for you, which is what we do at Solarfunnels.
We run the ads under your brand or ours, and every lead from your campaign goes to you and is never resold. Each one gets a call and a text within minutes, a confirmation, a reminder, and a rebook if they no-show. It's a flat monthly fee from $750 a month, month to month, with no setup fee. Ad spend is separate. You pay for it and we never mark it up.
What we don't do: we don't sell leads by the lead or by the appointment, so you can't buy a small batch from us to test. We don't work aged leads, only real-time ones, for compliance. We only do residential solar. And I won't guarantee a number of leads or deals, because that depends on your market, your price and your budget.
If you'd like to talk it through, book a 15-minute call.