Exclusive vs shared leads: count the close rate.

What the two words mean

A shared lead is sold to several contractors at once. You and three or four others get the same homeowner's details and race to make contact. An exclusive lead is sold to one contractor only. You are the only one calling.

Industry figures put shared restoration leads in the range of roughly a few hundred dollars each, and exclusive pay-per-call fire and water leads much higher, often several hundred to well over a thousand dollars per call. Those are market ranges, not our prices, and the spread is exactly the point of this guide.

The math shared leads hide

Price per lead is the wrong number. Cost per job is the right one, and cost per job is price divided by close rate.

On a shared lead you are one of several callers, so your close rate is a fraction of what it would be if you were alone. If a shared lead is cheap but four of you split the same homeowner, your effective cost per signed job can quietly climb past what an exclusive lead would have cost, and you have spent staff time chasing three losses for every win. Cheap leads are only cheap if you close them.

The math exclusive leads hide

Exclusivity is worth paying for only if the lead is real and timely. An exclusive lead that arrives late, or that turns out to be a homeowner who already signed with someone else, is an expensive way to buy a dead end. Exclusivity protects you from other buyers of the same list. It does nothing to protect you from being slow.

The variable both models ignore: time

Most exclusive-vs-shared debates are about how many buyers see a lead. Almost none are about when the lead exists. A form-fill lead, shared or exclusive, only exists after the homeowner searches and submits a form, which is well after the emergency. By then the fastest local company may already have the job. See speed to lead in restoration for why that first window matters so much.

A different kind of lead: the incident itself

There is a category that is neither a shared list nor a resold exclusive: a lead born from the loss the moment it is dispatched. Instead of waiting for a homeowner to search and fill out a form, you learn a fire or water loss happened in real time, matched to the property and its owner, with every number labeled. You reach out first because you know first, not because you outbid someone for a list.

That is what IncidentLead is. Coverage is sold by county rather than by the lead, so you are not paying per call and you are not racing a stranger's list, you are getting every qualifying loss in your area as it happens. See how that compares to the usual lead channels.

Whatever channel you use, reaching a homeowner still has to happen inside do-not-call rules and permitted hours. See calling fire and water leads without getting burned.