Stop Wasting Time on Bad Leads: How to Qualify Home Service Leads Before They Hit Your Calendar
Not every lead deserves a truck roll. A few questions on the first call separate real jobs from tire-kickers before anyone drives out to an estimate.
- Most bad leads can be screened out in a two-minute phone call.
- Ask about the problem, location, timing and decision-maker on every call.
- Fix your ads and forms so fewer bad leads come in.
- Track how many leads become booked jobs.
"The leads are garbage." We hear it a lot from owners who've tried online marketing before. Sometimes they're right. More often, good and bad leads are mixed together and nobody sorts them before the estimator gets in the truck.
Sorting leads quickly saves your time, your crew's time and your fuel budget, and your marketing looks a lot better for it.
What makes a lead qualified
A qualified lead:
- Needs a service you offer.
- Is in your service area.
- Needs it on a timeline that works for you.
- Is the person who decides and pays, or is working with that person.
If any of those is missing, the lead may still deserve a polite conversation, but it shouldn't take a prime spot on your calendar.
Four questions for every call
Keep these next to the phone, or build them into your CRM so whoever answers asks them every time.
1. "What's going on, and what are you hoping to get done?"
Let the homeowner describe the problem in their own words. You'll find out quickly whether it's a service you do, roughly how big the job is and how motivated they are.
2. "What's the address of the property?"
This confirms they're in your service area before you go further. It also tells you the drive time and lets you check for things like HOA rules.
3. "How soon are you looking to get this done?"
"Today" and "sometime next spring" are both fine answers, but they need different handling. Urgent jobs get booked now, and future projects go into a follow-up sequence.
4. "Is anyone else involved in the decision?"
On bigger projects especially, you want every decision-maker at the estimate. Otherwise you'll often hear "I need to talk to my spouse," and the job stalls.
Leads that don't fit
A lead that doesn't qualify isn't always a dead end.
- Outside your area: if you know a contractor there you trust, refer them. Referral relationships pay off.
- Not ready yet: add them to a follow-up list and check back when the timing suits them. Planned projects often come back.
- Price shoppers: explain what's included in your work and why it costs what it does. Some will come around, and the rest were never going to be your customers.
Fix it upstream
The best way to deal with bad leads is to attract fewer of them.
- Tighten your ad targeting to the areas you serve, and exclude searches that bring in job seekers, DIYers or services you don't offer.
- On your landing pages, say clearly what you do and where you work. If it helps, list starting prices or minimum job sizes.
- Add one or two qualifying questions to your forms, like service needed and zip code, and keep the forms short. (See why your website isn't booking jobs for more on forms.)
Measure booked jobs
Lead count alone can mislead you. Twenty leads that turn into eight booked jobs are worth more than fifty that turn into three. Track:
- How many leads come in from each source.
- How many qualify.
- How many become booked appointments.
- How many become paying jobs.
Then you can see which campaigns deserve more budget and which ones only make the phone ring.
Let someone else do the sorting
Qualifying every lead takes time, and that time usually comes out of the owner's day. At New Compass Media we contact and qualify the leads our campaigns bring in and book the right ones onto your calendar. If you'd like to talk through how that would work for your business, book a free call.
Drew is the owner and lead strategist at New Compass Media. He builds the websites, ad campaigns and follow-up systems that keep local home service businesses booked, and writes about what's working for the contractors he works with.
