THE SHORT ANSWER
Work backwards from output. A crew completing two jobs a week over forty-six working weeks needs ninety-two sold jobs a year. At four exclusive leads per sale that is 368 leads, or roughly thirty-one a month, and you should add a coverage buffer of twenty to thirty percent because leads and capacity never align neatly by week. Interior trades needing six to eight leads per sale can require sixty or more a month for the same crew.
Hiring decisions in contracting are usually made on confidence rather than arithmetic, which is why the new crew so often spends its first two months half-loaded. The number you need is calculable to within about fifteen percent, and calculating it before the hire changes both the timing and the size of the lead commitment. Two months of a half-loaded crew is a five-figure mistake and an entirely avoidable one.
The calculation has four inputs and one of them is uncomfortable. Jobs per week per crew, working weeks per year, leads per sale, and the coverage buffer that absorbs the mismatch between when enquiries arrive and when the crew is free. The uncomfortable one is leads per sale, because most firms guess it low, and guessing it low understates the order by roughly a third.
The numbers, at a glance
The formula: jobs per crew per week, times 46 working weeks, times leads per sale, divided by 12, times the coverage buffer
Working weeks: 44 to 48 after holidays, weather and training, not 52
Coverage buffer: 20 to 30 percent, rising to 40 for weather-dependent trades
Worked example: a two-person solar crew at two installs a week needs roughly 31 leads a month before buffer, 38 after
Start with what the crew can physically complete
Measure jobs per week from the last full year of completed work rather than from what the crew could do on a perfect week. Include the days lost to returning for a missing part, the survey that turned out to be wrong and the customer who was not home. The realistic figure is usually fifteen to twenty-five percent below the theoretical one.
Then convert to working weeks. Between statutory holidays, annual leave, training and weather, most installation crews work forty-four to forty-eight weeks. Using fifty-two overstates annual capacity by around ten percent, which propagates straight into an overstated lead requirement and an overspent budget.
Multiply by leads per sale, measured rather than assumed
Solar and heat pumps. Three to five exclusive leads per sale. A crew at two installs a week over forty-six weeks needs 276 to 460 leads a year, or 23 to 38 a month.
Roofing, glazing and insulation. Four to six per sale, and higher job counts per week. A crew at three jobs a week needs 552 to 828 a year, or 46 to 69 a month.
Kitchens and bathrooms. Five to eight per sale but far fewer jobs per crew, perhaps one a week. That is 230 to 368 a year, or 19 to 31 a month.
Painting, flooring and landscaping. Five to nine per sale on short jobs, often two or three a week, which can push the requirement past eighty a month per crew.
The pattern worth noticing is that lead requirement tracks job frequency far more than job value. A landscaping crew needs three times the enquiry volume of a heat pump crew and has a fraction of the margin to pay for it, which is why the interior and outdoor trades live or die on referrals.
The buffer, and why the annual figure lies
An annual average conceals the fact that leads arrive in a seasonal wave while crews are available in a flat line. If your peak quarter carries 35 percent of annual demand and your trough carries 15 percent, buying a twelfth of the annual requirement every month leaves you turning work away in spring and idle in November.
Add twenty to thirty percent as a coverage buffer, and shape it across the year rather than spreading it evenly. Weather-dependent trades should use forty percent, because a fortnight of rain converts an adequate pipeline into an empty one and the recovery lag is longer than the delay itself.
Sales capacity is the constraint nobody budgets for
Every lead needs a call within minutes, a survey booked, a survey attended and a written quotation. At six leads per sale and thirty-eight leads a month, that is thirty-eight fast calls, perhaps twenty-two surveys and twenty-two quotations, which is comfortably a half-time job before anyone has sold anything.
Buying volume that exceeds your ability to respond to it is the most common self-inflicted wound in this category. Contact rate falls, close rate follows, and the supplier gets blamed for a capacity problem. Size the sales resource in the same calculation as the crew, or cap the lead order at what the current resource can genuinely handle.
Size your lead order against real capacity
Count jobs completed per crew per week over the last full year, not the best month.
Use forty-four to forty-eight working weeks rather than fifty-two.
Measure leads per sale on at least sixty enquiries before using it in the formula.
Add a coverage buffer of twenty to forty percent depending on weather exposure.
Check that someone has the hours to call, survey and quote every lead you are about to buy.
How these figures were built
These figures are a benchmark model, not a survey. They combine an industry base range observed across Western European home-improvement campaigns with a country multiplier for local auction pressure. Treat them as a band to negotiate against, not a quote.
How Flock Leads prices this
Since the requirement lands as a monthly number, it is easier to plan against fixed package sizes than against an open-ended tap.
Starter - 10 leads for EUR 750, which is EUR 75 per lead
Growth - 25 leads for EUR 1,750, which is EUR 70 per lead
Scale - 45 leads for EUR 2,925, which is EUR 65 per lead
Pro - 70 leads for EUR 4,340, which is EUR 62 per lead
Max - 90 leads for EUR 5,400, which is EUR 60 per lead
No retainer, no contract term, and no lead sent to a second business. Unused volume rolls over under the Flock Lead Promise.
Want leads like this in your pipeline?
Flock runs the campaigns, screens the enquiries and hands you only the ones that match your service area, job size and capacity. You pay per lead, not per month.
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Related answers
Frequently asked questions
Should I buy the full requirement from one supplier?
Splitting across two sources protects you against a single source degrading, which happens more often than suppliers admit. The cost is that each cohort is smaller and takes longer to evaluate. Above forty leads a month, splitting is usually worth it.
How far ahead of a new hire should I increase volume?
Start six to eight weeks before the start date. Leads bought today become signed jobs in four to ten weeks depending on trade, so a crew hired the day volume increases will spend its first month underloaded and expensive. Six weeks of early spend is far cheaper than six weeks of an idle van.
What if my leads per sale is much worse than these bands?
Fix that before increasing volume. Improving from eight leads per sale to six reduces the requirement by a quarter at no cost, which is a better return than any price negotiation you will ever win with a supplier. Start with response time, since it costs nothing and moves the number fastest.
Does the calculation change for subcontracted crews?
The lead arithmetic is identical but the buffer should be smaller, because you can flex capacity down without carrying the wage. Subcontracting is effectively a way of buying a smaller coverage buffer at a higher unit cost. Whether that trade is worth making depends on how confident you are in the pipeline nine weeks out.
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