Every contractor who has bought leads has had the conversation that begins with the phrase these leads are rubbish. It almost never goes anywhere, because rubbish is not a testable claim and the supplier has no obligation to a standard that was never written down. The conversation that works happens before the first lead, and it is about definitions.

Suppliers are far more flexible on specification than on price, for a simple reason: tightening the specification costs them volume, which they can plan around, while cutting the price costs them margin, which they cannot. Understanding that asymmetry is most of the negotiation. Open on specification, keep price for the second conversation, and you will get further on both.

The numbers, at a glance

• The six criteria worth defining: 6 conditions: geography, job type, budget floor, ownership, timeline horizon and contactability

• Rejection window: 48 to 72 hours from delivery, with the grounds named in advance

• Expected rejection rate: 5 to 15 percent on a well-written specification

• What tightening costs: each additional criterion typically removes 10 to 25 percent of available volume, so choose deliberately

Write each criterion so a stranger could adjudicate it

The test for a good criterion is whether two people who were not in the negotiation would reach the same verdict on a given enquiry. Local becomes a postcode list or a radius in kilometres from a named point. Serious becomes a stated intention to start within a defined number of months. Suitable property becomes owner-occupied, detached or semi-detached, built before a given year.

Budget is the criterion that causes the most argument and the one worth the most. A supplier cannot promise the homeowner has the money, but they can promise the homeowner was shown an indicative price range before submitting and did not abandon the form. That is a real, testable, enforceable difference and it removes a large share of wasted surveys.

Choose which criteria to spend your leverage on

• Geography. Cheap to tighten and high value, because travel time is your most wasted resource. Always specify this precisely.

• Ownership. Costs the supplier almost nothing and removes a whole class of dead enquiry. Insist on it.

• Timeline. Moderately expensive in volume terms. Worth specifying if your pipeline is full, not if crews are idle next month.

• Budget floor. The most expensive criterion to impose and usually the most valuable. Expect to concede on volume or price to get it.

• Job type. Free to specify and frequently forgotten, which is how a roofer ends up paying for gutter cleaning enquiries.

• Contactability. A verified telephone number rather than an email address alone. Non-negotiable, and any supplier resisting it is telling you something.

Agree the rejection mechanism at the same time

A specification without a rejection process is a wish list. Agree the window first: 48 hours is tight but fair on volume you are calling immediately, and 72 gives room for a weekend. Agree what evidence is required, which for most grounds should be a note in your system rather than a recording, since evidentiary burden is how a generous-sounding policy is quietly neutered.

Then agree the outcome. A replacement lead is the usual remedy and it is reasonable. What matters more is the absence of a cap so low that it cannot cover a genuinely bad week, and clarity that a rejected lead does not count against your package volume. Ask both questions explicitly, because the answers are rarely written down unless you ask.

Manage the relationship after the first cohort

Report rejections weekly, with reasons, in a single message rather than as individual complaints. A supplier receiving a structured weekly summary will adjust targeting; a supplier receiving nine angry emails will manage you rather than the campaign. This is not a soft point: the operational response you get is largely determined by how legible your feedback is.

After sixty leads, sit down with the pattern. If rejections cluster on one criterion, that criterion is either mis-specified or genuinely hard in your market, and the honest answer may be that you should pay more or accept less. If rejections are scattered across all six, the problem is upstream traffic quality and no amount of specification tightening will fix it.

Revisit the specification once a quarter rather than continuously. Constant adjustment prevents the supplier from ever optimising against a stable target, which is a common way that well-intentioned contractors make their own volume worse.

Build a specification worth signing

1. Write each of the six criteria so an outsider could adjudicate any enquiry against it.

2. Rank them by value to you and decide which two you will spend leverage on.

3. Agree the rejection window, the evidence required and whether rejects consume package volume.

4. Send one structured weekly rejection summary instead of individual complaints.

5. Review the whole specification after sixty leads, then quarterly, and not in between.

Want leads like this in your pipeline?

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