THE SHORT ANSWER
Buy 20 to 30 leads over two to three weeks, keep your response time constant throughout, and judge the supplier on contact rate and quote rate rather than on closed jobs. Ten leads is too few to distinguish a bad supplier from a bad fortnight, and closed jobs arrive too late and depend too heavily on your own sales work to isolate the supplier's contribution.
Why the sample size matters more than the budget
With ten leads, a normal run of bad luck looks identical to a bad feed. With twenty to thirty, contact rate and quote rate become readable. The cost of the extra volume is far lower than the cost of cancelling a good supplier or persisting with a poor one for three months.
What to measure, in order of usefulness
Contact rate - reached within 24 hours. Below 70 percent points to bad numbers or stale delivery. This is the supplier's metric.
Match rate - right area, right job type, right ownership. Below 90 percent means the filters are not working.
Quote rate - reached leads that accepted a quote or visit. Below 40 percent points at intent, above 60 percent is a strong feed.
Close rate - useful, but arrives weeks later and reflects your sales work as much as the lead.
Controls that keep the test honest
Fix your response time for the whole test. If you call new leads faster because they are a trial, you are testing your own enthusiasm.
One named owner for every test lead, so nothing sits in a shared inbox.
Log the outcome of every single lead. A test with gaps in it proves nothing and cannot be re-run.
Do not change your service area or job types mid-test.
Run through a normal trading period, not a holiday fortnight.
Grounds to stop early
Stop before the sample completes if leads arrive hours late, if the replacement policy is refused in practice, if the same enquiry appears from a second supplier, or if homeowners report being contacted by competitors from the same source. Those are structural findings and no amount of extra volume improves them.
Related answers
Frequently asked questions
How much should a test cost?
Twenty to thirty leads at the trade's normal exclusive band. In most trades that is EUR 1,200 to EUR 3,000, and it buys a decision you can defend.
Should I test two suppliers at once?
Yes, if you can keep response time and ownership identical across both. Otherwise sequential tests are more trustworthy.
What if the leads are good but too few?
That is a positive result. Volume constraints are negotiable in a way that quality problems are not.
Can I test Flock at low volume?
The Starter package is 10 leads for EUR 750. Two of those across three weeks gives a readable twenty-lead sample.
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