Shared vs exclusive leads: the arithmetic
The comparison everyone makes is price per lead. The comparison that matters is price per deal, and you can only work that out from your own numbers.
Do the maths on your own funnel, not on a marketing page
Take your last thirty leads from any source. Count how many you reached, how many became a real conversation, and how many became a signed contract. That gives you a cost per deal for that source. It is the only number that settles the argument.
We are deliberately not printing a ratio here. Any universal "X leads per deal" figure is either someone else's market or an invention, and acting on it costs real money.
What changes between the two
Contact rate falls on a shared lead because the homeowner has already fielded several calls and stops picking up. The drop is not in the data you bought; it is in the reception.
Conversion falls again because the conversation that does happen is a price comparison. You are no longer the person solving a problem, you are the fourth quote.
Time per deal rises, and that is the cost nobody puts in the spreadsheet. If a shared lead takes three times the follow-up, the cheaper line item is not cheaper.
When shared leads are genuinely the right call
High-volume operations with a real call floor can make shared leads work, because they can afford to be the first of the four calls consistently. Speed is the whole strategy there, and it is a strategy, not a fallback.
If you are one person with a phone and a day job, that is not the game you are playing, and buying into it will just fill your week with bad calls.
Questions people ask
How many leads should I buy before judging a source?
Enough that one lucky deal cannot flatter it and one dead week cannot condemn it. Thirty is a reasonable place to start for most people, worked the same way every time so you are measuring the source rather than your mood.
Should I run more than one lead source at once?
Yes, once you have the capacity to work both properly. Running two badly is worse than running one well, because you learn nothing about either.
Is a cheaper lead ever worth it just for practice?
For a genuinely new investor or agent, there is a real argument for volume while you learn what the calls sound like. Just be honest that you are buying reps, not deal flow.
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